Are Atheists "Philosophically Limited"....?

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Boy is that a mouthful. Even if these regularities existed prior to the existance of our space/time universe they still had to be implemented in this one. If you like we can say that in lieu of a law giver we needed and implementer.

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There's no problem with regularities giving rise to other regularities. Once you accept that regularities can be basic, and in fact must be more basic than a "law giver" or an intelligent "implementor" there is no longer any valid inference from regularity to an intelligent cause.

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1/The way things are balanced in the universe in a way that permits life here and possibly elsewhere gives the appearance of design.

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This is a philosophically flawed view. If the proposed designer qualifies as being alive, then life doesn't require fine tuning (or you get an infinite regress), if it doesn't then why would it choose to fine tune for our sort of life rather than things like it ?

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2/A single living cell is an incredibly complex combination of atoms and molecules which is in turn formed by a complex combination of particles. They have the appearance of design.

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3/DNA and the genetic code have the appearance of design to the point that Francis Collins calls it "The Language of God".

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4/The way that all life works in such a way that it is able to develop and reproduce itself has the appearance of design.

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5/Natural selection and the evolutionary process has the appearance of design.

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These really belong together. Natural selection is pretty much inevitable if you have anything much like life. So that doesn't really qualify. Evolution is good at producing the appearance of design (which includes single cells and DNA). So really I think you are left with the origins of life, and even that is something of an argument from ignorance.

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6/Consciousness and mind, (I realize that none of you accept this), seem to point to something other than the physical, with in the case at least of human consciousness seems to me to point to a morality that comes from something other than a material world which would again point to design.

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THis one seems to be just wrong. At present physicalism looks like the best option for consciousness since it explains some facts very well (the relationship between mind and brain) and no alternative really comes close.The moral argument is extremely dubious. To me morality seems to be a cultural construct built on a base provided by evolution as a social species. If there is a good argument for any alternative, I haven't seen it.

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I don't accept this argument. (I know, turtles all the way down. ) My sense of things is that we are locked in our 4 dimensional world which we perceive with our 5 senses. Science itself even conjectures about other universes and dimensions. Can't I have the same latitude?

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I am not aware that there is any rule protecting scientific arguments from criticism. To the contrary, it is expected that criticisms will be made. And any scientific arguemnt with the flaws that you have (even if you are simply proposing an infinite regress without adequate reasons) would meet with heavy criticism. So I cannot see what "latitude" you are asking for.

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Certainly I am coming at it from a different perspective, and science hopes to be able to construct physical evidence for their theories, but just the same I don't see my approach as being unreasonable. Maybe change, can be measured differently in another time dimension. Maybe in another universe we can move around in time the way we move around in space in this one. Who knows?

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That doesn't save your argument from philosophical criticisms. If all you can do is speculate that the conclusion of your argument MIGHT be true if we make certain ad hoc speculations, you don't have a viable argument.

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Once we go past what we know it's always an argument from ignorance.

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Not if we extrapolate what we do know, rather than setting it aside. At the moment abiogenesis is something of an open question, but the evidence favours a natural origin, and work continues to progress.

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You talk about the relationship between mind and brain. I know where the brain is, but where is the mind? Even so I think that you are confusing the study of mechanism and confusing that with the reason for the mechanism.

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I would say that the mind is a process instantiated in the brain. The key issue is how changes to the brain affect the mind. The effect of the so-called "split-brain" operation is especially striking. Indeed the whole question of why a brain is needed for a mind is unanswered by dualism.

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It still appears to me that we have an innate sense of morality that is just naturally a part of us, that can be heavily influenced by socialization but is not formed from it. I admit that my position can't be proven but for that matter it can't be disproven.

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But that is consistent with my view. Evolved instincts would make up an innate core, while the rest would be a social construct.

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I'm just saying that it seems to be ok for science to speculate about other universes and dimensions but when a Christian does it is called flawed reasoning.

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By which you mean that you want your argument to be held to the standard for speculation, rather than the standard for an argument ?
That isn't asking for the same latitude as scientists get, that's asking people who disagree with you to be biased in favour of your arguments.

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Any philosophical argument will be open to criticism. So what?

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So maybe you shouldn't complain about criticism ? Or claim that it is somehow unfair that your arguments aren't given a special exemption from criticism ?

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Science may very well demonstrate how simple matter could come together to form the first living cell. (Personally I doubt it but I don't deny it's possible.) However, that still won't answer the question of why it happened at all. We can't tell scientifically whether or not it happened by pure chance or if it happened by intelligent intervention.

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In fact science might show that given the timescales and resources available it is QUITE LIKELY that the initial replicators (which would be much simpler than a cell) would come into existence and evolve from there. And that would leave no need for intelligent intervention.

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Let's say you're right about evolved instincts, and personally I think that there is a pretty good chance that you are, the basic question still remains. Did those instincts evolve through some random happening or did they evolve by design?

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Nether, of course. That is a false dilemma. They evolved primarily because they were advantageous to a social animal (granted that doesn't cover how the behaviour became innate, but that's something we can't expect to fully understand yet - the relationship between behaviour and genes is very subtle). Design, in this case, appears to be largely an ad hoc hypothesis anyway - why would a designer choose to give those particular instincts ? (And why distinguish between "moral" instincts and "immoral" ones ? Or do you believe instincts that lead to immoral behaviour were also designed ? Most people pushing your argument would not.)

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I do believe the cause for the universe is God. I believe being the most important part. For me, creationism is not the central part of my belief. The character Jesus Christ is. Therefore, when deciding whether or not to believe in the validity of creation, I look to the testimonies about the life and teachings of Jesus as my "norm," or standard, and ask a series of questions. Jesus claimed He was God. Is this true? Are the writings about him legitimate? Were there any eyewitnesses? How many? Do the eyewitnesses agree? Are there manuscripts? How many? Dating to as close to antiquity as possible, that exist to which I can point to as sources for the Bible I read today? Is there any discrepancy between these original texts and the current Bible?

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I'll just comment that you have a lot of assumptions here, and the order is a little confusing. You should start by questioning the provenance and origins of the writings (and only one of the four Gospels, and maybe a few of the Epistles are likely to have been written by eye-witnesses). The time of writing is also important - the fact that the Gospels are usually dated to decades after Jesus died is important.But to sum up. Only one Gospel and maybe a few Epistles are at all likely to have been written by eye-witnesses to Jesus' life. The Gospels don't agree, in some cases to an extent that should be surprising. There are some known changes in the manuscripts - and some people fight bitterly over them. And, I am given to understand, there may be quite a few more which are not so well known, because there is a gap in our knowledge.

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When these questions are answered I believe I can then look at how Jesus and the New Testament treated the Old Testament. Did Jesus believe in creation? If Jesus existed, and was God as He claimed, would it not then logically follow that if Jesus believed it, Creation happened?

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And there are some more questions here you should think about. To what extent can we reliably tell Jesus' beliefs from the Gospels even if they are largely accurate ? How much do we have to rely on unreliable inference ? (Even if they were accurate on events, the Gospels can't be expected to reliably report speech word-for-word, the more so, since it is unlikely that Jesus spoke in Greek, adding translation to the limits of human memory as a source of error)And even if Jesus is God, to what extent did he have God's knowledge ? Isn't he reported as saying that he did not have the full knowledge of God - specifically denying that he knew the exact timing of the end ?

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You are asking great questions.

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Thank you.

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I am trying to imagine if I were looking at it from the perspective of someone who has not grown up being taught that scripture is true. What would I have heard about Christianity? Jesus is kind of what my mind goes to, as I am interested in things that don't really make sense

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I'm afraid that I can't give you that perspective. Rather I have the perspective of someone brought up to believe, but came to reject it.

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Since only a few of the books in the NT are written by eye witnesses, do these eye-witnesses agree? To what degree do they deviate?

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I'm afraid that the authorship is so uncertain that we can't say for sure if any of the NT books were written by eyewitnesses.

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To what degree do the gospels disagree? Do they REALLY disagree? If they do, is there a reason or purpose? What is changed?

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It's well known that they do disagree. Which is even more surprising when we consider the amount of copied text found in the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew, Luke) - it's not certain who copied who, but the most common view among scholars is that Mark was the first, and the authors of Luke and Matthew copied from Mark. There's text in common in Luke and Matthew that doesn't come from Mark but how that happened is even more contentious.

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. To what extent CAN we reliably tell Jesus' beliefs? What texts demonstrate these things. Jesus was largely very cryptic and rather odd in his conversations with people. It is difficult to get a grasp on what he believed, as there is no "Here is a list of theological concepts Jesus believed and taught while he was here" chapter anywhere. But what did he teach? Really? And there is the component of translation. How much of a difference would it have made to the meaning of what he said? All valuable questions.

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It gets even more interesting when we consider that historical enquiry into Jesus has pretty much hit a dead end. Every attempt to reconstruct Jesus as a historical figure has tended to end up reaffirming the reconstructor's ideas about Jesus.

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This demonstrates that there were some limitations to the incarnation. Omniscience appears to be one of them, according to this text. This speaks to the sovereignty of the Father and the sacrifice Christ made to even become human, but doesn't really say much about Jesus' theological positions. Born and raised a Jew, Jesus would definitely have believed in creation--one text that exemplifies this is his comments on the Sabbath:

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But, of course, if Jesus believed these things because he was brought up as a Jew then his belief is of no value in determining the truth. If you want to appeal to divine knowledge than Jesus' belief has to be the product of divine knowledge.And the statement on the Sabbath could as easily be a reference to the Law as to creation. All it requires is a recognition that Jewish religious law mandated Sabbath observance. There's no need to even take the story of Moses literally, let alone the Creation account of Genesis 1.

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There is validity here. But to say that none of the NT books were written by eyewitnesses of Christ is a little much. While it is not believed the books of Mark and Luke were written by eyewitnesses of Christ, the books of Matthew and John are pretty confidently thought to have been written by the respective apostles, who were eyewitnesses to Jesus' life. But there is only so accurate one can get with these things. We can infer, based on what we know.

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The evidence for John having been written by an eyewitness is not great (and the primary author certainy did not witness everything in the book nor write the entire Gospel). Matthew is in fact very unlikely to have been written by an eyewitness. Your source, I am afraid us more than a little biased, for example refusing to admit that many Bible scholars - likely a majority - believe that Matthew is derived from Mark, or pointing out that the Matthew we know is not the document referred to Papias, differing both in the language and content.In fact I am afraid to say that most apologetic sources - perhaps especially those with a conservative bent - are not trustworthy.

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Sure. There are variances. There are differences. But we cannot assume that since there are differences the text is invalidated. It would be like saying since you and your friend saw a fire, and then wrote about it years later, because you disagree on some detail in the story the fire did not occur. The writers were human.

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It's more than the differences we would expect between eyewitnesses. For instance the version of the Olivet Discourse in Luke is quite different from the one found in Mark and Matthew (which are almost identical). And if we include Acts, the author of Luke places the post-resurrection appearances all in and around Jerusalem, while Matthew places them in Galilee. If you believe that the author of Matthew was an eyewitness, how could he forget Jesus having appeared in the road to Emmaus,telling the disciples to stay put? And all the events mentioned in Acts leading up to Pentecost?

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I would be interested to see some research in this area. Would that mean then that both christian and non christian historians have done this research and come to conclusions based on their presuppositions? Or that they both come to the same conclusion?

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Actually I mean that Christian historians have come up with drastically differing opinions.

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So apparently, Jesus knows He is from God. He knows he is God. He claims to be all the time. Not only does He know he is God, John claims that He was with God in the beginning. If Jesus is God, he was there at creation. He did the creating. Making sense?

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If John is right, and you must admit that even if the author of John was a disciple, he was not an eyewitness to the creation :-)

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What all this leads to is a model of authenticating Jesus before coming to a conclusion about Creationism. If Jesus existed, and was who he said he was, creation is validated in my mind. This is a very bare bones model of my thought process, and as I stated earlier I would like to flesh it out and present it in its entirety at some point.

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I think you would have to limit yourself to what Jesus said about creation, bearing in mind the context, the audience and the limits of memory, transmission and translation. That isn't going to be much.

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I would agree with you, the source perhaps is a little biased At the same time, I believe we are coming to the same conclusion. There is not certainty, but we can infer, and there is general consensus.

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Sure but the fact that our Matthew does not match Papias' description, and the indications that our Matthew is based on Mark allow us to infer that our Matthew is NOT an eye-witness account. It would be a very odd eye-witness who copied parts of somebody else's account!

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And that begs the question, "why is Luke's version a little different?" We can't just throw it out because it's different, everything has a purpose.

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It's more than a little different. To me it looks as if the purpose was to talk up Jesus' prophetic abilities by making the "prophecy" more closely follow the events, after the fact.

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Did Matthew forget? Or did he leave it out on purpose because there is a specific point he is trying to convey? Each writer was trying to convey a specific message to a specific audience. For Matthew, it was originally thought he was writing to Jews, but as he relies heavily on the septuagint, those who could read Greek are his audience. Luke is writing to Gentiles. There was a reason they each include different things, to emphasize different things and make specific points. So to say that the message of both is invalidated because there are discrepancies doesn't make sense in my mind. There is purpose

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So, in your view, Matthew's account is intentionally distorted and inaccurate for the benefit of his audience. I would call that dishonest. Why would you think that ?

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Valid point . But if we're reading scripture, we have a accept it as it is, and the claims it makes. The books claim their authors were inspired and led by God in writing. I don't see this as a cop out; this is where faith comes in.

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I'm sure you place great faith in the people who told you that, but it isn't true.

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I don't think so at all. I see where you're coming from, seeing where Jesus mentions creation can definitely be part of concluding in creationism, but if we're accepting that Jesus existed, and He was who He said He was, namely, God, we have to accept that He was there at the beginning. Even if John hadn't stated this, it would be inferred.

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Which doesn't change the fact that we have very restricted knowledge of what Jesus said, and even assuming those reports to be accurate (a big assumption in itself) we have to be very careful in going beyond what they actually say.For instance:

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58 Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. - John 8:58

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Did Jesus say it? Did he use those exact words? Could the "I am" - a very odd phrasing in English! - actually be a reference to God rather than Jesus ? Could it refer to a general preexistence ? There are certainly a lot of uncertainties here.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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Thus you quite likely accept logic, reason, and reality and shun faith...for the most part?

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Depends on what you mean by "faith". I've seen enough equivocation on that. I'm prepared to accept the views of genuine experts as trustworthy, unless there's reason to believe otherwise.

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When you critically examine historicity arguments both pro and con for the Bible, are you cooly unbiased in your acceptance and/or rejection and conclusions?

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I believe that would be generally true.

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I am not familiar with the writings of Papias, to be honest. But for the sake of argument let's say Matthew was not an eyewitness account. In fact he probably was not, as the letter is anonymous. This still does not invalidate the text for me.

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For what purpose? To communicate to the Jews a Messiah they did not believe or expect? To benefit the almost non-existent political power of the church? To convince people a person named Jesus existed, so they would internalize counter-cultural standards for loving people, justice, and ethics? This seems like a bit of a stretch, friend.

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That's a pretty nonsensical objection. We'd expect ALL the Gospel writers to talk up Jesus' abilities. It's a bit of a surprise that Luke would deviate so far from Mark's text, but the direction of the deviations is completely unsurprising. Convincing potential converts - and believers - that Jesus was a genuine prophet is not an unlikely motivation at all.Perhaps more importantly making excuses without actually considering the facts is irrational and a sign of a closed mind.

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I do not think so at all. believe the writer wrote in Greek so those who spoke Greek could read it. And I do not believe leaving out one detail is in any way dishonest. Or that consensus on every detail automatically means honestly. This is what I have stated.

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But you claim that he deliberately tried to cover up the events in and around Jerusalem following Jesus death. That's not "leaving out a detail". You suggested that the author of Matthew deliberately omitted major events, even going to the lengths of implying that they never happened. Everything from the encounter on the Road to Emmaus to the Ascension and Pentecost, an inconsequential detail ? Do you REALLY believe that or are you just throwing out excuses without bothering to find out what you're talking aboutI must confess I don't understand this attitude. How can the IDEA that the Bible is reliable be so much more important than what the Bible actually says ?

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Alright, this is fair, let's forget the whole inspiration issue for now

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I would say that the inspiration issue itself is not important. That your sources are misrepresenting the Bible, on the other hand, IS important. Ask yourself, why would they do that ? How can you trust them if they make claims that they ought to know to be false ?

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Sure. But we don't need to be timid or lazy about this. If we want, we can take a look at every place Jesus claims divinity (within context.) There are many. I believe the point still stands.

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In fact the issue was what Jesus believed about the Creation. But I suggest you DO look at the places where Jesus claims to be God - or supposedly does so. See how many come from John - see if you can find one clear example that is NOT from John.

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Great questions! He did, in fact.

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How can you know that. Ancient historians going back to Heordotus felt free to invent speeches. Why should the Gospel writers feel any differently ? Even if they were eyewitnesses how could they remember speeches word for word decades later ?

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I would ask the exact same questions. For Jesus to claim "I am existing," or "I AM" would be a pretty bold statement to an audience of Jews who all know (probably memorized) the story of the burning bush in the OT, where the G-D of Moses names Himself, "I AM." Jesus does this many times. It's not as straightforward and simple as we want, I understand, but it is pretty apparent.

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Which is in itself good reason to suspect that he didn't say it. In Mark, Jesus commands the disciples not to let people know that he is the Messiah. Openly claiming to be God - a far more dramatic claim - is hardly consistent with that.

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I do believe you are missing the point.

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I think that it is fairer to say that you are evading the issue. You're certainly not addressing - nor seem interested in addressing - the actual differences between the texts. Instead you seem to be arguing that the authors can only have motives that you approve of and therefore the actual differences don't count.

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t at all. I claim he simply did not mention them. How is this a deliberate attempt to deceive? If I am writing a letter to you about my birthday party, there could be multiple reasons why I did not mention a specific person or detail. Perhaps I simply forgot. Perhaps it was not pertinent to the letter. Perhaps I did not have access to the information. Perhaps I was trying to convey a specific message and extra information simply did not matter. You are right, I may hae made light of the differences. They are significant, but honestly we do the same thing all the time; it is not unnatural at all that these things are missing. It is unusual, but definitely not unnatural.

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But of course we are not talking about omitting mere details. We are talking about Matthew not only omitting everything from the Road to Emmaus encounter to Pentecost, but implying that they never happened, substituting his own stories.Again, you show no interest in considering what the Bible says at all.

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I am comfortable enough to say sure, I have presuppositions. We all do. We're both speaking from ours right now.

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It's quite clear that at least I'm not putting my presuppositions about the Bible ahead of the actual text - and that you are.

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But what the Bible actually says pretty much validates its reliability. There are differences. There are omissions. There are, dare I say, mistakes! This is fine, it is a book written by humans, for humans, so human error is a thing. This is ok

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If you really believed that, you wouldn't be evading discussion about the actual differences.

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I'm glad you mentioned this. Why does the loading of "I am" statements in John discredit the purpose of the statement? The purpose of John is to convince the reader of Jesus' divinity. The writer uses so many because that is the message he is trying to convey. Does this seem suspicious to you?

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It certainly makes me suspect that John's statements may be more based in bias than reality. And I note that you aren't addressing the issue of Mark.

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How can you know otherwise? Again, I would ask, for what purpose would they invent speeches about loving neighbors and doing justly to those who treat you unjustly? Honestly, it makes more sense for the speeches to be genuine; to claim forgery is a bit of a stretch.

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Herodotus invented speeches that he thought that the subjects might have said. If that's good enough for Herodotus why should it be out of bounds to the Gospel authors ?

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There are many methods for this. Jewish tradition included many oral traditions, passed down, word for word, that are still uttered to this day. Jewish Rabbis would often memorize massive sections of scripture. I wouldn't bank on this, but to memorize a speech, word for word, isnt even really a stretch. Oral tradition, a story passed down, fragments and sections written down perhaps, makes much more sense to me.

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Memorising a tradition, after it has solidified, is quite different from memorising a single speech as it is said. And how many of your presumed "eyewitnesses" had any special training in memorisation ?

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Sure. Each author paints different pictures of the same Jesus. Each author remembers and emphasizes different things for specific purposes. Instead of throwing up our hands, and shouting "false!' we can work a little harder, and examine the reasons why Mark emphasizes Jesus' instructions to "tell no one." This is a difference, not an invalidating contradiction.

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Or the author of John is misremembering, whatever the source of his information, based on his own biases. Let us not forget that John is dated to the END of the first century, sixty plus years after Jesus' death.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.