Atheist Vs Theist Debate

This post is for the birds.

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:50:00 +0000

I'll admit it... I live under a rock. It took me until yesterday to hear about all the crazy stories of animal mass-deaths to have happened in the last week or so. Apparently on New Years day, there were several hundred to several thousand birds to die all at once. Then a few days later, it happened again in Louisiana (birds AND fish), and then again in Sweden. Since then, I've heard a lot of buzz about it being a sign of the end-times, or some crazy conspiracy. Apparently, it's taken on the name, "Aflockolypse".

So what does it mean? Why are we suddenly being inundated with mass animal death? Why is this happening now? And what in the world does this have to do with Atheism vs Theism?

While I'm not a biologist, I can't answer, "Why" these animals are dying off en-mass. I'm sure there are perfectly valid reasons. But I can answer the other above questions.

What does this all mean? Well, it doesn't mean anything. Nature doesn't work that way. There is no message in something like this. This doesn't mean that God thinks we're too sinful or anything like that. If anything, the lessons we learn from something like this are more localized to the answers of, "What is causing a large amount of species to die prematurely?" and "Is there a way to prevent it in the future/should humans even try to prevent it?"

Why is this happening now? And what does this have to do in this blog? My answer to both of those is: confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypothesis regardless of whether the information is true.

We had one sensational news story that happened to take place on New Years day. Since it's a time that people think of a "rebirth" of the year, something sensational happening on that day gets more notice. People assume it has something to do with this special day, and they take note. When a similar, just as sensational story comes out soon after, people will correlate the two (or more) stories. Add in a conspiracy theory or two, and every time a mass species death occurs, you get confirmation bias that these events must be related.

At this time, there is no reason to believe that any of these recent mass deaths are related at all. In fact, there is no reason to believe that this is anything but commonplace in nature. Mass animal deaths happen all the time, and they just don't make the news. In fact, here is a map of mass bird and fish deaths in the past few weeks alone, all over the world. As you can see, this is not an uncommon occurrence. It happens all the time.

This is very similar to the story of, "The Bermuda Triangle". Where people take note of plane and shipwrecks that happen in this specific area of the Atlantic Ocean, and completely dismiss the equal amount of plane and shipwrecks that happens elsewhere in the world.

How does this relate to theism and/or religion? The most glaring parallel I can make is through the idea of prayer/spells/asking your god for something however outrageous and possibly sometimes getting it. People pray all the time. They certainly don't always get what they want. But when they do get what they pray for, it's taken as a sign of god's acceptance. When they don't get what they want, it's taken as a sign of god's "mysterious ways" or some sort of lesson, and the event is generally forgotten.
In reality, there have been numerous studies on prayer. They have varied results at best. But the one result they all show is that prayer seems to have no more success than that of chance.
To take an answered prayer as proof of god's existence is to be using confirmation bias to prove your belief. You could just as easily flip it around and say that every unanswered prayer is proof that god does not exist.

What other parallels can one take from the lessons of confirmation bias? Earlier in this blog, we debated the validity of prophecy. We argued Christian semantics back and forth about whether or not prophecy was or wasn't fulfilled. But we skipped over the myriad prophecies that were never fulfilled. These non-fulfillments are just as important in validating the truth behind a given religion. They give a much broader view of how close to chance a prophet (or prophets) actually is. One or two accurate predictions is impressive unless there are several hundred other predictions that aren't accurate at all. Then we see how close to chance a prediction actually is.

Confirmation bias is a very sneaky rationale. People from all sides fall for it. It runs rampant in Homeopathy, a prior i skepticism, religion, atheism, spirituality, and science. If we're going to know the truth, we have to understand how it happens, and we have to be willing to see it when it happens. Most importantly, we have to acknowledge when it's happening to ourselves.

-Mike

My Apologies.

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:33:00 +0000

I've been away from the blog for several weeks now. As I am in the process of starting a business from scratch, I have had very little time to work on this project, which is more of a hobby for me than anything right now.

I appreciate everyone's patience. And don't worry, there will be more to come very soon!

-Mike

Know your non-believer: Atheist vs. Anti-Religionist

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:39:00 +0000

This is the first in a series of posts I've been wanting to tackle for a little while. While it's not necessarily going to be written to ignite debate, I wanted to address a few things that would help people of different beliefs better understand atheism from my perspective.

There is a relatively new movement within the atheist community called, "New Atheism". This has been brought about by the work of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and several other rockstars of atheism. It has spawned organized groups like The Brights, and aided to the numbers of Humanists. These are groups which I would go so far as to say fit within Cory's earlier definition of a religion. New Atheists have followers that are just as vocal and opinionated as any other fundamentalist.

The point of view of the New Atheist movement is very much the idea that religion is antiquated, and should be questioned. Many consider it harmful and are very vocal about it. Richard Dawkins has even gone so far as to call certain aspects of religion "child abuse". Christopher Hitchens has said that religion is, "the main source of hatred in the world".

What I want to address in this post, is that there is a significant difference between, "Atheism" and "Anti-Religionist".

Atheism is a dis-belief in god. That's it. In and of itself, this does not force someone to have a philosophic belief about the morality of religions or people of other beliefs. One can be an atheist and be perfectly fine with people believing something other than what they believe. Not all atheists, including myself, believe that religion is evil. Not all atheists are anti-religionists.

Anti-Religion is atheism with an agenda. Anti-Religionists feel that religion has a negative effect on our society, and are openly against it. They are the ones that speak up, because they are the ones with an agenda themselves. Unfortunately, because they are the ones that speak up, many people associate all atheists in this manner, and this is simply not true.

To take things to a personal level: at this point, I feel like I need to be honest and acknowledge that I most likely have anti-religion leanings now and then. There are certainly agendas that religions push politically that I clearly don't agree with, and I may be vocal about them once in a while. But I can't say that religion is inherently evil. There have been terrible things done in the past in the name of atheism just like there are terrible things in the past done in the name of religion. I don't think that touting one philosophy as being morally right or wrong over another is going to solve any problems. This may be a blog specifically devoted to debating, but the point is to have open communication. In communicating, we may actually learn from each other, and that can actually solve problems.

-Mike

Alien scabies attack!

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:21:00 +0000

Cory,

As far as I'm concerned, we've hashed out the arguments for and against calling atheism a religion. I don't think we'll really come to a definition of "Religion" that we will both agree on. And that's where we're falling short.

Admittedly, this post is more in reference to your comments on Richard Dawkins then to the rest of the post.

The belief of Dawkins that you are referring to is called: Panspermia. It is the idea that life has traveled through space, probably carried on something like a comet, which found it's way to Earth, and started multiplying here. Versions of this theory has been around at least since the 5th century B.C. and is not something Dawkins made up.

Not that I necessarily believe this is how life began on Earth, but I think it is a valid theory worth exploring. For one, we have recorded the existence of extremophiles, some of which could actually survive a trip through space. For two, humans may have inadvertently done this ourselves. We know that certain strains of extremophiles that can survive a trip through space happened to be around during the Cambrian Explosion.

Of course this theory doesn't explain how life began, but it could explain how life began on our planet. We know that collisions with extra-solar objects and planets can launch pieces of the planet into space. We know that Earth has been bombarded with meteorites.
Given that we know there is life that can survive a trip through space, and that we humans have actually done it with our own space-equipment, I don't see how this idea is assinine whatsoever. And I certainly don't see how it is self-contradicting. It has nothing to do with intelligent design whatsoever, and has everything to do with known natural processes.

Well, that's all I have to say about that for now. Take care Cory!

-Mike

Dawkins' aliens gave all of us scabies!

noreply@blogger.com (Risk) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 05:22:00 +0000

Mike,

You keep coming back to this "faith is a belief that finds supporting evidence" thing, and I have to take issue with that. I feel that I have searched for what I consider to be the most logical conclusion to my questions, and that search for truth has led me to believe in God. I didn't start out believing in God and then ran around looking for supporting evidence. I think our methodologies have been very similar; it is simply our conclusions that have differed.

Regarding "lessor Gods", certainly a point will come when accepting more than your own god will cause a conflict, and you'll have to decide which god you believe in more accurately (Zues may exist, for instance, just not as the ancient mythologies describe). This is a tangent that I don't wish to get sidetracked with, except to say that I agree with you to a point, but that explanations can be made.

Dawkins has made the case that intelligent design is not possible, but that life on this planet may have originated by alien life "seeding" the blocks of life to this world. This claim is not only self-contradicting, it is outright assinine. This is one example.

As for disagreeing with Jesus, certainly one couldn't hope to contradict God and still call themselves a follower of Him. But I could disagree with His apostles, or certain doctrines or events recorded in the Bible - even ones that i thought were true. This is a distinction, admittedly, that atheists don't have to make.

I always heard the quote as "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair style" in which case all I have to do is shave my otherwise full head of hair and reveal the fallacy of this idea. I suppose the same would hold true for calling it a hair color. "None" could arguably be called a color. But this is always going to come down to definition, and your slice of my argument refering to religion as a system of beliefs only portrays part of my argument. It is a system of beliefs regarding the supernatural that results in a call to action - that call may be to do nothing, but choosing not to believe is an active decision by a sentient being. This is the action to which I refer, not specifically a call to "preach the word" or some such thing. In this case, the NRA isn't quite a religion (although they do have some borderline dogmatic doctrines).

Your beliefs may not get tax exempt status, but your not-for-profit organizations do, same as mine. I'm not tax exempt just because I believe a certain way, but the institution I support is a registered 501(c), just like, oh, say, the HRC. Tax status has nothing to do with this debate.

I'm not offended that you think I'm wrong regarding atheism, and I'm not out to offend you, so I am glad you don't take offense. I just think you're defining the term too narrowly to purposely exclude your beliefs from the title of religion, simply because of the implications it would have to admit that you believe in something without proof. Likewise, you think I am defining the term too broadly and including too many groups. I'm not convinced that you are right, and clearly you don't agree with me. This is probably a reasonable place to put this element of the debate to rest. Almost.

I'll end by reminding you that abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscence. Hence, your evidence-based approach still leaves you with a gap that must be filled before you can make the claim that God does not exist (your claim is that nothing you have found shows evidence of God, therefore He must not exist. But since this evidence does not prove absence, you are making a leap of faith to conclude that it does). I am glad to see your intellectual honesty in admitting that you may be wrong. I would argue that the most honest thing to do would be to conclude that God may or may not exist, and that there simply isn't enough evidence one way or the other to make a valid conclusion. But that would likewise require me to do the same thing, since my belief in God is based largely on the same evidence that you have been citing, simply with different conclusions (I am assuming that God exists until shown otherwise, while you are assuming the God doesn't exist until shown otherwise). But this is exactly the point. In abscence of absolute proof, we each have to assume that our beliefs are true, how did you say it? oh yeah, "with our without proof." Neither of us has sufficient evidence to bridge the last bit of the gap into fact, so we must rely on faith alone to validate our beliefs. Hence, we are both religious.

On to bigger and more important things. Until next time.

Cory

PS- I have been working on an approach that will put you a little more on the defensive, since I agree that up to now we have really been defending God's existence more than you defending His abscence, but I want to be careful because I'm not interested in attacking or offending you or your beliefs. Dan made most of my recent argument in his last post, so I have scraped that one and am researching another approach. Before Christmas, I promise. Hopefully it's worth the wait.

Richard Dawkins cured my scabies!

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:34:00 +0000

Ok, I've never had scabies, and I certainly don't believe that Richard Dawkins could do very much to cure them. But I think it's funny to think of him as a "Patron Saint" of Atheism.

Cory, I really have a hard time with you saying I have a certain amount of, "faith" and that drives my beliefs. In fact, it is absolutely the contrary. As I talked about in my very first post, it is my lack of faith that drives my atheism. My beliefs are based on evidence, not faith. I believe in the Big Bang origins of the universe not because it sounds good, but because of the evidence we have that caused us to come to those conclusions.
My personal philosophy is not to come up with an idea and then find evidence to prove it. My personal philosophy is to look at the evidence and then use it to understand what is happening. This is the polar opposite of having faith.

"Faith" and "Belief" do not mean the same thing.
"Belief" is something you think is true. and "Faith" is trusting what you think is true to be true, with our without proof.

I don't believe in God not because I have faith he doesn't exist, but because I don't see any proof of his existence. I acknowledge that I may be wrong. I can't disprove god's existence. But to take an idea and then search for proof to validate those claims is a flawed process. It causes people to filter out what information doesn't fit their idea. I don't disbelieve in god because I want him to not exist, but because I don't see the evidence that leads me to make the conclusion that he does.

I understand that god could exist and works in ways that show no evidence. But I can't take lack of evidence as proof of his existence. That is just illogical. That is why I can't say that I have "faith".

"Bottom line - a religion is a system of beliefs that result in a call to action." You can use that definition if you would like, but I think this is far too broad. For one, my Atheism doesn't necessarily call me to action. I may choose to act upon my dis-belief, but I know far more atheists that prefer not to say or do anything to others about it. For another, there are far more systems of beliefs that don't have anything to do with a belief in god that result in a call for action. For example: I would not consider "Pro-Gun Rights" to be a religion.

For the record, I don't take offense to calling Atheism a religion. I just don't agree that it is. But like you said, it comes down to what our definition of "religion" is. This reminds me of the Don Hirschberg quote that goes something like, "Calling Atheism a religion is like calling 'bald' a hair color."

You may believe in other "lesser gods" but if they are the gods of other religions than your own, you have to acknowledge that in most cases, there will be a conflict of interest in terms of which mythology is correct. If you believe in Yahweh AND Zeus, then you have extremely conflicting origin stories of the universe. If one is correct then the other isn't. You can't get around it without skewing the very understanding of who that god is.

Although I'm curious as to what logic of Richard Dawkins you think is assinine, I don't think it's relevant to this debate. The same goes for the other famous Atheists. Although as far as Bill Maher is concerned: Anyone who makes a movie where they are belittling people of other beliefs for two hours is just a deuchebag.

"However, just as disliking Mahar or Hitchens doesn't make you less atheist, disagreeing with, say, Brigham Young on certain things doesn't make me less Christian." I agree with you here. Although, I wonder how you would feel if instead of you disagreeing with Mr. Young, you disagreed with Jesus. But that's a whole different subject.

We can go back and forth about the subject of what does and doesn't constitute a religion. Like I said, I'm not offended by it. I just don't agree that my atheism is a religion.

You're right. I have first amendment rights on the issue. But my beliefs don't get tax-exempt status.

Thanks for (although not deliberately) bringing up this subject. I feel as though I've been playing offense this entire blog and you and Dan have been playing defense. I would love for you two to bring up debates where I have to defend my stance a little more.

Take care, and happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

-Mike

Re: It's Gettin' Silly Up In Here

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 03:15:00 +0000

Dan,

You're right, things really are getting silly at this point. We've hit a point where we are stuck in an endless loop.
I'll argue that you're using circular reasoning. You'll argue that you're not.
I'll argue that I don't accept testimony as accurate evidence. You'll argue that it is.
I'll ask for more evidence. You'll give me something from the bible, and we'll play a game of "who knows the bible better than who." Then I'll argue that using the bible as proof of itself is using circular reasoning. Then we're back to square one.

I can (and did the research) to argue against the extra Biblical writings and why they aren't evidence for the New Testament claims. But that will get us back into the, "Who knows the bible better than who" game. And I think you misunderstand what I would consider as evidence to back up the claims of the gospels.

I feel as though I've explained that human testimony can be invalid, and have shown proof. As I said before, I will hold steadfast in this regard. I understand that in history, sometimes this is the only way we know what has happened. But I also argue that in the history we know, especially that which we know solely from human testimony, it is subject to be invalid. This doesn't mean that it's ALL wrong. In most cases, I would bet that what we know is fairly accurate. But in terms of arguing for the existence of the supernatural, which is what we are doing, we can NOT settle for anything less than 100% accuracy. Human fallibility is an unfortunate trait that will never allow for human testimony, however earnest, to be capable of being considered as 100% accurate evidence.

I feel as though I've given enough evidence to make a case for why I BELIEVE the gospels have been embellished/changed/corrupted. I could go into it, but I don't feel like getting into another game of, "who knows the bible more than who".

I am at a loss for words about your arguments for the Gospels as not being biased stories for Jesus.

At this point, I'm willing to declare that I agree to disagree. We aren't making any more headway on this subject, and our energy can be saved for new debate. I really don't want to go another round of rehashing the same arguments.

Thanks for keeping me on my toes! I expect nothing less during our future debates!

-Mike

My holiday season remarks

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 02:32:00 +0000

Thank you Cory and Dan for the kind words.

Now is a fantastic time to sit back and remember we have much more in common with each other than the differences this blog focuses on.

Of course this is a blog who's nature is the spirit of debate, but none of us would be participating if we weren't hoping to share who we are with those that differ from us.
In that, our purpose here is to bring us together, not push us apart.

In the few months we've been doing this, I feel as though you guys are much more my friends then just strangers across the digital divide. In that, I would certainly like to express my deepest, "Thank you" to everyone who has participated, even if all you've done is read the blog.

I hope you have all had a fantastic Holiday and have taken the chance to appreciate all the opportunities we are lucky to have.

Best Wishes,
-Mike

Beyond silly, this is just smarmy!

noreply@blogger.com (Risk) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 06:54:00 +0000

Friends,

We don't have to believe in a deity this time of year to give thanks for the great freedoms we enjoy, our faculties that allow us to work and be prosperous, and for good friends with which to share ideas and expand our understandings of the world and universe. No matter what else is said here, I want you all to know that I am thankful for this great opportunity to share these ideas with you guys and I am thankful for our cyber-friendship.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Best,

~Cory

It's Gettin' Silly Up In Here

noreply@blogger.com (D.Kreft) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 07:30:00 +0000

Getting back to my circular reasoning argument: Why are the only stories of Jesus from the Christian point of view? Where is the public record which takes into account the miracles he performed? Where are the non-Christian stories of Jesus from that time? Where is the archaeological evidence to back up the claims? There simply are none.

This isn't strictly true, as a quick Google search for extra biblical writings Jesus can easily demonstrate. It's true that there are no detailed accounts of his life from non-Christian sources, but that's not to say that there's no information about Jesus from extrabiblical writings.

I have to confess a certain amount of amusement here, Mike. Right in the middle of an argument against the reliability of eyewitness testimony, you ask for more (albeit extrabiblical) eyewitness testimony! You then say you want archaeological evidence of said miracles, but then you completely discard without careful consideration the extant archaeological evidence (i.e. historical documents). This is starting to get silly.

There aren't any relics to back up your claims. Like I said before, the gospels were made decades after, and the oldest fragment of the gospels we have is dated to 117-138 AD which is almost 100 years after the life of Jesus.

I think you're missing the point here. The point is not that documents are bad and relics are good; the point is that relics are better than documents. What kind of relic would suffice to demonstrate that lots were cast for Jesus' clothing while he hung on the cross (in fulfillment of Psalm 22:16-18)?

I believe the stories of Jesus HAVE been forged or corrupted.

The key word here is, of course, "believe." You are free to believe what you want, Mike, but that doesn't mean that your belief necessarily correlates with reality, right? Since we're discussing physical attestation (relics) of truth claims, what document evidence do you rely upon to support your belief that the narratives of Jesus' life are corrupted?

You have acknowledged that the writings of Jesus were written decades after the event.

Yep, I sure have. And that beats the pants off of any other ancient document...and I don't see anyone complaining about the hundreds or even thousands of years that separate extant copies of other ancient documents and their authors.

I have already stated that I believe the gospels to be secondary sources at best.

There's that word again...."believe."

I demonstrated that this is just plain untrue in my last post, Mike, but you've not directly interacted with my answer. This feels a lot like evasion.

Considering all of the sources we have for Jesus' life are in the New Testament, NONE of the sources are independent.

Interesting. A few posts ago, you argued that Matthew and Luke "contradicted" one another in their respective geneaologies of Jesus; now you're arguing that they're really not independent writers. You're arguing against yourself here. Either Matthew and Mark wrote indepenently of one another or they colluded with one another and are thus not independent sources. Which is it?

If you are trying to claim your leader is the foretold Messiah, your stories are most absolutely biased and motivated to saying he is who you claim he is.

Again, you're reading too much into the text you quoted. It says there is a tendency towards bias. I'm biased. You're biased. Cory's biased. We all have a bias--only objects are truly objective. But that's not to say that all biases are equal, nor does it necessarily follow that all biases are bad.

The rest of that point talks about "opposite motivations." Does the following sound like a good reason to write a bunch of lies...and to continue to teach them in the midst of such treatment?

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?
1 Corinthians 11:24-29

I honestly don't see what bias you're seeing. My experience has shown that skeptics typically point an accusatory finger at the horrible shortcomings of its characters, but you seem to be implying here that the writers were biased to "pump up" the characters to make them look larger than life--superhuman, even. I wonder...have you read about Noah getting drunk? David's murder and adulterous affair with Bathsheba? Elijah running scared from Jezebel? Peter continually sticking his foot in his mouth and denying his relationship with Jesus three times? Paul's stubborn insistence to go to Jerusalem in Acts 20-21 and his appeal to Caesar that got him thrown in jail? The Bible paints pictures of its "heroes" with warts and all...which is hardly the type of literature one would see from a biased source. We certainly don't see these kinds of accounts from ancient Egyptian records, for example--when the pharaohs lost battles, they had those records expunged. Not so in the Bible--every time the Israelites got their butts handed to them or their leaders fell (e.g. Samson), it was all written down.

Again... the gospels were written by the followers of Jesus. They are absolutely biased sources in terms of making claims of him being the Messiah.

This really hearkens back to the first point I made about asking for evidence that you won't accept, but I'll bite anyway. In your opinion, who would be a credible source for demonstrating that Jesus really did fulfill the prophesies of the promised Messiah?

-dan

and yet, still a spade . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Risk) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 03:29:00 +0000

Mike,

I will return to my regularly scheduled rebuttal shortly, but I was passing by and saw this post and I couldn't resist offering a response. I should be working on, well, a dozen other things, yet here I am. This started as a comment on your post, but it's too long, so now it has a life of it's own.

Your post should be called, "why atheism isn't an organized religion," and that would make the response more fitting. True, atheists don't necessarily have holidays or organization, although it's tough to say that there are no dogmas or doctrines, or that there are no holy men. 'Holy' is the wrong term, although I find it terribly funny to refer to men like Hitchens and Dawkins as "patron saints" of atheism (funny in the tongue-in-cheek sense, not that I am intentionally poking fun at your expense). But all the same, there are some distinct similarities between atheist organization and any other religious organization, even if they are tenuous at best.

In truth, though, this really does come down to definitions, and as usual this is where we start getting into trouble. While you may be a 'hard' atheist and have come by your beliefs honestly, the fact is that you have to incorporate some amount of faith to get to the point where those beliefs become a call to action. Being atheist is just that - the act of not believing, or better yet the act of believing that nothing exists. Having a belief in God one way or the other requires some amount of faith - regardless of whether you are starting from zero belief or full-on Jesus freak.

Bottom line - a religion is a system of beliefs that result in a call to action. However you want to describe the details within this definition is fine - call me an atheist against the Wiccan gods if that helps sort out the specifics. For the record, though, I have no problem believing in other gods, call them 'lesser gods,' for several reasons that I don't need to take up space with here.

All the same, sort the details as you like; atheism is still a religion - a belief regarding the supernatural that results in a call to action. This does not fit the definition of an organzied religion, at least not very well, I will grant. But I never claimed that atheism proper was an organized movement of like-minded individuals led by some specific individual or group who is/are their central authority. I only claim that atheism requires faith (belief) in the supernatural (in this case that it doesn't exist) and as such fits the definition of a religion.

And for the record, I have nothing against Mr. Dawkins - he seems like a bright, polite man. I happen to think his logic is seriously flawed and therefore his conclusions are assinine, and I have, in the past, called him the "stupidest smart person alive." But that says nothing of the character of the man. Bill Mahar, on the other hand, is both fundamentally flawed and a complete ass. I agree with you there. Hitch, I can't speak to him as I have not paid him much attention. I understand he and his brother are quite at odds, though, and that there is supposed to be some big debate between them in the coming months. Ah, sibling rivalry.

I bring this up to point out that I, too, don't agree with everything the Christians get wrapped up in, or all of what they say. Even within my own Church, I have disagreed with certain ideas and actions. The beauty of Chrisitanity, to me, is its focus on agency - I am perfectly free to accept or not to accept as I see fit. The consequences, of course, are another matter. But the physical world is no different. I can disbelieve in gravity all I want, but as soon as I walk off the end of a pier, gravity is going to remind of the consequences of my disbelief.

However, just as disliking Mahar or Hitchens doesn't make you less atheist, disagreeing with, say, Brigham Young on certain things doesn't make me less Christian.

This is a side note I could continue discussing for days, so let's just wrap it up here. I am not convinced that atheism is not a religion, only that it is not an organization. I realize the position it puts you in to accept my point of view on this matter, and I know you will argue with me til the end of days about this point. But I have gone these rounds countless times and I have yet to hear the rational argument to refute my position.

Look on the bright side: you get the protection offered by the 1st amendment this way.

~Cory

Why Atheism isn't a religion.

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:10:00 +0000

This subject has been mentioned a few times to me, so I thought I would weigh in my thoughts on it.

Of course, like many things, the definition of what constitutes a "religion" is different for many people. If your argument is that a religion is solely your beliefs about God, then yes, I could see you arguing that atheism is a religion. In a similar respect, one can be "spiritual" yet not ascribe to a religion (and that would also be a religion). There are many parallels between religion and atheism, but beyond having a stance about your belief in god, the two subjects differ greatly.

Atheism is a lack of belief in god or gods. That's it. Although I don't believe in a Christian God, I also don't believe in the Hindu gods, the Greek gods, the Norse gods, Wiccan gods, etc. If my dis-belief is the definition of my religion, then we are all part of that religion. If you believe in a Christian God, then you are an atheist to the Wiccan gods. Does that mean your religion (even though you may be a Christian) is now Atheism?
In the same respect, my lack of belief in a god is no more a religion then my lack of belief in ghosts, bogeymen, alien abductions, and chupacabra are.

Atheism doesn't have any doctrine it follows. There is no dogma. There are no ceremonies. There are no holidays. There are no holy men, and there is no organization.

Of course, Atheism has it's heroes, and it's books. There are guys like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Bill Maher. We have books like, "The God Delusion" and "Why I am not a Christian". But none of these things are pre-requisites to being an atheist. I can choose to dis-agree with Hitchens, or Maher, or Dawkins (and I do sometimes), and I can still be an atheist. I don't agree with everything written in "The God Delusion", I think Bill Maher is an ass, and I think Christopher Hitchens is a crass jerk. I am allowed to think critically about the things these people say. I'm allowed to disagree with them about their opinions, and sometimes I do. This doesn't make me any less atheist.

The major difference I see between Religion and Atheism isn't necessarily even what our beliefs are, but how we come about believing them. In a nutshell: Religions take a belief and try to find evidence to support it. Atheists takes evidence and build their belief from the information they have. Of course this is an over-generalization. No one fits neatly into one or the other category. But I think it is an overall fairly accurate description.

That being said, there are different organized groups that have core atheist beliefs. I think it would be safe to argue that these border on being religions. Humanism is a perfect example. But one doesn't have to be a humanist if they are an atheist.

One other thing that I wanted to address in this post, but am unsure where to put it is: I consider there to be at least two different classes of Atheists. For lack of a better term, let's call them Hard and Soft Atheists.
A "Soft" atheist is someone who doesn't believe in a god, but doesn't necessarily have strong reasoning why. They haven't really studied the arguments, or possibly haven't even thought much about god at all. They just know they don't believe. They do not have strong convictions on the subject. I would consider them to be just a small step to the "no god" side of agnosticism.
A "Hard" atheist is someone who has thought about the subject, and has studied the arguments for and against belief in god. These people generally have very strong convictions.

The reason I make this distinction is because I've been describing overall generalizations of atheists. My descriptions will most likely fit "hard" atheists much better than they will, "soft" atheists.

Well, thanks for reading.
Until next time,
-Mike

yes, I suck.

noreply@blogger.com (Risk) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:03:00 +0000

Hi again,

If any of you read my most recent post, I apologize. I removed it for the simple fact that I wrote it in haste between other projects and I didn't really give it the thought that this blog deserves. There has been some great discussion going on, and for me to just throw together a few random ideas late at night doesn't seem to do the rest of you any justice. So I took it down and I will rework it to make it more up to par. If you were preparing a response or comment, just hold on to it.

In the meantime, sorry again for my absence; school is kicking my butt and I just don't have the free time that I need to keep up with you guys. I'll try better in the coming weeks.

Cory

History is written by the winners.

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:21:00 +0000

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon. ~Voltaire, Jeannot et Colin

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. ~Thomas Babington Macaulay

Dan,

I'm sorry, but I will not take reliance on word of mouth alone to be 100% accurate proof of anything. I'm not going to budge on this. Understand that I'm not asserting that this means word of mouth is 100% innacurate. What I am saying is that if all you have is word of mouth to go by, then you don't have 100% verifiable evidence. Sure, many parts could be accurate, but there are many parts that could be wildly inaccurate.

For example: Let's talk about the Trojan War and the stories that came from it. It's stories have been told for thousands of years. We have, in recent years, found evidence to support that the war actually happened and that Troy actually existed. Does this mean I have to believe the stories are 100% accurate? No. I don't believe there was a man named Achilles who was actually immortal all over his body except for his heel. I don't believe that general Odysseus actually fought off a cyclops. Are we to say that Homer was a liar? No, but I'm going to say he wasn't 100% accurate.

How is this any different from the stories of the Bible? Sure there are many historical accuracies, but there are also many inaccuracies.

I still assert that the "scientific" method is the best tool we have to properly derive the truth out of any given claim. But let's go ahead and use the "historical" method you brought up and put the four gospels to the test.

Here is a copy/paste of the core principals of the Historical Method of which you linked to in your post with my notes in green intersected in between:

Human sources may be relics such as a fingerprint; or narratives such as a statement or a letter. Relics are more credible sources than narratives.

There aren't any relics to back up your claims. Like I said before, the gospels were made decades after, and the oldest fragment of the gospels we have is dated to 117-138 AD which is almost 100 years after the life of Jesus.

Any given source may be forged or corrupted. Strong indications of the originality of the source increase its reliability.

This is a significant part of my argument. I believe the stories of Jesus HAVE been forged or corrupted.

The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened.

You have acknowledged that the writings of Jesus were written decades after the event.

A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source which is more reliable than a tertiary source, and so on.

I have already stated that I believe the gospels to be secondary sources at best.

If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.

Considering all of the sources we have for Jesus' life are in the New Testament, NONE of the sources are independent.

The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.

If you are trying to claim your leader is the foretold Messiah, your stories are most absolutely biased and motivated to saying he is who you claim he is.

If it can be demonstrated that the witness or source has no direct interest in creating bias then the credibility of the message is increased.

Again... the gospels were written by the followers of Jesus. They are absolutely biased sources in terms of making claims of him being the Messiah.

I'm sorry, but all of your evidence doesn't even comply with the method you're trying to use. To use the Bible as evidence for Jesus is to use biased testimony from a biased source.

I appreciate your sparring with me Dan. I think it's time that I make note that I hope you understand that even though we have this debate, I respect your beliefs even if they aren't my own. I do think we're getting close to having to agree to disagree on what constitutes valid evidence, which is where I expect the argument to go.

Take care!

-Mike

Bare Metal

noreply@blogger.com (D.Kreft) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:40:00 +0000

Mike,

I don't think our argument is obscured at all. On the contrary, I think we've actually almost gotten all the way through the paint and primer and are starting to expose the bare metal that underlies your objections.

The video you linked to is certainly interesting, but ultimately it is not terribly helpful in supporting your position. The producers of this clip make a big deal of the divergences between the eye witness testimonies, but they say absolutely nothing of the intersections of their testimonies. I'd bet you a nickel that everybody in that class would agree that "Yes, a man walked into the class and stole the professor's purse"--the historicity of that event is without question.

The point is well taken that eye witnesses testimony is subject to human frailties, but this is precisely why we cross-examine eye witnesses--to find the common thread that stitches together the truth. This video leads one to believe that we can never discern the truth from eye witness testimonies, but even popular televisiion programs such as "America's Most Wanted" clearly demonstrate that corroborated eye witness testimony is absolutely invaluable and indeed necessary to come to the truth (this is, after all, why police departments employ sketch artists).

The video also fails to prove your point because of the drastic differences in the very nature of the events being compared. The purse snatcher was in that classroom for about 10 seconds and in that short time frame he created a mild emotional "trauma" (for want of a better word) in the students as evidenced by their cry of outrage that went out when the 'perp' grabbed the purse. This is hardly equivalent to events that transpired over the three year earthly ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

History comes to us reliably through, among other things, reliable eye witness accounts (which is not an oxymoron as you seem to be asserting). If eye witness accounts were always unreliable (which really is what you are arguing when you discount such testimony out of hand), we'd have no hope of ever knowing anything about the past apart from what our shovels might unearth. Using your standard of historical "proof," I defy you to prove to me that Washington crossed the Delaware River on December 25, 1776; that Abraham Lincoln really signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863; that Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes booth in Ford Theater or any other event that took place in the days before photography and that itself did not leave physcial scars or remnants behind. You are attempting to (in)validate history using the scientific method (or more precisely, by empirical means), which is utterly fallacious--historical events are not directly observable, measurable or repeatable--they're also not always tangible. To properly analyze historical events, one must use the aptly named "historical method." Relying upon the scientific method on historical events is like trying to overhaul an engine using only a pair of pliers and a screwdriver.

Now, regarding the authorship of the four Gospels. That Mark penned his Gospel first is fairly well understood, but your assertion that none of them were eyewitnesses is completely without merit.

Matthew (a.k.a. Levi the tax collector) was one of the original 12 disciples called by Jesus (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27) and he is also enumerated among the 11 in Acts 1:13.

Mark, it seems, was indeed heavily influenced by Peter, who was an excellent primary source for his writings. Primary sources are crucial in the construction of an accurate historical record. But to presume that he was not an eyewitness to the accounts himself assumes too much. Jesus had more than 12 disciples (Luke 6:17), so just because Mark was not one of the 12 doesn't mean he wasn't there. Additionally, it is commonly held that Mark was referring to himself in Mark 14:51,52 as the young man who was with Jesus when the latter was arrested in Gethsemane.

Luke, the gentile "beloved physicician" was perhaps not an eyewitness to all events, but Luke tells us up front in the first few verses of his Gospel that he set out to write an orderly account of Jesus' life using primary sources. He was also Paul's traveling companion, so he got to see and experience first-hand what Paul was up to during his ministry. Luke's acumen as an historian is widely attested, so I see no reason to belabor this point.

Your assertion that the Gospel of John is not penned by him also appears to be without any real basis in reality. There are very good reasons to believe that the author John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved" but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to find those reasons and interact with them on his own.

So I suppose if I wanted to be ultra precise, I would have to say that "The Bible was written by eye witnesses or by companions of eye witnesses..." but even with the insertion of of this new clause, the weight of the statement still stands--we still have these records written during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses which is also why your argument about the accounts being penned "decades after the events took place" doesn't really hold any water. Are you willing to admit that you cannot accurately recall events that took place when you were a boy? If your parents are still alive, ask them if they have lived through anything that they can "remember like it happened yesterday."

The New Testament is the single most well attested work of ancient literature extant, period. It has more document support (in terms of the number of MSS and MS fragments--well over 5,000) and some of these fragments date, as you noted, to within a couple of decades from the originals. Compare this with any other work of antiquity, where a dozen copies that date to within several hundred years is considered "really good." Again, this is a very well documented fact, so I see no reason to drone on about it here.

That's all I have time for right now...gotta get ready for work.

Until next time...

-dan

Why Eyewitness Testimony is not good proof.

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:50:00 +0000

Dan, our argument is getting very obscured, so I'm going to try and narrow it down.
It seems to me that our major argument is about if there is or isn't fallibility in the testimonies in the Bible.

To make it clear, the human memory is not only fallible but more importantly, it is malleable.
Watch this short video as evidence of this. Please make special note as to how the witnesses can be lead to believe something they didn't see, even without realizing it. This happens every day. I'm not calling anyone an "ignorant ignoramus" as you have put it. We are all susceptible to it, even scientists.

THIS fallability is exactly why I won't accept eyewitness accounts as evidence. You MUST have better evidence for the truth of your claims then eyewitness accounts. This should be true not only as proving the existence of god, but also in the courtroom.

I acknowledge that the Bible has many accuracies as proven through actual archaeological evidence. But please, show me the actual archeological evidence that proves Jesus actually fulfilled the prophecies you have indicated. If all you have is the writings of the Bible, I'm sorry, but that's just not good enough.

Just as I acknowledge the Bible does contain accuracies as well as inaccuracies, I can put that argument to other texts like that of Socrates or Homer are probably not 100% accurate as well. I will full on acknowledge that what we know of Julius Caesar may not be completely true.

Also, as a role reversal for you Dan (and a side argument), if you're so sure that eyewitness testimony is proof, then please read the first few parts of the Book of Mormon, which has the testimony of 11 eyewitnesses to the truth of it's claims. Tell me why you would discount the eleven of them, and yet you accept the testimony of the four Apostles.

In defense of the "Eyewitnesses writing in the time of other eyewitnesses" argument:
The gospels of Matthew and Luke are based on and used the Gospel of Mark to make their writings. The Gospel of Mark was based on the DISCOURSES of the Apostle Peter.
The Gospel of Luke and Acts were written by Luke, who was most likely NOT an eyewitness to Jesus.
The Gospel of John is actually written based on the TESTIMONY of the Apostle John, and not by John himself.
NONE of the four gospels of Jesus' life were written by eyewitnesses. The stories of Jesus that we account as true are based off of stories told by others. The earliest estimation of the first of these writings was 70 years after the life of Christ.
I'm not talking about how many times the Bible has been translated. When I say the New Testament is like a game of telephone, I mean, the original works are a game of telephone. They are written by people who heard stories decades after the events took place. This is not an intellectually dishonest claim.

I acknowledge your "Two Fathers" argument, but like I said before, I think it's a band-aid response. This is the same for the Census argument. You are side-stepping the error by coming up with a way it "could" be true, thus keeping your argument valid. In the same vein, I could side step the stories of Jesus as the being metaphorical, and that's how they "could" be invalid. This is not proving you are wrong, but I ask you, if the gospels are true, why aren't they blatantly accurate? Why do we have to find a way to make them work, when it's much easier to explain that they are probably just sometimes wrong? Again, this argument is getting off topic, and I acknowledge it for later debate.

"So you really don't believe that eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable. Belief is not belief unless you're willing to live it out when even when it is inconvenient for you; otherwise what you have is pragmatism--whatever works at the time'll do. You are applying one standard for yourself and another for those who walked the roads and fields of Israel during the 1st century A.D.--eyewitness testimony is okay if it agrees with your position, but unreliable when it grates against your belief system."

No, I wouldn't tell someone, "Believe me, because I'm infallable." I never said that eyewitness testimony was completely unreliable. There's a difference between "completely unreliable" and "possibly innacurate". If you're talking about a court of law, of course I would use eyewitness testimony to prove my innocence. That's a matter of self preservation. But if I were on the other side, and I was trying to prosecute someone who had eyewitness testimony to prove their innocence, I just may use the argument against testimony to prosecute them. IS that pragmatism? Absolutely: YES. But does it actually PROVE innocence or guilt? Nope. That's the difference between "courtroom truth" and "actual truth" that I'm so desperately trying to define for you. We are not in a court of law trying to convince 12 people that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies. We are actually trying to prove if Jesus fulfilled the prophecies.

I think Cory better argues about Joseph Smith than I can, so I'll leave that argument alone from here.

"I think Cory mentioned this in one of his earlier posts--you have set up an impossible criteria for believability, Mike. You cry "bullocks" because something sounds ridiculous without really trying to understand it. You ask for proof of historical events, but then reject a priori eyewitness testimony as recorded in the Bible…because it's in the Bible. Then you turn around and ask for corroborating accounts from outside of Scripture for every miracle recorded--but this would require more eyewitness testimony from superstitious folks who simply cannot tell fact from fiction. When a plausible explanation is given for reconciling the discrepancy, you call it a "Band-Aid answer" and dismiss it a priori as so much "poo-poo."

No, I don't want more eyewitness testimony at all. I want real evidence. I'm not dismissing it a priori because I don't want to believe. I'm dismissing it I don't accept testimony to be infallable evidence. I will accept eyewitness testimony when there is actual infallable evidence to back up what the testimony says. To go back to my cake in the box argument: I can question you if you say you have a cake in the box, but you can prove it by actually showing me the cake.

Using your example:You CAN prove to me that you had a smoothie for every morning last week. One piece of evidence would be to show me the receipts from the smoothie bar. Another, better piece of evidence would be to show me (forgive me for being disgusting) analysis of your stool samples which were collected throughout the week which show smoothie pieces. At least these pieces of evidence are based on proof that is much less fallible than human testimony.

I don't have an infinitely scalable wall. I will accept actual evidence. But human testimony is NOT that evidence.

Please excuse my "terseness" as well. My arguments may come off as attacks, but they are meant as a matter of discourse and not as personal attacks.

-Mike

Scaling the Infinitely High Wall

noreply@blogger.com (D.Kreft) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 08:09:00 +0000

1. You are arguing, "My belief is true, because what I believe in tells me it's true." It's a circular argument.

That does look fairly circular, doesn't it? Fortunately, though, that's not my argument. My argument is that

My belief is true because it is based upon the Bible which is a "reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They record events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophesies, and they claim their writings are divine rather than human in origin." (see Why I Choose To Believe the Bible) This is demonstrable via manuscript evidence, archaeology, prophesies and the statistical probability against these prophesies being fulfilled by chance.

If I tell you I am God, you can't logically argue that I am because I say I am regardless of how many people believed me.

You seem to be hinting that I've pulled an appeal to the majority, but to the best of my recollection, I have never made the argument that "X billiion Christians can't be wrong." If I'm reading too much into this statement, please forgive me, but it just seems like you're teetering on the edge of a straw man argument there.

I can argue that you're not God because you fail to meet your own standards of God's attributes that you outlined in your very first post (i.e. omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.). Now, if you were to start pullin' off some miracles like raising folks from the dead, then I'd have to take another look. :-)

It sounds ridiculous to me, and that is why I discount it's testimony.

"If, at first, an idea does not sound absurd, then there's no hope for it." -- Albert Einstein

It is NOT historically reliable (as I eluded to in my last post about getting the dates wrong about the census).

The message I'm getting here, Mike, is that if something sounds absurd to you then no amount of evidence or rational explanation is going to sway you. This is just being arbitrary. I've offered you reasonable explanations for the dating and mode of the census in question, yet I have not seen you acknowledge them. I don't know if you saw it, but I posted a follow up comment on an earlier post that offers a reasonable explanation for the "Joseph has two fathers" objection as well.

And I can write a whole post with examples on how it isn't internally consistent. If Jesus is the son of God, there needs to be proof other than the hearsay of people who couldn't explain the world without the use of superstition. Of course parts of the Bible are true. We have archaeological evidence to back up that there were cities, people, and even some events talked about in the books. But we have no evidence of the supernatural tales which were written. The inaccuracies alone in the Bible show that we need outside evidence to prove any sort of validity in the tales.

Now this is very interesting indeed. You say in this post that "The miracle must have actually happened, and be verifiable that it happened." You ask for evidence for an historical event, yet you reject out of hand any testimony from the people that saw them happen in the presence of other eyewitnesses based upon a presupposition that the witnesses were superstitious ignoramuses simply by virtue of epoch in which they lived--guilt by association. Does this not seem rather arrogant to you?

Special pleading is a tactic I could use in a court of law, but not in the field of science and logic. That's exactly my point when I say there's a difference between, "Courtroom proof" and "actual proof". I elaborated more on this in my recent response to Cory here.

So you really don't believe that eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable. Belief is not belief unless you're willing to live it out when even when it is inconvenient for you; otherwise what you have is pragmatism--whatever works at the time'll do. You are applying one standard for yourself and another for those who walked the roads and fields of Israel during the 1st century A.D.--eyewitness testimony is okay if it agrees with your position, but unreliable when it grates against your belief system.

6. "I wonder…when you last played "telephone," were you allowed to verify the message you received with the person who originated the message?" Even if I did, sometimes it still turns out wrong, especially if it's a game of telephone that has gone on for decades.

This is the mother of all false analogies. In the game of Telephone, the message has its origins in the mind of one person who tells one other person, all the way around the circle. However, this is absolutely not what happened with the accounts we read in the Bible--remember when I said that the Bible was written by eyewitnesses who lived during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses? Most events took place in full view of the public--only a handful were done in private. Thus, there's not even a passing resemblance to the game, and any attempt to draw such an analogy is patently absurd, if not just plain intellectually dishonest.

I can try and come up with a list of inaccuracies of the New Testament if you want, but that's for another time. I already gave a few examples, which I think is more than enough to make my point.

I look forward to addressing a list of alleged inaccuracies.

8. Joseph Smith was MURDERED for his claims... why does him having to be physically tortured make a statement any more valid? From my understanding, I'm not an LDS Historian, but Joseph Smith had a chance to get away, but when confronted about it, decided to go face the ensuing mob. That sounds like martyrdom to me. All he had to do was leave, or change his claims, and he did neither.

The context of this question was my statement that the disciples would not go from cowards to dying for their message if they knew it to be a lie. This says nothing about someone who sincerely believes what he believes he is telling the truth. Your assertion is that the biblical authors "fabricated/adjusted/stretched from the truth in order to fit the tales of him to the predetermined indicators of the messiah"--i.e. that they lied. If they lied, then they knew they were liars. If they knew they were liars, then they would not have gone from cowards to turning the Roman Empire upside down. Can you imagine the apostles getting together over some matzohs and wine and writing up these stories just so a "dead guy" would look like the messiah the nation had waited for for centuries and then being faced with stonings, beatings and crucifixion and not a one of them would recant? I don't know about you, but my imagination isn't that good.

BTW, Smith went to face the mob because he thought they were out to rescue him (wikipedia). But then again, this is all just heresy based upon unreliable eyewitness testimony, so it's probably all bunk anyway.

9. It sounds to me like having to come up with a band-aid answer to reason why it's not wrong.

I think Cory mentioned this in one of his earlier posts--you have set up an impossible criteria for believability, Mike. You cry "bullocks" because something sounds ridiculous without really trying to understand it. You ask for proof of historical events, but then reject a priori eyewitness testimony as recorded in the Bible…because it's in the Bible. Then you turn around and ask for corroborating accounts from outside of Scripture for every miracle recorded--but this would require more eyewitness testimony from superstitious folks who simply cannot tell fact from fiction. When a plausible explanation is given for reconciling the discrepancy, you call it a "Band-Aid answer" and dismiss it a priori as so much "poo-poo."

Physical, tangible, put-it-in-a-test-tube evidence is not how historical accounts of events are verified, Mike. If this is the kind of evidence you require for a transient event in history that left no physical trace of its passing--then to be consistent you're going to have to throw out a good portion of all of recorded history. Using this criteria for historical proof, I can't even "prove" to you that I had a smoothie for breakfast every day last week, so how is anyone supposed to be able to scale this infinitely high wall you've erected between yourself and the truth claims of the Bible?

Please forgive my terseness…I'm not irritated or angry (though I am a bit perplexed)--I'm just trying to keep the length of my replies under control so as not to scare away those in our audience with short attention spans. :-) I continue to appreciate your willingness to allow me to discuss these issues with you.

Until next time,

-dan

Evidence: In argument.

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 18:46:00 +0000

Thank you Dan for your very well thought out post. I'm glad to see you're out in full force!

Before I get into my retort, I want to address that we are starting to get into a game of "Who can do more research than who." Which I think is going to get us into a downward spiral of endless debate, and not at all my intent of this blog. That's exactly why I try to keep specific religions out of it. At some point, we're going to have to agree to disagree.

That being said, I'll try to address your arguments.

1. "I'm having a hard time with this, Mike. On one hand you concede that the 66 books of the Bible were penned by ~40 different authors over the course of ~1,500 years, yet your assertions belie your concession of these facts because they either presume collusion between the authors or some sort of conspiracy to edit all 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the NT into harmony with one another. The former is quite literally impossible given the time frame we're talking bout and the latter is rather preposterous in the light of the manuscript evidence against that argument. So really, it's actually quite arbitrary to discount the validity of 66 books just because they are bound under one cover."

I'm not arguing anything about conspiracies or some formal setting where people over hundreds of years sat down to put a book together. You are missing my whole point, which I'll try to make a little clearer. Instead of saying, "The Bible is true because it says it is." maybe I should say you are making the argument, "Christianity is true because it says it is." or "Jesus is the son of God, because he says he is." It's all referring to the same belief system. You are arguing, "My belief is true, because what I believe in tells me it's true." It's a circular argument. If I tell you I am God, you can't logically argue that I am because I say I am regardless of how many people believed me. I've explained this several times, and I'm not sure how else to tell you.

"If it claims to be true and it demonstrates itself to be historically reliable and internally consistent, what rational reason would we have to discount its testimony of itself? " We are talking about an invisible man in the sky, who we've never seen. He sent his son, who is also himself, to perform miracles, tell us how we can also go to the sky instead of burning underground. This son not only raised the dead, but came back from the dead himself. This all happened 2000 years ago or more, in a time when people had no other reasoning to explain the unknown world then to attribute it to supernatural forces. I'm calling shenanigans. It sounds ridiculous to me, and that is why I discount it's testimony. It is NOT historically reliable (as I eluded to in my last post about getting the dates wrong about the census). And I can write a whole post with examples on how it isn't internally consistent. If Jesus is the son of God, there needs to be proof other than the hearsay of people who couldn't explain the world without the use of superstition.
Of course parts of the Bible are true. We have archaeological evidence to back up that there were cities, people, and even some events talked about in the books. But we have no evidence of the supernatural tales which were written. The inaccuracies alone in the Bible show that we need outside evidence to prove any sort of validity in the tales.

"Claiming invalidity of this kind of testimony is just plain invalid unless it can be demonstrated that the writers colluded with one another or that the documents have been altered over time to make the books cohere" Argument from Ignorance fallacy aside, No, I'm not claiming anything like that. I am however claiming that the stories of Jesus were fabricated/adjusted/stretched from the truth in order to fit the tales of him to the predetermined indicators of the messiah. I'm sure we'll get into an argument over this, but I think that argument is best left for another thread.

"If I'm reading you correctly, you don't seem to have a problem with the prophesies that were made so much as the record of their fulfillment. Would that be an accurate assessment? If so, perhaps it would be more productive if you could pick out a specific prophesy and demonstrate why it is a lie or otherwise invalid?" I'm not willing to concede that the prophecies' provide accurate wording for there to be indisputable proof of their fulfillment.

2. "Okay, fair enough. But what do you do when you have no newspaper articles from the time that talk about his speeches? Do you discount what we know about Julius Caesar because his Commentaries on the Gallic War is the only source we have? From what I understand, though I'm certainly not an expert on Socrates, all we know about him is what was written by Plato. Do we then have to throw out Plato's writings as unreliable and "without proof"? We don't have to discount anything, but we also don't have to consider it to be 100% accurate, and it's certainly NOT proof. For all we know, Plato did make up Socrates. He also made up Atlantis. I assume that Socrates is real, but if given good enough reason to doubt his authenticity, then I'm willing to doubt. In fact, you have me doubting now.... thanks.

"Please correct me if I'm misreading this, but it sounds like you are saying that if the witnesses were testifying in your favor, you would accept their testimony but if they were testifying against you, you would claim that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Assuming I'm reading you correctly, isn't this special pleading?" Yep. Special pleading is a tactic I could use in a court of law, but not in the field of science and logic. That's exactly my point when I say there's a difference between, "Courtroom proof" and "actual proof". I elaborated more on this in my recent response to Cory here.

3. I'm not quite sure why you re-listed your arguments for the prophecies of the messiah. I know what you posted earlier, and why you believe they fulfill my requirements. That is what we are in the middle of debating.

4. "I think you have a false dichotomy here, Mike. You are presuming that those in the first century church recognized the canon based on a purely arbitrary basis. Why do you suppose none of the apocrypha enjoyed anything more than temporary or local recognition? Why did none of the apocryphal writings have anything more than a semi-canonical status? Why did no major canon or church council recognize them as canonical?"

We are getting WAAAY off topic here. So this is the last I'm going to discuss this in this thread. The early Christian Church was a hodgepodge of ideas and beliefs that were very much a result of where they being taught, and who was teaching them. When a system of formality was put into place, they picked things to be considered dogma based on what would show the Church in a light they deemed appropriate. This doesn't mean what was left out was inaccurate, or that what was left in was accurate. On the occasion of the first Council of Nicaea, leading members of the church were FORCED to concede or be exiled. This is what happened to Arian (who's followers did not recognize the Council's results as canonical).

5. "Again, similarity means nothing especially in light of the differences between the works you cite and the account of Christ. But really this is just a red herring, Mike. That the ancient mystery religions and other pagan accounts bear some passing resemblance to the life and work of Christ is completely irrelevant. The question on the table is "Is the Bible trustworthy?" Let's stick to that question and not get distracted with the periphery." The statement I made was first started to show how invalid the story of Jesus (and therefore the New Testament) most likely is. My statements are the proof I am showing to back up my claims. At the time when I first stated them, it was poignant to my argument, but I also agree it has become non-sequitur and we can address these issues at a later date.

6. "I wonder…when you last played "telephone," were you allowed to verify the message you received with the person who originated the message?" Even if I did, sometimes it still turns out wrong, especially if it's a game of telephone that has gone on for decades.

7. "About what story are you unsure? That the disciples were a bunch of cowards? Or that all but one were murdered for their testimony? Aristotle is credited as saying that "the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself." What about these accounts of the disciple's actions before and after Christ's resurrection do you find that discredits them?" I can try and come up with a list of inaccuracies of the New Testament if you want, but that's for another time. I already gave a few examples, which I think is more than enough to make my point.

8. "Joseph Smith, Jr. was murdered by an angry mob while trying to defend himself from within the confines of a jail cell. I don't really think he had time to go about making statements before he passed. Secondly, Joseph Smith, Jr. was never (to the best of my knowledge) stoned, beaten or flogged for for his doctrine (2 Corinthians 11:16ff), and he never suffered physical torture, much less death, at the hands of someone seeking a retraction of his teachings. " Joseph Smith was MURDERED for his claims... why does him having to be physically tortured make a statement any more valid? From my understanding, I'm not an LDS Historian, but Joseph Smith had a chance to get away, but when confronted about it, decided to go face the ensuing mob. That sounds like martyrdom to me. All he had to do was leave, or change his claims, and he did neither.

"So I ask you, is your comparison of Joseph Smith, Jr. to the biblical writers fair?" I don't see why not. He is just as much a prophet to the Mormons as the Apostles are to all of Christianity.

Of course, this topic is also getting WAY off subject, and I'd rather leave it alone at this point.

9. "A discrepancy is not the same as an error, Mike. A discrepancy is simply a difference. Just because there is a difference reported by two people concerning the same event doesn't mean that they are not both telling the truth--it just means you have to do more than scratch the surface to discover the truth." It sounds to me like having to come up with a band-aid answer to reason why it's not wrong. There may also be a DISCREPANCY to weather or not Jesus was actually the Son of God (which there is). The Bible, and more narrowly, the New Testament is full of them.

This is getting to be another non-sequitur argument, much like the "Jesus is based of old god stories" argument.

Well, these are getting to be amazingly long posts. I think we'll need to take it down a notch, lest we start running off would-be readers.

Thanks Dan!

-Mike

Evidence

noreply@blogger.com (D.Kreft) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:11:00 +0000

Hi Mike,

Thank you for the quick turn-around. I'm sorry I couldn't reply in like time, but I generally like to "sit on" things for a couple of days to think over what my interlocutor says and evaluate not only his arguments but also my own position (this is partly why I don't get involved in many real-time discussions of this nature--I need time to mull things over a bit. :-) At any rate, I'm very appreciative of the time you're putting into this discussion and the respectful manner in which you frame your responses. I'm not sure whether to apologize for my long response--I try to be very thorough to minimize the volleying, and my concern is that if my responses are too terse then that will leave more room for misinterpretation (e.g. "Oh now he's getting snippy!") and then we have to go 'round and 'round to clarify points; so it seems to be somewhat safer to be a little on the verbose side. *shrug*

Again, I'll address your objections point by point.

1. I understand that the Bible was written over several centuries by many people. You still can't use it to justify itself. It doesn't matter if it was written by one person, or a hundred thousand people. You can't say the Bible is correct because it says it is. You MUST have outside evidence, of which, we just don't have.

I'm having a hard time with this, Mike. On one hand you concede that the 66 books of the Bible were penned by ~40 different authors over the course of ~1,500 years, yet your assertions belie your concession of these facts because they either presume collusion between the authors or some sort of conspiracy to edit all 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the NT into harmony with one another. The former is quite literally impossible given the time frame we're talking bout and the latter is rather preposterous in the light of the manuscript evidence against that argument. So really, it's actually quite arbitrary to discount the validity of 66 books just because they are bound under one cover.

Secondly, nowhere in my post did I say that the Bible is correct because it says it is (though I agree with the statement). But even if I had, the reverse argument can also be applied here: "The Bible is not false just because it says it is true." If it claims to be true and it demonstrates itself to be historically reliable and internally consistent, what rational reason would we have to discount its testimony of itself? But this is really something of a straw man anyway. What I am arguing is that specific prophesies were made in the Old Testament and their specific fulfillments are recorded by authors (often by multiple authors) who lived centuries later. Claiming invalidity of this kind of testimony is just plain invalid unless it can be demonstrated that the writers colluded with one another or that the documents have been altered over time to make the books cohere. Could it be that the reason you reject the Bible is because you have decided a priori that it is invalid?

If I'm reading you correctly, you don't seem to have a problem with the prophesies that were made so much as the record of their fulfillment. Would that be an accurate assessment? If so, perhaps it would be more productive if you could pick out a specific prophesy and demonstrate why it is a lie or otherwise invalid?

Yes, I actually believe this. I addressed this in my post to Cory, but I'll address it again. If I felt that there was a discrepancy about a certain event in Lincoln's life while reading his biography... yes, I would want outside evidence of his claims. If I didn't believe that he gave the Emancipation Proclamation, I would look for newspaper articles written in that time which talked about his speech. It's an outside source given at the time of the speech. It may actually be more accurate than Lincoln would claim himself 30 years after giving the speech.

Okay, fair enough. But what do you do when you have no newspaper articles from the time that talk about his speeches? Do you discount what we know about Julius Caesar because his Commentaries on the Gallic War is the only source we have? From what I understand, though I'm certainly not an expert on Socrates, all we know about him is what was written by Plato. Do we then have to throw out Plato's writings as unreliable and "without proof"?

In your courtroom example: of course I would take every possible measure to prove my innocence. But I would absolutely use that excuse if a dozen eyewitnesses were claiming I was guilty.

Please correct me if I'm misreading this, but it sounds like you are saying that if the witnesses were testifying in your favor, you would accept their testimony but if they were testifying against you, you would claim that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Assuming I'm reading you correctly, isn't this special pleading?

But in this example, like I said in my previous post: There is a difference between courtroom "Proof" and "actual proof". We are talking about what's true, not what people THINK is true. Something is either true or it isn't, and it doesn't matter how many people believe it, that doesn't make it true.

I'm not clear on the difference between "courtroom proof" and "actual proof." Could you elaborate on this, please?

In your post Atheist: What would I accept as proof ? PART 1: Prophesy, you listed nine criteria for determining whether a prophesy were acceptable as proof:

a. The prophesy must predict something that is going to happen in the future.

All the prophesies I cited did just this…

b. It must predict something extremely specific.

…and this.

c. It must predict something that if true must be beyond probability.

You would not commit to a specific answer on this, but I would think that a 1 in 10^17 chance of fulfilling 8 prophesies and a 1 in 10^157 of one man fulfilling 48 prophesies would qualify as "beyond probability."

d. We must have no other way of knowing beyond that of god's insight. The event must be something that cannot be predicted by natural means.

You have not cited this as a reason for rejecting the prophesies concerning Christ that I listed, so I can only assume that prophesies concerning Christ also meet this criteria.

e. It must predict something that we have no control over. I could predict that a certain person was going to win the lottery on a specific day. If that prediction came true, I would find it far more likely that there was tampering with the lottery than there was an actual god inspired event.

Ditto here. While it could be argued that Jesus could have manipulated some events to fulfill prophesies (e.g. riding into town on a donkey) there are even more that could not be within his power to manipulate (e.g. soldiers dividing lots for his clothing, that his legs would not be broken on the cross, the seed of Abraham, descendant of David, etc., etc., etc.).

f. The prophecy MUST come true and must be verifiable that it did.

This is where I suspect you are hanging your hat, so to speak. However, you have not demonstrated under cross-examination why the testimony of the Gospel writers and their respective accounts of Jesus fulfillment of the OT prophesies should be rejected or even called into question other than the purely circumstantial evidence of the accounts bearing surface similarity to ancient myths and legends.

g. When it comes true, the extreme specifics of the prophecy must be carried out accurately. It must be beyond a statistical coincidence that it came true.

This is also demonstrated in Scripture (e.g. hands and feet pierced, bones not broken, born in Bethlehem, etc.) and the peer-reviewed statistical analysis done by Peter Stoner.

h. It must be fulfilled legitimately. There must be no tampering with evidence, or influence toward making the prediction occur in any way. This is probably easier said than done, but it is a crucial part of being able to consider a prediction to be true.

I have not seen you make any specific claims of evidence that has been tampered with or illicit influence, so the prophesies I cited also seem to pass this criterion.

i. One measure of a prophet's communion with god is repeatability of prophesy. I would consider it to be proof if a prophet made multiple accurate predictions that are statistically impossible to predict, and who's results are impossible to fake or manipulate.

We haven't gone into an in-depth analysis of any individual prophet's track record, but again you have not objected to messianic prophesies based upon this criterion, so I'm assuming they pass this one as well.

So based upon your own criteria and a lack of substantial, specific argumentation against the fulfilled prophesies I cited, I see no rational reason to reject their validity.

3. There is clearly a difference between what story is to be considered true and what is to be considered myth, and what theory is backed by evidence and what theory isn't backed by evidence. You are making a false analogy. You are making a comparison where there just isn't one to be made. If the debate was about "What do we have EVIDENCE for, and what don't we have evidence for." And "whatever actually has evidence goes in, and the rest is left out." But that's not why things were left out. They were left out for the literary purposes you posited, which is not evidence based.

I think you have a false dichotomy here, Mike. You are presuming that those in the first century church recognized the canon based on a purely arbitrary basis. Why do you suppose none of the apocrypha enjoyed anything more than temporary or local recognition? Why did none of the apocryphal writings have anything more than a semi-canonical status? Why did no major canon or church council recognize them as canonical?

There were five basic criteria a work had to meet to be recognized as canonical:

Was the book written by a prophet of God?
Was the writer confirmed by acts of God?
Did the message tell the truth about God? God cannot contradict Himself (2 Cor. 1:17,18), nor can He utter what is false (Heb. 6:18). Hence, no book with false claims can be the Word of God. For reasons such as these, the church fathers maintained the policy "if in doubt, throw it out." This enhanced the validity of their discernment of the canonical books.
Does it come with the power of God?…The presence of God's transforming power was a strong indication that a given book had His stamp of approval.
Was it accepted by the people of God? [Canonicity is recognized, not declared.]

(McDowell, Evidence, pp. 21,22)
So yes, this is about evidence--textual evidence: authorship, internal consistency, consistency with other works that are recognized as canonical; and no, this is not a false analogy by any means.

4. But the difference between the similarities of the god stories and the scientific theories is that the god stories came hundreds of years before Christianity ever did. The people had plenty of time to have heard the stories of Dionysus, RA, Mythra, Krishna, and Horus. Have you ever heard of, "The passion of Osiris"? In making a comparison to Jesus' ability to hit the mark in terms of prophecy, there are just too many similarities for me to consider this to be a coincidence.

Again, similarity means nothing especially in light of the differences between the works you cite and the account of Christ. But really this is just a red herring, Mike. That the ancient mystery religions and other pagan accounts bear some passing resemblance to the life and work of Christ is completely irrelevant. The question on the table is "Is the Bible trustworthy?" Let's stick to that question and not get distracted with the periphery.

You are saying that the Bible was written by people who knew people that saw it? Sorry, but I've played the telephone game before, I know how that works out. By the way, let me tell you what happened to a friend of a friend of mine *insert urban legend here*.

I wonder…when you last played "telephone," were you allowed to verify the message you received with the person who originated the message?

c) ...Well.. for one, we don't know how true this story is.

About what story are you unsure? That the disciples were a bunch of cowards? Or that all but one were murdered for their testimony? Aristotle is credited as saying that "the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself." What about these accounts of the disciple's actions before and after Christ's resurrection do you find that discredits them?

And 2. I've heard from Cory that you're not LDS. Do you take that when Joseph Smith's [sic] didn't confess to making up the church on his deathbed as proof that the LDS Church is true? Just because someone doesn't confess to making it up doesn't mean they weren't wrong. As far as we know, they believed every word of what was preached and were still wrong.

Joseph Smith, Jr. was murdered by an angry mob while trying to defend himself from within the confines of a jail cell. I don't really think he had time to go about making statements before he passed. Secondly, Joseph Smith, Jr. was never (to the best of my knowledge) stoned, beaten or flogged for for his doctrine (2 Corinthians 11:16ff), and he never suffered physical torture, much less death, at the hands of someone seeking a retraction of his teachings.

So I ask you, is your comparison of Joseph Smith, Jr. to the biblical writers fair?

6. Here's an article about the Roman censuses of that time period. Luke is not only wrong about Joseph having to go to Bethlehem. He's also wrong about what time period the census was taken.

Archaeological discoveries show that the Romans had a regular enrollment of taxpayers and also held censuses every fourteen years. This procedure was indeed begun under Augustus and the first took place in either 23-22 BC or in 9-8 BC. The latter would be the one to which Luke refers. (McDowell, Evidence, p. 63)

Secondly, we find evidence that Quirinius was governor of Syria around 7 BC. This assumption is based on an inscription found in Antioch ascribing to Quirinius this post. As a result of this finding, it is now supposed that he was governor twice--once in 7 BC and the other time in 6 AD (the date ascribed by Josephus) (Ibid)

Thirdly, having to go back to one's birthplace to register was not altogether unheard of during this time period, as evidenced by a papyrus found in the early 20th century bearing a decree made by Gaius Vibius Maximus, prefect of Egypt during the first century A.D., which said in part:

Since the enrollment by households is approaching, it is necessary to command all who for any reason are out of their own district to return to their own home, in order to perform the usual business of the taxation… (Cobern, C.M. 1929. The New Archeological Discoveries and their Bearing upon the New Testament. New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls, p. 47; Unger, M.F. 1962. Archaeology and the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, p. 64).

McDowell also quotes Dr. Norman Geisler as saying "Was Luke confused? No; in fact he mentions Quirinius later census in Acts 5:37. It is most likely that Luke is distinguishing this census in Herod's time from the more well-known census of Quirinius: "This census took place before Quirinius was governor of Syria." There are several New Testament parallels for this translation." (Ibid, p. 64)

Skeptical 19th century German archaeologist Sir William Ramsay, setting out to make a topographical study of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), was compelled to consider the writings of Luke. As a result he had to admit a complete reversal in his beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence uncovered in his research. Speaking of this reversal, he said "I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without prejudice in favor of the conclusion which I shall now seek to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavorable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tubingen theory had at once time quite convinced me. It did not then lie in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative shoed marvelous truth. In fact, beginning with a fixed idea that the work was essentially a second century composition, and never relying on its evidence as trustworthy for first century conditions, I gradually came to find it a useful ally in some obscure and difficult investigations." (McDowell, New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, sidebar on p. 62).

Ramsay is also quoted as saying "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy…this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians…Luke's history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness." (McDowell, Evidence, p. 61)

At the risk of exploding this post into a full-blown novel, I'll cut this point short by simply pointing out that in light of the tremendous amount of painstaking detail that Luke documented both in his gospel and in the book of Acts, and that Luke is widely regarded, even by some secular scholars, as a first-rate historian, I really don't see any solid evidence to discount his testimony.

7. You are admitting that there's a discrepancy, which is all the point I was trying to make. Obviously you understand that there is room for error in the Bible. And since we can't know how many errors they are, we can't assume anything is absolutely true. There is obviously an explanation for the error, which you linked to, but it is obvious proof that the Bible isn't 100% accurate.

A discrepancy is not the same as an error, Mike. A discrepancy is simply a difference. Just because there is a difference reported by two people concerning the same event doesn't mean that they are not both telling the truth--it just means you have to do more than scratch the surface to discover the truth. To use a modern day example, consider the following statements:

1. "Shaq's father is Joseph Toney."
2. "Shaq's father is Phillip Harrison."

There is definitely a discrepancy here, but is there an error (i.e. a contradiction)? For these two statements to violate the law of noncontradiction, they have to both be true at the same time and in the same sense. But they're not because statement 1 talks about his biological father whereas #2 talks about his legal father (since his biological father relinquished parental rights)--the man that Shaq calls "my father."

Wow..another novel…time to send this one to the publisher. :-)

-dan

No True Scotsman would believe in miracles.

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:19:00 +0000

Cory,

1. Are you talking about the, "No True Scotsman.." fallacy? I must confess, I've not heard of the "Scotsman Fallacy" besides that one.

But I think I'm following your argument in that I've made the definition of "miracle" to be too complex to happen.
I tried to admit to this in my original post when I said that it should really be entitled, "Why I don't believe in miracles."

I full on agree that if miracles happen, it's possible that they will be rooted in natural causes. But my argument is, and I haven't changed this: If we are going to use miracles as PROOF of god's existence, then they must be supernatural. I'm not trying to say this in order to say there are never miracles. My reasoning behind this statement is because if there's a natural cause for a "miracle" then that's all the more explanation there needs to be.

For example: If someone survives a horrible car accident, it may be because god made sure the seat belts worked. But if they survived the car accident, it may just be because they were wearing a seat belt. Surviving the car accident is evidence that the seat belt worked, but not evidence that god exists, even if god had everything to do with it.

My point isn't to say there are no miracles, but to set up a standard for how miracles could actually prove the existence of god. If you can come up with a way for a miracle to have naturalistic origins, and yet still be proof of god's existence, I would love to discuss that with you. The problem I am finding is that in order for it to be proof, we have to find a situation where god is the only explanation. In order to rule something as being divine in nature, we have to rule out all other possibilities. This is the heart of scientific testing.
Call it lack of creativity on my part, but I can't think of any other way in which a "miracle" can be proof of god's existence without there being an unnatural event. Otherwise, we haven't taken out all of the other possibilities it could be.

2. You said, "That said, it wouldn't matter if a million people said you had no cake in the box; if 2 people saw you do it and could testify that there was cake in the box, all the people in the world couldn't make such a thing untrue by not believing it. There is simply cake in the box and someone besides you said there is. Now whether or not people want to believe your eyewitnesses is a different story, and clearly this is where we are reaching our impasse." The problem I have with this statement is, if you tell me there's cake in the box, and I don't believe you, all you have to do is open the box and show me the cake. I don't have to take it on blind faith or human testimony that there's cake in the box. You can give me real evidence to prove that the cake exists.

As far as credibility is concerned: It doesn't matter if someone is a cop, a lawyer, a criminal, a priest, someone of fantastic moral values, etc. People see the world based on their perceptions. If someone "sees" what they perceive to be a ghost then that's what they will tell you they saw. They can be telling what they consider to be the truth, even if in reality, all they saw was an odd shadow. Not only that, but it's a well known documented phenomena that people's perceptions and memories can be altered through intentional and unintentional suggestion. This is true for individuals as well as with groups. In many cases, the power of what a group says will significantly alter what someone's perceptions are. Here and here are two fantastic video examples of this. There is nothing magic going on in either video, it just happens to be people who are being taken advantage of under mass suggestion. Benny Hinn may be able to knock people over, but he'll never be able to grow someone's arm back by smacking them with his jacket.

So no, I don't accept human testimony as evidence of god, and it doesn't matter if they are of fantastic moral value or not, or if there are hundreds of people testifying or not. Human perception is just far too unreliable. Like I said before, there is a difference between courtroom truth and actual truth.

3. I'm looking forward to your arguments. I agree that if you can prove that Christ is who Christians say he is, then that's pretty fantastic evidence for God. Unfortunately, I think you'll find with me, that's easier said than done.

I wasn't deliberately holding out on you about my knowledge of the Bible. My journey to atheism has come with a lot of investigation. I don't take my dis-beliefs lightly.

-Mike

the apologist apologizes

noreply@blogger.com (Risk) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 04:11:00 +0000

Mikey,

Things have not panned out this weekend like I hoped and my reply to you on this thread will be delayed yet again. additionally, Dan went the direction I was headed (albeit with slighty different arguments) so much of my next post would have been repetious anyway. The sum total of this circumstance is that I will be replying with something different in the coming days. Sorry for *more* delay. You have been endlessly patient; one day I hope to reward it with a philosophically brilliant argument.

In the mean time, I want to quickly make some corrections, or clarifications as it were (regarding your post titled "the cake is a lie"):

#1 - This is the Scotsman fallacy to which I referred in my title. You are defining a term to such a degree that nothing will qualify (premise: miracles MUST violate the law of nature; observation: this miracle has a logical, natural explanation, however unlikely the condition is; conclusion: this miracle is not a miracle), thus the entire argument is moot. There is no evidence to suggest that miracles WILL violate the law of nature, only an assumption that they must. Thus, your premise is wrong, therefore your conclusion will be flawed, but you will hold to the premise nonetheless. Nothing that anyone could offer for consideration could ever meet your standards (since there is nothing to suggest that a miracle MUST violate nature, likely no miralce WILL violate nature) and therefore we have no ground to gain, in either direction, with this line of argumentation.

#2 - The arguments regarding death row as an aside, I am not making an appeal to popularity here; you are correct that if something is true it is true no matter how many people believe it or not. That said, it wouldn't matter if a million people said you had no cake in the box; if 2 people saw you do it and could testify that there was cake in the box, all the people in the world couldn't make such a thing untrue by not believing it. There is simply cake in the box and someone besides you said there is. Now whether or not people want to believe your eyewitnesses is a different story, and clearly this is where we are reaching our impasse. But as you explained to Dan, you would take the eyewitness testimony if it were on your behalf and meant the difference in your freedom (as I suspect we all would) but would argue the eyewitness testimony if it were against your case. In either situation, the more people there are who can testify of a truth, the higher the likelihood is that whatever thing they are testifying of is true so far as others are concerned. Really the more pertinent question is: what is the credibility of the witnesses? What is the crediblity of the source? These are the things that bear discussion, not the value of eyewitnesses themselves. But that is another post and another direction entirely, one that I intend to take up at some point in the future.

#3 - As for the Bible as a credible piece of historical literature, you have hashed this out with Dan fairly well. I hope to readdress your arguments within my own post, as I think there are a couple places that are being overlooked and/or over-generalized regarding the Bible and its credibility. Also (and I know we have tried to keep this religion-nuetral but I see no way around it - Christianity is what I know best as well and it's beginning to look like we'll have no alternative but to discuss it in more detail) much of my upcoming argument will rely on Christian works and authors as evidence (read: not proof) for the divinity of Christ and thus the existence of God (if we can prove Christ is who he said he was, it follows that God exists - there's my coming argument in a nutshell). Thus much of what I have to say parallels what you and Dan have discussed and will therefore be somewhat repetitious. But we'll see where we end up when we get there. My only point within this context is that the bible has more credibilty than you appear to be giving it credit for - even in light of certain discrepancies.

Nice work on your recent posts, btw. You have been holding out on me; I had no idea you were so well versed in Christianity.

This has already gone on too long. Good night.

Cory

Objections re-objectified

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:16:00 +0000

Hey Dan! Wow! What a long retort! I apologize if this has taken me a while to respond.

1. I understand that the Bible was written over several centuries by many people. You still can't use it to justify itself. It doesn't matter if it was written by one person, or a hundred thousand people. You can't say the Bible is correct because it says it is. You MUST have outside evidence, of which, we just don't have.

2. You said, "I don't think you really believe this, Mike. Do you apply this standard to all historical works of non-fiction like, say...the history books you used in school or autobiographies of people like Abraham Lincoln? If you were arrested and tried for a crime you did not commit, would you ask the judge to dismiss the testimony of a dozen eye witnesses who are willing to testify under oath that you are innocent?"

Yes, I actually believe this. I addressed this in my post to Cory, but I'll address it again. If I felt that there was a discrepancy about a certain event in Lincoln's life while reading his biography... yes, I would want outside evidence of his claims. If I didn't believe that he gave the Emancipation Proclamation, I would look for newspaper articles written in that time which talked about his speech. It's an outside source given at the time of the speech. It may actually be more accurate than Lincoln would claim himself 30 years after giving the speech. In your courtroom example: of course I would take every possible measure to prove my innocence. But I would absolutely use that excuse if a dozen eyewitnesses were claiming I was guilty. But in this example, like I said in my previous post: There is a difference between courtroom "Proof" and "actual proof". We are talking about what's true, not what people THINK is true. Something is either true or it isn't, and it doesn't matter how many people believe it, that doesn't make it true.

3. You said, "By this line of reasoning, would you not have to then conclude that no scientist today really knows anything about anything because they argue, debate over thetheory du jour? You seem to be arguing that 'because there is debate, there can be no truth.'" There is clearly a difference between what story is to be considered true and what is to be considered myth, and what theory is backed by evidence and what theory isn't backed by evidence. You are making a false analogy. You are making a comparison where there just isn't one to be made. If the debate was about "What do we have EVIDENCE for, and what don't we have evidence for." And "whatever actually has evidence goes in, and the rest is left out." But that's not why things were left out. They were left out for the literary purposes you posited, which is not evidence based.

4. You said, "The key words in this objection, though, are "most likely". Most likely based upon what? This theory, and that's really all it is, has no compelling evidence to support it that I've ever seen, and it completely ignores the substantial differences between the account of Christ's life and the ancient legends/fables that are claimed to be their antecedents. If you'd like to discuss specific evidence to support this claim, I'd be more than happy to entertain it, but as it stands right now the topic bears no further comment."
I gave you the example of Jesus' descent into hades. I could give you the example of Jesus turning water into wine as an example of proving he's better than Dionysus (also known as Bacchus) the Greek god of wine who A. was born of a god and moral woman, B. Was killed as a Martyr only to come back through resurrection. C. His followers drank wine and ate bread which they believed became his blood and flesh. I can continue making comparisons of things attributed to Jesus with things attributed to the gods that came before him. I can also do the same with Christianity in general. I don't know what more proof you need. I would suggest you look into it yourself. Here is a Wikipedia article about Jesus compared to other gods.

It's true that these may just be similarities. But the difference between the similarities of the god stories and the scientific theories is that the god stories came hundreds of years before Christianity ever did. The people had plenty of time to have heard the stories of Dionysus, RA, Mythra, Krishna, and Horus. Have you ever heard of, "The passion of Osiris"? In making a comparison to Jesus' ability to hit the mark in terms of prophecy, there are just too many similarities for me to consider this to be a coincidence.

5. You said, "b) As I've already stated, the Bible was written by eye witnesses during the lifetime of other eye witnesses, and the apostles actually encouraged people to check out the story for themselves (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) just as Paul's traveling companion, Luke the physician did in writing his Gospel (John 1:1-4)." You are saying that the Bible was written by people who knew people that saw it? Sorry, but I've played the telephone game before, I know how that works out. By the way, let me tell you what happened to a friend of a friend of mine *insert urban legend here*.

"c) Of the 12 apostles (Judas was replaced by Paul), all but one of them (John) were murdered for their testimony (see http://poptop.hypermart.net/howdied.html). If what you are saying is true, then 11 men went from utter cowards, running when Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:56) and cowering in a locked room "for fear of the Jews" after his crucifixion (John 20:19,20) to dying for their testimony that Christ has risen from the dead even though, as you say, they knew they were lying the whole time. " Well.. for one, we don't know how true this story is. And 2. I've heard from Cory that you're not LDS. Do you take that when Joseph Smith's didn't confess to making up the church on his deathbed as proof that the LDS Church is true? Just because someone doesn't confess to making it up doesn't mean they weren't wrong. As far as we know, they believed every word of what was preached and were still wrong.

Your numbers kind of died off after #5, but I'm going to keep that going.

6. Here's an article about the Roman censuses of that time period. Luke is not only wrong about Joseph having to go to Bethlehem. He's also wrong about what time period the census was taken.

"I have a friend who was born in Okinawa, Japan because his dad was in the military; but not long after his birth, his family came back to the State of Washington. Is my friend a liar for saying that he's from Washington when he was clearly born in Japan? Or is he a liar for saying that he was born in Japan when he clearly has spent nearly all of his life in Washington?" Your friend is not a liar, but he's ALSO not traveling to Japan to take the census there. I was born in Virginia, but I tell people I'm from Utah, because that's where I spent the majority of my life. When I take the census, I take it where I live. That's the point. The whole point of the census is to tell about current demographics in our country. If I traveled to Virginia to take the census, then it would skew not only Virginia's findings, but Utah's as well. Why would Joseph travel to Bethlehem to take the census when it would clearly skew the numbers for both Bethlehem and Nazareth? It just doesn't make sense.

7. "The discrepancy between Matthew's and Luke's genealogies comes from their starting/ending points. Matthew, writing to demonstrate that Jesus is the promised Messiah, demonstrates Christ's right to be called the King of the Jews (as a descendant of David)--it's his legal ancestry as the adopted son of Joseph. Luke's genealogy in chapter 3 of his gospel likely traces Jesus' lineage back through Mary all the way back to Adam, but there are other possibilities as well. I've only just now skimmed it, but an article on Wikipedia discusses a half-dozen or so explanations for the discrepancy." You are admitting that there's a discrepancy, which is all the point I was trying to make. Obviously you understand that there is room for error in the Bible. And since we can't know how many errors they are, we can't assume anything is absolutely true. There is obviously an explanation for the error, which you linked to, but it is obvious proof that the Bible isn't 100% accurate.

Well, thanks Dan for the spirited debate! You and Cory are certainly keeping me on my toes!

-Mike

Objections Answered

noreply@blogger.com (D.Kreft) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 04:34:00 +0000

Hi, Mike.

I can surely appreciate your desire to keep the discussion of the existence of God as religion-neutral as possible. After all, we don't want to get into a "my religion can kick your religion's butt any day" match. However, since the topic of prophesy was broached, and since I believe it's possible to demonstrate that the Bible is unique in this regard (and other regards as well), it seemed fitting to bring it to the table. Also, as arguably the most scrutinized book in history, it is never far from discussions between atheists and theists, I didn't think you'd have a problem with it. :-)

So I don't miss any of your points, I'd like to address your objects in a point-by-point fashion.

1. You are using the Bible to prove the validity of itself. This is circular reasoning. You are basically saying, "Jesus of the Bible is true, because the Bible says so."

I'm not seeing the circularity. I don't want to insult your intelligence, but neither do I want to take things for granted, so please bear with me if the following is old hat to you.

I think that perhaps the reason you feel the argument is circular is that perhaps you believe that the Bible was written by one individual or by a group of contemporaries. If we were to present another "holy" book that was written in this manner, then I think you might begin to have a case for the argument of circular reasoning.

But remember that the Bible is actually a collection of 66 books that were written in three different languages by 40 or so eye witnesses during the lifetime of other eye witnesses over the course of some 1,500 years--most of the authors never met each other. These authors lived on three different continents and hailed from all walks of life; among its authors are kings, shepherds, farmers, fishermen, a doctor, and a Hebrew scholar.

It's also important to remember that there was a 400 year gap between the last book of the OT (Malachi) and the advent of Jesus Christ. So really what you have here is not "the Bible" testifying to its own validity, but we have multiple Old Testament prophets who claimed to have received the oracles of God making predictions about One who wasn't born until hundreds or thousands of years later (e.g. David's vivid portrayal of the crucifixion in Psalm 22 was written roughly 1,000 years before Christ was born). The Dead Sea scrolls, dated to about the 2nd century BC, bear an air tight testimony to the accuracy and preservation of the Old Testament text that we have in our Bibles today--so there is no room for revisionism (barring interference from a teenager in a tricked-out DeLorean).

Now, the charge is usually leveled that Christ did things just to fulfill prophesy or that his followers directly "massaged" the facts to paint a picture of Christ as having fulfilled some or all of these prophesies. I can address that in a follow-up post if you like, but I think the present post is going to be long enough without tackling that issue, too.

So, if using the specific, written prophesies of individuals who lived no less than 400 years before Christ leaves me open to the charge of circular reasoning simply by virtue of these writings being bound under the same cover, I'm afraid I'll have to plead guilty as charged.

2. As I posted in a previous post, the fallibility of human recollection dictates that human testimony, however earnest, is not a valid form of proof that something happened the way that they said it did. This being said, and considering the Gospels of Jesus weren't written until decades after his death, I have a hard time believing the accuracies of their claims.

I don't think you really believe this, Mike. Do you apply this standard to all historical works of non-fiction like, say...the history books you used in school or autobiographies of people like Abraham Lincoln? If you were arrested and tried for a crime you did not commit, would you ask the judge to dismiss the testimony of a dozen eye witnesses who are willing to testify under oath that you are innocent?

You are right when you say that human recollection is easily corrupted. This is explicitly taught in the Bible:

The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes
and examines him. (Proverbs 18:17)

One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime
or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established
by the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Deut. 19:5)

...and this is the reason why we cross-examine witnesses in the court room. Does this guarantee absolute justice 100% of the time? No, it doesn't, because we're still dealing with fallible people making fallible judgements based upon the testimony of other fallible people. However, it's quite a leap from "eye witnesses may be corrupted" to "all eye witnesses are unreliable"--this is the fallacy of hasty generalization.

3. The Gnostic Text, Apocrypha, and the convening of the Council of Nicaea, are just a few pieces of evidence that we have that in the first few hundred years after Jesus' death, early Christians were still debating what was true, what wasn't, what was going to be considered dogma, what was going to be in the Bible, and what was going to be left out and forgotten. This is obvious evidence that what is in the New Testament is not necessarily accurate to what actually happened.

By this line of reasoning, would you not have to then conclude that no scientist today really knows anything about anything because they argue, debate over the theory du jour? You seem to be arguing that "because there is debate, there can be no truth."

We actually don't even have to wait for a couple of hundred years after Christ's death and resurrection before we start seeing false doctrine (i.e. doctrine that flatly contradicted the plain teachings of Christ and the Twelve Apostles). For example, Paul wrote Galatians between 53 and 57 AD in refutation of the false gospel of the Judaizers (who were teaching that Christians had to, among other things, be circumsized before they could be true Christians). The Apostle John wrote 1 John between 85 and 95 AD to refute the gnostics of his day.

The reason the texts you cite were not considered canonical (even though some, like the books of the Maccabees have historical value) can be summed up in six quick points which I quote from The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (McDowell, p. 25,26):

None of them enjoyed any more than a temporary or local recognition.
Most of them never did have anything more than a semi-canonical status, being appended to various manuscripts or mentioned in tables of contents.
No major canon or church council included them as inspired books of the New Testament.
The limited acceptance enjoyed by most of these books is attributable to the fact that they attached themselves to references in canonical books (e.g. Laodiceans to Colossians 4:16), because of their alleged apostolic authorship (e.g. Acts of Paul).

4. As in my previous post, the stories of Jesus are very similar to many Messiah-gods of older religions. The stories of Jesus are most likely amalgamations of the stories of the older gods as a series of "one-upmanship" stories told as if to say, "My God is better than your god" to those of differing beliefs. [...snip...]

Similarities do not necessarily imply correlation or relationship. Scientific history is replete with example of men who didn't know each other who made essentially the same discovery completely independent of one another. Just because two men discover the two phenomenon at the same time does not necessarily imply collusion.

The key words in this objection, though, are "most likely". Most likely based upon what? This theory, and that's really all it is, has no compelling evidence to support it that I've ever seen, and it completely ignores the substantial differences between the account of Christ's life and the ancient legends/fables that are claimed to be their antecedents. If you'd like to discuss specific evidence to support this claim, I'd be more than happy to entertain it, but as it stands right now the topic bears no further comment.

5. Considering the amount of time it took for the Christian church to become organized, and the amount of arguing within the early Church about what stories were true and what weren't, I find it far more likely that the stories of Jesus were written to make him sound like the one foretold in the prophecies, and not that he actually fulfilled the prophecies. If that is the case (which I believe it is) then it makes perfect sense that Jesus would fulfill such a staggeringly impossible amount of foretold events. He fulfills the prophecies because the stories we have of him wrote of him to specifically fulfill those prophecies.

There are several reasons why this objection simply doesn't hold any water:

a) The amount of debate over "what stories were true and what weren't" is grossly overstated. There was actually very little debate in the early church about which writings were canonical and which weren't. Please refer back to my response on your objection #3.

b) As I've already stated, the Bible was written by eye witnesses during the lifetime of other eye witnesses, and the apostles actually encouraged people to check out the story for themselves (1 Corinthians 15:1-11) just as Paul's traveling companion, Luke the physician did in writing his Gospel (John 1:1-4).

c) Of the 12 apostles (Judas was replaced by Paul), all but one of them (John) were murdered for their testimony (see http://poptop.hypermart.net/howdied.html). If what you are saying is true, then 11 men went from utter cowards, running when Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:56) and cowering in a locked room "for fear of the Jews" after his crucifixion (John 20:19,20) to dying for their testimony that Christ has risen from the dead even though, as you say, they knew they were lying the whole time.

Does it really seem likely to you that a dozen men would have their lives so radically transformed (remember, Paul was busily persecuting and executing Christians before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus--he wound up authoring about 2/3rds of the New Testament!) and die for what they know to be untrue?

Case in point #10 from your list: The messiah is born in Bethlehem. Jesus was from Nazareth. It seems terribly convenient to me that Joseph and Mary traveled many days to go to Bethlehem at the time Jesus was born. The reasoning behind this is because there was to be a census. We have enough documentation from the Roman records at that time to know that they would not have required people to go to the town of their ancestors for a census. In fact, that doesn't even make any sense. Sending people elsewhere to take a census ruins the results of the census and is in direct opposition to the whole reason the census is used. This is clearly a band-aid answer to cover up the fact that Jesus is a Nazarene and yet still supposedly the foretold Messiah.

Just because it doesn't make sense to you doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for it--kinda like the way out of Chinese finger cuffs seems totally counter-intuitive to those who first encounter them. But once you understand how they work, there's no problem getting out of 'em. If you would like to present some specific documentation from the Roman records that support your claim, I'd be more than happy to look 'em over.

I'm not sure what the problem is here. Micah 5:2 says the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem and that's what happened: Matt. 2:1,4,5; Luke 2:4-7; John 7:42. Joseph is warned in a dream that Herod was on the rampage and that he should take his family to Egypt (Matthew 2:13,14). After Herod died, they returned from Egypt (Matthew 2:15) in fulfillment of another prophesy made hundreds of years before (Hosea 11:1). But he couldn't go back to Judea because Herod's son Archelaus was in power, so the family settled in a little town in the region of Galilee known as Nazareth (Matthew 2:19ff). I have a friend who was born in Okinawa, Japan because his dad was in the military; but not long after his birth, his family came back to the State of Washington. Is my friend a liar for saying that he's from Washington when he was clearly born in Japan? Or is he a liar for saying that he was born in Japan when he clearly has spent nearly all of his life in Washington?

Case in point #9 from your list: Jesus is from the house of David: Is Jesus the son of God? If so, he's not descended from Joseph. Is he descended from Joseph? If so.... Is Joseph from the house of David? He apparently has two fathers: Jacob (Matthew 1:16) and Heli (Luke 3:23). This two-fathers example alone shows the fallibility of the claims by the New Testament. Now that we've established that the New Testament could be wrong... we have no way of knowing what ELSE could be wrong. Yet again, another reason that I can't accept the Bible as accurate proof of anything.

"Though the phrase 'son of' can mean 'offspring of,' it also carries the meaning, 'of the order of.' Thus in the Old Testament 'sons of the prophets' meant of the order of prophets (1 Kings 20:35), and 'sons of the singers' meant of the order of the singers (Nehemiah 12:28). The designation 'Son of God' when used of our Lord means of the order of God and is a strong and clear claim to full Deity." (Charles Ryrie, quoted by McDowell, p. 152).

The discrepancy between Matthew's and Luke's genealogies comes from their starting/ending points. Matthew, writing to demonstrate that Jesus is the promised Messiah, demonstrates Christ's right to be called the King of the Jews (as a descendant of David)--it's his legal ancestry as the adopted son of Joseph. Luke's genealogy in chapter 3 of his gospel likely traces Jesus' lineage back through Mary all the way back to Adam, but there are other possibilities as well. I've only just now skimmed it, but an article on Wikipedia discusses a half-dozen or so explanations for the discrepancy.

Again, you've got to remember that when reading about events in the Bible we're reading literature that comes from and documents events that occurred in a culture very different than our own. Just because we don't immediately "grok" what's said or it seems foreign to us, remember that there's a good reason it seems foreign--it is foreign. This is why when we go to the text (any text, really) we employ a historical-grammatical hermeneutic. If we don't consider both the cultural context as well as the grammatical context of passages under examination, we're almost surely going to butcher the text and get out of it what was never intended.

I could go on and on.

Cool! So can I. Bring 'em! I love this stuff. :-)

-dan

Christ and prophecy

noreply@blogger.com (Atheist Mike) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 21:05:00 +0000

Dan,

Thank you for your post. Considering it's your first one, welcome to joining our forum.

I generally try to keep my arguments as religion neutral as possible. Not because it's not valid, but because none of us is an expert in every religion, especially when it is not our own religion. I couldn't tell you anything about the prophecies of the Hindus, Muslims, Raeilians, Scientologists, etc.. and someone could argue a point of theirs that I just don't know enough about to make an informed rebuttal.

Of course, there are times when staying neutral just isn't going to happen, especially when talking about prophecies. I'm hoping in the future to make some posts directly questioning Christianity and some more specifically questioning the LDS religion. In turn, I hope you guys will question my beliefs as well.

Luckily, I probably know most about Christianity, so I'll try to address your post here.

I agree, your statistics are staggering. If Jesus fulfilled all of those prophecies, it would be very compelling evidence. Unfortunately, I have a few problems with your arguments.

1. You are using the Bible to prove the validity of itself. This is circular reasoning. You are basically saying, "Jesus of the Bible is true, because the Bible says so." It's not proving anything. Your entire argument gets thrown out the window if it turns out that the Bible happens to be inaccurate.

2. As I posted in a previous post, the fallibility of human recollection dictates that human testimony, however earnest, is not a valid form of proof that something happened the way that they said it did. This being said, and considering the Gospels of Jesus weren't written until decades after his death, I have a hard time believing the accuracies of their claims.

3. The Gnostic Text, Apocrypha, and the convening of the Council of Nicaea, are just a few pieces of evidence that we have that in the first few hundred years after Jesus' death, early Christians were still debating what was true, what wasn't, what was going to be considered dogma, what was going to be in the Bible, and what was going to be left out and forgotten. This is obvious evidence that what is in the New Testament is not necessarily accurate to what actually happened.

4. As in my previous post, the stories of Jesus are very similar to many Messiah-gods of older religions. The stories of Jesus are most likely amalgamations of the stories of the older gods as a series of "one-upmanship" stories told as if to say, "My God is better than your god" to those of differing beliefs. Case in point is the story of Jesus' "Harrowing of Hell" to release all of the old dead spirits. (Eluded to in Ephesians 4:9 but also in the Apocryphal: Gospel of Nicodemus) Originally, this was Jesus' descent into Hades (the afterlife of Greek mythology). This story isn't literal so much as it was a way for the early Christian's to claim their God has dominion over even the Gods of other religions.

5. Considering the amount of time it took for the Christian church to become organized, and the amount of arguing within the early Church about what stories were true and what weren't, I find it far more likely that the stories of Jesus were written to make him sound like the one foretold in the prophecies, and not that he actually fulfilled the prophecies. If that is the case (which I believe it is) then it makes perfect sense that Jesus would fulfill such a staggeringly impossible amount of foretold events. He fulfills the prophecies because the stories we have of him wrote of him to specifically fulfill those prophecies.

Case in point #10 from your list: The messiah is born in Bethlehem. Jesus was from Nazareth. It seems terribly convenient to me that Joseph and Mary traveled many days to go to Bethlehem at the time Jesus was born. The reasoning behind this is because there was to be a census. We have enough documentation from the Roman records at that time to know that they would not have required people to go to the town of their ancestors for a census. In fact, that doesn't even make any sense. Sending people elsewhere to take a census ruins the results of the census and is in direct opposition to the whole reason the census is used. This is clearly a band-aid answer to cover up the fact that Jesus is a Nazarene and yet still supposedly the foretold Messiah.

Case in point #9 from your list: Jesus is from the house of David: Is Jesus the son of God? If so, he's not descended from Joseph. Is he descended from Joseph? If so.... Is Joseph from the house of David? He apparently has two fathers: Jacob (Matthew 1:16) and Heli (Luke 3:23). This two-fathers example alone shows the fallibility of the claims by the New Testament. Now that we've established that the New Testament could be wrong... we have no way of knowing what ELSE could be wrong. Yet again, another reason that I can't accept the Bible as accurate proof of anything.

I could go on and on.

I'm sure that you will definitely disagree, and I'm looking forward to your arguments. Thanks for your post Dan!

-Mike

Prophesies Concerning the Promised Messiah as Evidence for God's Revelation

noreply@blogger.com (D.Kreft) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 07:07:00 +0000

Since we're on the topic of prophecy as evidence for God's existence, I'd like to throw my $0.02 into the ring. The Old Testament is rife with specific prophesies concerning the birth, life, death and resurrection of the Messiah promised to the world. I'll enumerate some of the big ones below and follow up with a statistical analysis of their coming to fruition in one person.

I'm pulling this information from chapter 8 of Christian apologist Josh McDowell's tome The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (1999).

To keep the list of prophesies manageable, I'm going to skip a whole bunch of them. I apologize in advance for not linking these verses to an online Bible (e.g. biblegateway.com), but just doing the markup for this list was quite a task in and of itself!

According to the OT, the Messiah must be…

Seed of Abraham
- Prophesied: Genesis 22:18, 12:2,3
- Fulfilled: Matthew 1:1; Galatians 3:16
Son of Isaac
- Prophesied: Genesis 21:12
- Fulfilled: Luke 3:23,34; Matthew 1:2
Son of Jacob
- P: Genesis 35:10-12; Numbers 24:17
- F: Matthew 1:2; Luke 1:33
From the Tribe of Judah
- P: Genesis 49:10; Micah 5:2
- F: Luke 3:23,33; Matt. 1:2; Hebrews 7:14
From the Family Line of Jesse
- P: Isaiah 11:1
- F: Luke 3:23,32; Matt. 1:6
Of the House of David
- P: Jeremiah 23:5
- F: Luke 3:23,31; Matt. 1:1, 9:27, 15:22; 20:30, etc.
Born at Bethlehem
- P: Micah 5:2
- F: Matt. 2:1, 4; Luke 2:4-7; John 7:42
Presented with Gifts
- P: Psalm 72:10; Isaiah 60:6
- F: Matt. 2:1,11
Herod Kills Children
- P: Jeremiah 31:15
- F: Matt. 2:16

...snip...

Preceded by a Messenger
- P: Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1
- F: Matt. 3:1,2, 3:3, 11:10; John 1:23; Luke 1:17

...snip...

He Was to Enter Jerusalem on a Donkey
- P: Zechariah 9:9
- F: Luke j19:35-37; Matt. 21:6-11

...snip...

Betrayed by a Friend
- P: Psalm 41:9, 55:12-14
- F: Matt. 10:4, 26:49,50; John 13:21
Sold for 30 Pieces of Silver
- P: Zechariah 11:12
- F: Matthew 26:15, 27:3
Money to be Thrown Into God's House
- P: Zechariah 11:13
- F: Matthew 27:5
Price Given for Potter's Field
- P: Zechariah 11:13
- F: Matthew 27:7

...snip...

Silent before Accusers
- P: Isaiah 53:7
- F: Matthew 27:12

...snip...

Hands and Feet Pierced
- P: Psalm 22:16 (Psalm 22 is a vivid portrayal of crucifixion c. 1,000 years before it was invented)
- F: Luke 23:33; John 20:25
Crucified with Thieves
- P: Isaiah 53:12
- F: Matthew 27:38; Mark 15:27,28

...snip...

Bones Not Broken
- P: Psalm 34:20
- F: John 19:33

...snip...

His Side Pierced
- P: Zechariah 12:10
- F: John 19:34
Darkness over the Land (at Noon)
- P: Amos 8:9
- F: Matthew 27:45
Buried in a Rich Man's Tomb
- P: Isaiah 53:9
- F: Matthew 27:57-60

Now for the fun part.

In his book Science Speaks, Peter Stoner takes just eight of these prophesies (the ones I've highlighted in yellow. There are ten, actually, but a couple of prophesies were combined for reasons not explained in McDowell's book; #33 + #44 are treated as one, as are #44 + #45) and calculates the statistical probability that one man fulfilled them all (again...this is just eight of them). I now quote McDowell who quotes from Stoner's book:

We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophesies is 1 in 10^17...[In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that we take 10^17 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas.] They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, form their day to the present time, providing they wrote them according to their own wisdom.

Now these prophesies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 10^17 of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ. This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those prophesies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 10^17 of being absolute. (Stoner, Science Speaks, 100-107)

Perhaps 1:10^17 isn't good enough. Stoner then goes on to consider forty-eight prophesies...

We find the chance that any one man fulfilled all 48 prophecies to be 1 in 10^157. this is really a large number and it represents an extremely small chance. Let us try to visualize it. The silver dollar, which we have been using, is entirely too large. We must select a smaller object. The electron is about as small an object as we know of. It is so small that it will take 2.5 x 10^15 of them laid side by side to make a line, single file, one inch long. If we were going to count the electrons in this line one inch long, and counted 250 each minute, and if we counted day and night, it would take us 19,000,000 years to count just the one-inch line of electrons. If we had a cubic inch of these electrons and we tried to count them it would take us, counting steadily 250 each minute, 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 times 19,000,000 years or 6.9 x 10^21 years.

With this introduction, let us go back to our chance of 1 in 10^157. Let us suppose that we are taking this number of electrons, marking one, and thoroughly stirring it into the whole mass, then blindfolding a man and letting him try to find the right one. What chance has he of finding the right one? What kind of a pile will this number of electrons make? They make an inconceivably large volume. (Stoner, Science Speaks, 109, 110)

There are many other attestations of the divine origin of the Bible both in terms of the things it reports and the specific prophesies it makes that we can go into if need be, but the convergence of 60+ prophesies made by multiple authors over the course of a couple of thousand years in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth cannot be easily ignored.

-dan