A wise man typed:
“So let us rejoice that Father Zeus was a randy bastard. What a dull world it would had been without his rapacious ways.”
It wasn’t A ‘‘dull’’ world that’s for sure, Until the Man in charge said enough is enough
and wiped out those randy Demi-Gods with The Deluge.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
My point is that these are two extraordinary claims and from our perspective we received the information the same way. We heard about it from other people.
[/quote]
Pat–I am in a rush so I want to respond to just two points.
Related to the above: Of course, from an individual perspective, we, in our daily lives, take a mountain of things for granted. I believe that something called Mount Everest exists, but I couldn’t say so with authority until I’ve seen it. I believe that the riven nucleus of an atom can cause a nuclear explosion, but I’ve never seen such, and we all know pictures can be forged. I believe that man evolved from apes, but I’ve never performed radiometric dating on a fossil.
However, beyond the personal, this point falls apart. Retaining the analogy with black holes, I could spend the next few years studying at a university and I’d come out the other end knowing just how and why we “know” black holes to exist, in the same way that I could spend the next few years at a flight school and know just how and why airplanes work, etc. The thing is, for our intents and purposes, this is not anything close to necessary. Fields of study have become so professional, so specialized, and so reliable, that–unless something is patently controversial–it can simply be taken for granted by us laymen. Of course this isn’t ideal, but it’s absolutely necessary, because mastery of every academic discipline, and thus personal authority on every question of human knowledge, is physically impossible.
So, I don’t have to earn a PhD in every scientific field in order to believe that science is generally correct, at least in much of what it says. I am a human being with a decent capacity to reason, and when I learn about X scientific “truth,” I may be learning the dumbed-down, layman’s version, but I’m free to head off and look at the actual paper that brought the “truth” into the light. And I can read the abstract, and take a look at the names under the title, and I can understand that, because this paper was published in this respected journal, it was peer-reviewed. And on and on and on, and in the end, I am compelled to accept the “truth” as just that, on pain of otherwise being a fool.
I will reiterate that repeated trials force us to acknowledge with what passes in earthling-minds as certainty that, if I were to go through the rigorous gauntlet of becoming a scientist, I, too, would :know" about black holes. This is important.
And it differs from what you describe below in a few important ways. First, the quote:
[quote]By the same token there is a mountain of historical evidence of extraordinary claims experienced by religious people through out history whose validity all depends on the fact that the Resurrection took place, or none of the others happened either. There are hundreds if not thousands of extraordinary ‘miracles’, apparitions, and various other events experienced by people in religious history whose experiences are all tied to the event of the resurrection. It is not a matter of simply taking an ancient text at it’s word. But lots of stuff happened since then lend it credibility. It is not reasonable to toss out 2000 years worth of claims and experience simply because is seems unbelievable. It requires that we believe by default that there are a whole lot of liars, deceivers, mentally disabled people through out history. Are we to say everyone of these people are full of it and none of it is worth examining? That does not seem reasonable to me.
[/quote]
So, Johnny is told two things. The first is by Norman, a scientist, and Norman tells him that there are these strange things in the universe called black holes. The second is by Isaac, a monk, and Isaac tells Johnny that Jesus came to him (Isaac) in his cell one night and kissed him on his brow.
In that moment, you’re perfectly correct in making the point that the two claims are qualitatively identical. Johnny knows jack shit about black holes, and he knows jack shit about what goes on in Isaac’s cell after dark.
So Johnny decides to go about figuring out what he should and shouldn’t believe. He goes to high school, and then college, and then into a PhD program, and then he gets a job at a university, and he devotes himself to physics and astronomy. And after a while he realizes: Yes, Norman was telling the truth.
This is not hypothetical or allegorical. This happens day in and day out, and this is undeniable.
Now Johnny wants to test Isaac’s claim. But he can’t, because Isaac’s claim cannot be repeated and cannot be studied. It’s just something Isaac said, and nothing more.
This is the difference. Science can be done, testament to miracle can only be heard.
Now, you make the point that many people have attested to many miracles. Sure. But do I for a second have any reason to believe that they’re telling the truth? Of course not. Anybody who’s been around this planet for more than a few years understands that anything said by a stranger is to be treated with skepticism, and infinitely more so when the thing said is, “I have seen miracle.” Go look up witness testimonies for some catastrophic event. If there are ten people who saw a thing, you’ll get 12 different accounts of what happened. Hell, the same person will give you a different account on a different day. You’ve got liars, idiots, wishful thinkers, attention whores, hallucinators, alcoholics, manipulators. And that’s just the rich folk. Poor people will tell you they saw a unicorn if they think it’ll get them a couple dimes in their pocket.
[/quote]
Good stuff and interesting points, but you are wrong on one account. You can go to university and study religion as well. You can study it to death in depth and see it for yourself, just like you can the stuff of science. The rub is that in the end, you will still neither be more convinced of the other or vice versa. Given that an equal amount of effort and study provided in both disciplines.
You say there is no evidence and people tend to be full of themselves, full of shit and like to tell ‘fish stories’. I agree there are a lot of full of shit people in the world. I agree it is wise to be skeptical, but it’s not wise to fully and wholly reject because it ‘sounds funny’. Religion is NOT based on miracles and it is testable.
If Johnny were to go to college study religion and test it’s claims he could. Religion is testable. No, you cannot go back in time and experience the resurrection for yourself, at least not in the tangible way you would expect. But you can find out if it’s true. Or if any of it is true.
You say this stuff is not knowable, I say it is, if inexpressible at times. You need to put some time into it. Not just what people say against it, but study the thing itself.
I cannot prove it to you, it’s simply not something I can do for you. I can tell you if you seek the answer, you will find it.
With philosophy I can argue all day long and have no problems with it. When it comes to the stuff of revelation then it’s trust and verify.
Don’t trust what people tell you, ignore the noise and find out for yourself.
You can search the words of both and see where they lead you. Herodotus, tells of stories he has heard and folk tales as told to him by others through his travels, Paul tells of his own experience.
They aren’t technically comparable as their roles and purpose and manifest in history are totally different. But you can read them both, and decide for yourself.
You don’t see the possibility of miracles. I see them everyday.
Even David Hume accepted the possibility of miracles. In his analysis of causal relationships he took them into account and derived his observations about causation. It’s what drove his ‘third element’ of causation theory.
What I found more interesting than him trying to explain them away is the fact he acknowledged them in the first place rather than simply dismiss them as not happening.
[quote]
Last but not least: Why is it that miracle only ever happens in private, away from security cameras and photographers and video recorders? Why is it always, “I saw nessie, but I didn’t have my camera on me?” It’s because nessie doesn’t exist.[/quote]
They don’t, there is a long history, and some of them you can even go see for yourself. Some of them still exist and are accessible, though understandably very protected. If you want to go see a for real miracle, things that have no explanation to this day, take a trip. They exist, they are out there.
This is where I stop though, I am not going to list one and discuss it. You can find out and you can see them for yourself. Discussing the veracity of a particular miracle on a forum is a non-starter. I made that mistake, once and once it will be made.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Is the objective/empirical evidence list for any of these thing longer than for “Jesus Christ is God, the son?”
[/quote]
The assumptions are fewer. This is important. I assume that my life is not a hallucination; Bob down the street assumes that the government has planted tracking devices in each of his testicles. To say that our two assumptions are of identical merit and wisdom is pure foolishness.
Of course, at the objective heart of all this, we know nothing. If you’d like to end the debate there, we certainly can–though I contend that a worldview that wins out only by reducing all others, along with itself, to a pile of rubble is a worldview not worth adopting.
[/quote]
I disagree, I think it’s the first step in really understanding. But we do know things. The list of things we can know is astonishingly short. The things we actually do know is even shorter.
What we are left with is a few things that are, and a whole bunch of shit that probably is. We may never know about Bob’s testicles, but if it cannot be reduced to what we can know it probably doesn’t matter.
[quote]
But this won’t change the fact that, once we choose (as we must) to trust in our rationality, in the relative acuity of our perception, and in what I’ll call the reality of reality, then further assumptions can be weighed and judged–the weighings and judgments being contingent, of course, upon the validity of the first assumption.
And, as I said before, the fewer the assumptions, the firmer the ground.[/quote]
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
Extraordinary claims from people that are alive today, and extraordinary claims from people that have been dead for centuries or millennia are not equivalent pat.
Go tell the astrophysicists that black holes are bullshit, and that people that claim to have talked to God are more legit.
[/quote]
I believe black holes exist. I find them quite miraculous actually.
They haven’t, you just haven’t looked. It just doesn’t make the 6 o’clock news.
Interesting to you, perhaps. People have been trying to call religious people crazy for centuries. It’s an old claim with a fancier more ‘scientific’ sounding name. The whole, ‘they think they are telling the truth, but the poor sot is just nutty.’
Nero fed us to the lions for all that crazy talk.
Yeah, but now we can slice this up with Occam’s razor and say what is more likely, that these people talk to God? or that they have/had undiagnosed mental issues? The latter is far more likely.
There’s a reason no one believes that crazy guy on the corner saying that God speaks to him.
Satan: “I can destroy your Church.”
Our Lord:
“You can? Then go ahead and do so.”
Satan:
“To do so, I need more time and more power.”
Our Lord:
“How much time? How much power?”
Satan:
“75 to 100 years, and a greater power over those
who will give themselves over to my service.”
Our Lord:
“You have the time, you will have the power.
Do with them what you will.”
Pope Leo’s alleged conversation he allegedly overheard, October 13, 1884.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
Yeah, but now we can slice this up with Occam’s razor and say what is more likely, that these people talk to God? or that they have/had undiagnosed mental issues? The latter is far more likely.
There’s a reason no one believes that crazy guy on the corner saying that God speaks to him.
[/quote]
That’s a misapplication of occam’s razor. Especially in the sense that occam’s razor requires the fewest assumptions and diagnosing mental disorders particularly in people who are dead is extremely complicated and a misapplication of the science. We cannot know they are crazy simply because they claim to have a divine encounter. In the true application of occam’s razor, the opposite is true. The simplest claim with the fewest assumption is that they did have a divine encounter. It’s not reasonable to dismiss 2000 years of history as all being nuts.
[quote]pat wrote:
In the true application of occam’s razor, the opposite is true. The simplest claim with the fewest assumption is that they did have a divine encounter. It’s not reasonable to dismiss 2000 years of history as all being nuts.[/quote]
That’s just wrong. The simplest explanation is what we already use when talking about those “nutty” pagans.
And if you believe that 2,000 years means something then some ancient Egyptian must have been right about his beliefs. How about Hinduism? That’s older than Judaism. I mean, if it’s simply a question of time. Could all of those Indians, for all those millennia, been wrong?
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
“Pedophilia is evil.” Has no more evidence going for it than “Christ is the savior/lord/God.”
[/quote]
Then would you not agree that nothing has evidence going for it–nothing at all, under any circumstances? The kind of evidence you’re referring to, of course.[/quote]
If I agreed, wouldn’t I be saying that I (along with you) KNOW your statement to be true?
Ultimately I belief in faith, first. My interaction with this universe requires faith in it’s reality. Before I can even “do science,” I have faith that I’m doing something real. Observing and measuring a real universe. With other real intelligences that do the same.
By the way, does that make “pedophilia is not evil, because there are no evil acts” a more reasonable position? Or, how about “opposing state recognized gay marriage is not evil, because evil doesn’t exist. Nor do inherent rights.”
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
They were very real to the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Norse.
You’d be in big trouble had you implied that they were not to the devout believers in Sparta, Alexandria and Oslo. [/quote]
And that’s the problem with the religious. It is real to them and that’s enough for it to be real. Belief is not truth. [/quote]
And one day it will be Real Truth to you also. Just wait.
[/quote]
This is the stuff that I take issue with.
You don’t “know” this. Because you can’t prove it. And if you can’t prove a claim, why make that claim?[/quote]
There are some answers we will never know, I add, on this side of heaven. My faith is strong in the fact that people 2000 years ago lived and walked with Jesus. That they knew he was God, and he was here to save us. They also were killed because of that belief.
Now you say that is not proof, but yet we believe in the theory of Relativity from a guy that is dead that you never met. Now people have built on that Theory for 50-70 years yet it is considered Gospel to the scientific community. What is the difference? There is no difference other than people were not killed for that belief.
[/quote]
Scientists are always willing to change their theories if something better comes along that invalidates the first theory. Just ask them what the minimum evidence they require to at least doubt the theory of relativity and it probably won’t be much.
Now what type of evidence do you require to reconsider your belief in god?[/quote]
Scientist base their beliefs on Mathematics which is entirely man made. Now to reconsider God it would take a huge amount of evidence to change my mind. I have 5000 years of evidence that proves God exists. Theory of Relativity only 60-70 years. Which one has more evidence?
[/quote]
There is NO evidence of God’s existence. let alone “5000 years” (which by the way is a length of time, not a body of evidence). And “Math is man made”? You wouldn’t be able to do your taxes let alone be typing on a computer if it wasn’t for the absolute facts the math produces. Take your pre-K homeschooling somewhere else. please.
Pat and Sloth, I am enjoying the debate and am interested in continuing, but have come upon an ocean of work that needs doing, so I will respond when I get a minute (whenever that is).
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Pat and Sloth, I am enjoying the debate and am interested in continuing, but have come upon an ocean of work that needs doing, so I will respond when I get a minute (whenever that is).[/quote]
Heh, understood. I’m supposed to be trying to excuse myself from this thread. Don’t really have the time to spare anymore. So, when I get stuck on one thread, it’s about the only thread I have time for.
[quote]Dangles wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
They were very real to the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Norse.
You’d be in big trouble had you implied that they were not to the devout believers in Sparta, Alexandria and Oslo. [/quote]
And that’s the problem with the religious. It is real to them and that’s enough for it to be real. Belief is not truth. [/quote]
And one day it will be Real Truth to you also. Just wait.
[/quote]
This is the stuff that I take issue with.
You don’t “know” this. Because you can’t prove it. And if you can’t prove a claim, why make that claim?[/quote]
There are some answers we will never know, I add, on this side of heaven. My faith is strong in the fact that people 2000 years ago lived and walked with Jesus. That they knew he was God, and he was here to save us. They also were killed because of that belief.
Now you say that is not proof, but yet we believe in the theory of Relativity from a guy that is dead that you never met. Now people have built on that Theory for 50-70 years yet it is considered Gospel to the scientific community. What is the difference? There is no difference other than people were not killed for that belief.
[/quote]
Scientists are always willing to change their theories if something better comes along that invalidates the first theory. Just ask them what the minimum evidence they require to at least doubt the theory of relativity and it probably won’t be much.
Now what type of evidence do you require to reconsider your belief in god?[/quote]
Scientist base their beliefs on Mathematics which is entirely man made. Now to reconsider God it would take a huge amount of evidence to change my mind. I have 5000 years of evidence that proves God exists. Theory of Relativity only 60-70 years. Which one has more evidence?
[/quote]
There is NO evidence of God’s existence. let alone “5000 years” (which by the way is a length of time, not a body of evidence). And “Math is man made”? You wouldn’t be able to do your taxes let alone be typing on a computer if it wasn’t for the absolute facts the math produces. Take your pre-K homeschooling somewhere else. please.[/quote]
Agreed math is a discovery and not some random belief or man made invention.
“Dangles” he does exist…Pope Leo who was very wise and Spiritually Attuned
overheard a conversation between him and the evil one and decided to let
people know about it…the conversation he overheard was on October 13, 1884,
exactly 33 Years earlier to the day that mass sighting UFO Incident happened in
Portugal, where the Sun danced in the Sky and seemed to be approaching
Earth at one moment and headed toward the crowd…a very possible cosmological
event even if people in other locations in Portugal, Spain, and the rest of Europe
didn’t notice it.
It was a true Miracle.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Pat and Sloth, I am enjoying the debate and am interested in continuing, but have come upon an ocean of work that needs doing, so I will respond when I get a minute (whenever that is).[/quote]
Hey smh take your time. I am too enjoying it and looking forward to your responses.
[quote]Dangles wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]dmaddox wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
They were very real to the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Norse.
You’d be in big trouble had you implied that they were not to the devout believers in Sparta, Alexandria and Oslo. [/quote]
And that’s the problem with the religious. It is real to them and that’s enough for it to be real. Belief is not truth. [/quote]
And one day it will be Real Truth to you also. Just wait.
[/quote]
This is the stuff that I take issue with.
You don’t “know” this. Because you can’t prove it. And if you can’t prove a claim, why make that claim?[/quote]
There are some answers we will never know, I add, on this side of heaven. My faith is strong in the fact that people 2000 years ago lived and walked with Jesus. That they knew he was God, and he was here to save us. They also were killed because of that belief.
Now you say that is not proof, but yet we believe in the theory of Relativity from a guy that is dead that you never met. Now people have built on that Theory for 50-70 years yet it is considered Gospel to the scientific community. What is the difference? There is no difference other than people were not killed for that belief.
[/quote]
Scientists are always willing to change their theories if something better comes along that invalidates the first theory. Just ask them what the minimum evidence they require to at least doubt the theory of relativity and it probably won’t be much.
Now what type of evidence do you require to reconsider your belief in god?[/quote]
Scientist base their beliefs on Mathematics which is entirely man made. Now to reconsider God it would take a huge amount of evidence to change my mind. I have 5000 years of evidence that proves God exists. Theory of Relativity only 60-70 years. Which one has more evidence?
[/quote]
There is NO evidence of God’s existence. let alone “5000 years” (which by the way is a length of time, not a body of evidence). And “Math is man made”? You wouldn’t be able to do your taxes let alone be typing on a computer if it wasn’t for the absolute facts the math produces. Take your pre-K homeschooling somewhere else. please.[/quote]
Oh there is plenty of evidence for God’s existence. It’s interesting that by the same token you believe math, which is purely metaphysical, is not man made yet you believe God is. Though the same process of reasoning deduces the existence of both. Hell, you can use math as a starting point and deduce God must exist. For existence itself is proof of that which exists that cannot, not exist.
The fact that you don’t understand that just means you haven’t actually given it much thought.
There is not ‘5000 years’ of proof, there is an eternity of it.
[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
Agreed math is a discovery and not some random belief or man made invention.
[/quote]
Everything we know is ‘discovered’ we create nothing. Nobody has ever had an original thought even. We didn’t invent the car, we discovered it could be done. We didn’t invent the wheel, we discovered that something round, rolls. We didn’t invent fire, we discovered fire. We didn’t invent science, we discovered it.
That all exists beyond our knowledge of it as does much, much more we have yet to discover.
[quote]pat wrote:
Oh there is plenty of evidence for God’s existence. [/quote]
Which God?