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Author Topic:   The Tension of Faith
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 601 of 1540 (823569)
11-12-2017 7:39 PM
Reply to: Message 599 by PaulK
11-12-2017 5:22 PM


Re: The Evidence Of 1 Corinthians 15:5-8
PaulK writes:
As I said, I see it as evidence against a physical resurrection. And that is because a physical resurrection raises the problem of where Jesus was when he wasn’t being seen, and because the evidence - such as it is - can be easily explained without one.
Yeah, sorry, I'm still not seeing the evidence. I understand your arguments, but they're based on your preferred interpretations, not evidence. When faced with someone with other interpretations all you've got is argument against argument, not evidence. There's no evidence in the NT for anything, including the resurrection, neither physical nor spiritual.
quote:
How is it evidence rather than just a story with no supporting evidence?
There has to be some reason why they said it. That it is based on something that did happen seems to me more likely than that it was a complete fabrication.
Why? Some argued that even if Clinton wasn't actually running a pedophilia ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor, that it is based upon something true seems more likely than that it was a complete fabrication. Why?
That’s because they hate Clinton. To the point of irrationality. There never was any real evidence - just a few emails with slightly odd phrasing - so we know that the rest was made up.
That they hate Clinton to the point of irrationality is your unevidenced argument, which is the same type of argument you started with when you said, "There had to be some reason why they said it." You don't have evidence but rather unevidenced arguments guided by your own opinions.
On the other hand post mortem hallucinations, dreams about dead people, mistaken identifications are all things that happen quite commonly. And from there cognitive dissonance makes it quite likely that the disciples - some of them, at least - might come up with the idea of the resurrection. But if they wanted to manufacture evidence - as later Christians may well have done - then a vague list of disconnected appearances isn’t exactly a likely choice.
That's the opinion you're arguing for, not evidence.
quote:
Or it could have been based upon some existing religious mythology.
Do you have any evidence it was ?
No, of course not. I was only offering yet another possibility that has no evidence. And your own preferred scenario has no evidence. If you chose you could argue all day with someone about which of these possibilities is correct, but you'd never settle anything because no evidence exists.
Here's an example of a Bible-related claim that has evidence: the tale of Noah is not original but has its origins in an older tale. The evidence is the older Epic of Gilgamesh. The parallels are undeniable. Issue settled.
quote:
I understand your argument, but others might have different opinions (Faith, for example), and this isn't evidence.
An argument isn’t evidence but it explains why the text may be considered evidence,...
You can argue for an interpretation or scenario, but an argument can't turn text into evidence.
...and I certainly don’t think that Faith would argue that Paul made it up.
The opinion I thought Faith would disagree with was yours, the one where you said that the accounts about the appearances of Jesus were insufficiently detailed and impressive.
But really this is inference to the best explanation. If you accept that Jesus existed...
Is there evidence that Jesus existed?
...then I have a parsimonious explanation of why the belief in the resurrection started, why there is so little about the appearances prior to Matthew and why we find so much variance in the Gospel (plus Acts) accounts of the appearances.
A "parsimonious explanation" is not evidence.
That’s pretty good going, for a question of history.
It seems more a question of religious claims.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typo.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 599 by PaulK, posted 11-12-2017 5:22 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 605 by PaulK, posted 11-13-2017 12:36 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 602 of 1540 (823570)
11-12-2017 7:42 PM
Reply to: Message 600 by Faith
11-12-2017 5:53 PM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
Faith writes:
One does not speak of an historical account of actual events in the real world as a "religious work." That implies something like a treatise, not a report of observations of real events. The gospels are historical accounts, not religious works.
The Gospels are not historical accounts. If you don't like the term "religious works" could I suggest "sacred writings."
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 600 by Faith, posted 11-12-2017 5:53 PM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 603 by jar, posted 11-12-2017 9:47 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 604 by kbertsche, posted 11-12-2017 11:49 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 609 of 1540 (823587)
11-13-2017 11:20 AM
Reply to: Message 604 by kbertsche
11-12-2017 11:49 PM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
kbertsche writes:
The modern scholarly view is that the gospels are examples of "Graeco-Roman biography", which is a historical, non-fiction genre.
In a Google search, "Graeco-Roman biography" is only ever mentioned in connection with the Gospels. Rather than "a historical, non-fiction genre," it seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of justifying the Gospels.
The fact that they are "religious works" does not obviate their historicity.
The Gospels lack of evidenced facts, plus their combination of truths, fallacies, unverifiabilities, internal and external contradictions, and impossibilities, would seem to "obviate their historicity."
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 604 by kbertsche, posted 11-12-2017 11:49 PM kbertsche has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 610 by Faith, posted 11-13-2017 11:49 AM Percy has replied
 Message 612 by PaulK, posted 11-13-2017 11:55 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 615 of 1540 (823596)
11-13-2017 1:05 PM
Reply to: Message 605 by PaulK
11-13-2017 12:36 AM


Re: The Evidence Of 1 Corinthians 15:5-8
PaulK writes:
If you are going to ignore any written accounts you will lose a lot of history.
I'm not ignoring written accounts. I'm arguing that written accounts are not evidence. The original claim that began this subdiscussion was that the Bible contains the evidence of its own truth and accuracy, and of course this isn't true. No writing contains the evidence of its own truth and accuracy. The point I'm arguing is not that written accounts should be ignored, but that they are not evidence.
While written accounts are not always good evidence for what they claim (something that needs to be established case by case)...
I would use different terminology. I would say that written accounts can vary widely in accuracy. The measure of that accuracy lies in supporting evidence, which is definitely not contained in the written accounts themselves.
...the fact that the thing has been written is evidence in itself.
Sure - it's evidence that someone wrote something.
Just saying that it could be complete fiction and ignoring it is not really a sensible view.
I'm not saying that anything in particular in the Bible is "complete fiction" and should be ignored. The Bible just happens to be the focus in this thread because faith is the topic. The key issue is far more global and concerns how we know what we know, and that's through evidence. Writing is how we communicate information about evidence, but writing is not itself evidence.
Consider a couple newspaper articles as an example, one from Breitbart News, the other from The New York Times. The two articles disagree on some point. Neither article contains evidence, of course. The articles can be about and can describe evidence, but they cannot contain evidence or be evidence. To settle the disagreement between the two articles you must go back to the evidence. Resolution of the disagreement definitely does not reside in deeper analysis of the articles with arguments like "they wouldn't say it that way if it weren't true" and "this isn't convincing because it doesn't contain enough detail."
If you want a specific example of articles from Breitbart and the NYT that disagree, try ones about the size of the inauguration day crowds. Reading the articles and arguing with people about them won't settle anything - you'll need evidence, probably the photos are the best evidence.
Interesting fact: recently a polling group asked voters to view the crowd-size photos for Trump and Obama and choose which one had more people. All the non-Trump voters correctly identified the Obama photo as the one containing more people, but 1-in-6 Trump voters picked the Trump photo. Fascinating, no? Ah, human nature, gotta love it.
And if you don’t see inference to best explanation to be a valid argument - and that seems to be implicit in your claim not to see the evidence - you are losing even more.
I think making inferences from available information is a fine way to argue, but inferences are only as good as the information they're based upon, and if the information is not an accurate reflection of the original evidence then the inferences are, well, garbage-in/garbage out. That's what's wrong with the way you're arguing - you have no idea of the quality of the information you're working with.
I don’t doubt that if you look at their other writings you will find plenty of evidence of their hate.
I wasn't expressing doubt that they hate Clinton. I was merely echoing your own words when I said, "That they hate Clinton to the point of irrationality is your unevidenced argument." It was you that originally used the phrase "to the point of irrationality", and that was the part that I felt was unevidenced. It was the same type of argument you started with a couple messages ago when you said, "There had to be some reason why they said it."
The fact remains that they constructed a grand conspiracy out of almost nothing, while I am pointing to a very mundane explanation of something widely believed to be extraordinary.
Your explanation is mundane, but that anything like it ever happened is unevidenced. Paraphrasing your line of argument, "We can accept the Biblical passages as correct because it is always possible to invent mundane explanations for anything fantastical." For all you know you're inventing mundane explanations for complete fictions.
The fact that the reported appearances can be explained by mundane and common occurrences is evidence and not opinion.
The claim that inventing "mundane and common" explanations for fantastical events is evidence makes no sense.
The rest is argument. Why should we prefer the idea that it was all made up to the idea that it reports ordinary, even expected events ?
That it's all made up is just one of the possibilities I added to your list, not my conclusion. What I actually think is that the claims are unevidenced and that there are many reasons for questioning their credibility (meaning the degree to which they conform with the original evidence, were it to still exist after all this time), such as internal and external contradictions and inconsistencies, as well as impossibilities. A story in which someone rises from the dead, makes a number of appearances, then ascends to heaven, isn't one that lends a lot of confidence in the truth or accuracy of the other details.
On the contrary, I win on parsimony. You have to assume that the existing religious mythology existed and would be used. I don’t.
As I said, I wasn't arguing for a competing explanation, just adding to the list of possibilities. But if I had been trying to argue with you about whose explanation was most parsimonious then I would mention that you have to assume multiple spiritual appearances in direct contradiction to science and to some Biblical claims that they were definitely physical appearances, plus you add the possibility of multiple occurrences of mistaken identities. Whose explanation is really most parsimonious?
But more importantly, parsimony isn't related to my argument about the relationship between writing and the extent to which it is based on evidence. Not that it was a point I was ever trying to argue, but let me just grant you the win on parsimony. I'll just grant that your explanation is the most parsimonious and that the possibility I tried to add is garbage. Your explanation, indeed, all explanations based only on writing, are still unevidenced, and that's what counts.
And let me point out that writing is the only evidence you have for that.
One more time, writing isn't evidence.
And someone taking a similarly sceptical viewpoint could argue that the story in the Bible (or the stories mashed together to make the Biblical version) was made up independently.
Yes they could, and it would be an unevidenced argument.
quote:
The opinion I thought Faith would disagree with was yours, the one where you said that the accounts about the appearances of Jesus were insufficiently detailed and impressive.
The lack of detail in 1 Corinthians is an obvious fact, and while it would hardly surprise me to see Faith disagree with the Bible it is not certain. Equally, just thinking that they saw Jesus isn’t that impressive and that is all you can rationally get from 1 Corinthians.
Oh, I didn't realize that when you criticized the lack of detail about the appearances that you were referring only to the bit of information about them in 1 Corinthians. Given that there's plenty of detail elsewhere I guess I don't see it as a problem.
quote:
Is there evidence that Jesus existed?
There is but you've made it plain that you won’t accept it.
If you mean I won't accept that writing something down turns it into evidence, you're right, I won't accept it.
quote:
A "parsimonious explanation" is not evidence
Can you please stop this silly confusion over evidence. If I have the best explanation - and a parsimonious explanation with significant explanatory power is certainly good, and you haven’t come close to anything better - then the facts that are explained should be considered evidence for the explanation.
But I don't feel confused about evidence. The confusion seems to lie on the other foot. You can have all the parsimony in the world, but parsimony based on unevidenced information of unknown credibility isn't worth much.
quote:
It seems more a question of religious claims.
The question of what actually happened, using no theological assumptions at all, preferring naturalistic explanations to miracles looks like historical investigation to me. Why call it religious ?
Because you're trying to extract history from a religious book where one of the possibilities for some or all of the events is that nothing ever happened. For example, some or all of the miracles, rather than being naturalistic events that actually took place but that were misinterpreted as miracles, may never have happened at all, may simply have been invented because people found miracles convincing.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 605 by PaulK, posted 11-13-2017 12:36 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 618 by PaulK, posted 11-13-2017 2:36 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 616 of 1540 (823600)
11-13-2017 1:26 PM
Reply to: Message 610 by Faith
11-13-2017 11:49 AM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
Faith writes:
Sorry, it's you against millions of Christians for two thousand years. You lose.
Gee, the "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" fallacy pops up yet again.
If you divide the world into two categories, "Christian" and "other", "Christians" are outnumbered.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 610 by Faith, posted 11-13-2017 11:49 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 631 by Faith, posted 11-14-2017 1:19 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 617 of 1540 (823601)
11-13-2017 2:00 PM
Reply to: Message 607 by Faith
11-13-2017 10:19 AM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
Faith writes:
No, because it's basically the same problem, your effort to pretend they aren't about real historical events just because they refer to people and events you prefer to call "religious."
I think pretty much everyone agrees the Bible is a religious book and that people like Noah and Moses and Job and Jesus and Paul were religious. "Religious" is not a term of denigration.
{What makes a miracle "religious?"
You're really asking this question? You just finished arguing a few messages ago that John described the miracles so that people would be convinced of the truth of our risen Lord Jesus Christ and so be brought to salvation and eventual reunion with God in Heaven, and you're asking what makes a miracle religious? Seriously?
After his death Jesus appeared in a glorified body that could walk through walls, what's "religious" about that observed historical event that occurred in real time?
It's religious because it's a miracle recounted in your religious book, the Bible. It's also unevidenced and fantastical.
Calling these things "religious" is just a way of pretending they didn't happen.
Calling them religious is simply accurate terminology.
I'm not pretending they didn't happen. I'm calling them unevidenced, and they contain much that calls their credibility into question, such as fallacies, internal and external contradictions, and impossibilities.
They happened, there's nothing religious about them, they are simply real events that happened in real time.
There's no existing evidence of these events.
Kbertsche is right that even with "religious content" they don't lose their historicity, but I don't even want to agree with him about religious content, because that's just terminology designed to discredit their real historical existence in the end anyway.
Don't worry so much about terminology. A work of history by any other name would still be a work of history. The Gospels are not works of history. Perhaps a good term for them would be religious biography.
Also to say they are examples of a literary genre of biography, as KB does, implies that the fishermen who followed Jesus would have been familiar with that genre, which is ridiculous.
If the genre was common and familiar at the time, why wouldn't they have written in a style they were familiar with? The quality of writing in the Gospels varies but is pretty good overall. Whoever the Gospel authors were, even fishermen, by the time they penned the Gospels they had acquired a fair amount of literary talent and would certainly have been familiar with common biographical approaches.
No, they are simple descriptive accounts of events that they witnessed or knew about in the real world, most concerning Jesus' miraculous acts, which makes them "historical" by any definition.
That's one opinion. Another is that they're religious works carefully researched using prior works and crafted to serve as the central religious books to various early Christian communities.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 607 by Faith, posted 11-13-2017 10:19 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 632 by Faith, posted 11-14-2017 1:22 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 619 of 1540 (823603)
11-13-2017 2:47 PM
Reply to: Message 612 by PaulK
11-13-2017 11:55 AM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
PaulK writes:
That may be because low-grade apologists are drowning out the respectable voices.
See this for a better view of the issues.
Ah, thanks, very interesting. Too long to read through the whole thing, but I got the general idea after a few pages.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 612 by PaulK, posted 11-13-2017 11:55 AM PaulK has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 626 of 1540 (823612)
11-14-2017 10:06 AM
Reply to: Message 618 by PaulK
11-13-2017 2:36 PM


Re: The Evidence Of 1 Corinthians 15:5-8
PaulK writes:
You are certainly ignoring written accounts as evidence and that is wrong.
It isn't that I'm "ignoring written accounts as evidence." It's that I'm pointing out that they *aren't* evidence. When we write we're recording our thoughts, but those thoughts could be about anything, from real accounts to complete fictions, from fully accurate to full of mistakes. At best writing represents an effort to create an accurate description of evidence from the real world.
Here's a brief example. George Papadopoulous made false statements to the FBI for which he was later arrested. But had Comey pledged loyalty to Trump and not been fired then Mueller would never have been appointed special counsel and there would never have been an investigation that uncovered Papadopoulos' false statements. So Papadopoulos' false statements would be on record at the FBI as...what? Not evidence, because they're not true statements, not accurate reflections of the real world. But we wouldn't know they're false. To find out what really happened you have to go back to the evidence, which is what the FBI did.
It would be fairer to say that written accounts - without corroborating evidence - are often very poor evidence for the events that they recount.
So poor that they shouldn't be considered evidence at all. While oral and written statements can be invaluable aids to ferreting out the truth, for instance by telling you where to look for evidence or relating the sequence of events, they are not themselves evidence. Evidence is a result of things that happen. Or put another way, things that happen leave evidence behind. Someone relating what they saw or heard is not evidence left behind by something that happened.
Consider, where can we find names but in written documents ? Records of astronomical events are used to establish chronologies. The Amarna letters tell us of the dealings of the Egyptians with their neighbours. Josephus gives us a good - if heavily biased account of the Jewish revolt.
I've been distinguishing between evidence and information. The names, the astronomical events, the Amarna letters, Josephus' accounts, they're all information, not evidence. Names are something we have no evidence for. Astronomical events leave evidence behind, which today we can record with proper instruments. Tycho Brahe, good as he was, made recording errors.
You might ask why I'm so against viewing the written word as a form of evidence that can range from weak to strong, which was suggested at one point in the discussion, I think by GDR. The reason is because evidence, the results of things that happen, is never false or fictional or contradictory (though it might be difficult to decipher). Evidence is a record of events that have occurred in the real world, the written word is not. Or rather I should say that the written word *can* be a record of events in the real world, but mostly not, and it's impossible to tell when you have an accurate account and when you don't unless you go back to the actual evidence, which written accounts are not.
So if the written word cannot be trusted, how do we accomplish anything? Well, much of what we accomplish using the written word is based upon trust. Say you're a waiter in a restaurant. When the customer pays the bill, do you check the signature (writing) against the card? No, of course not. The customer gives you his card, you put it through the card unit, you bring all the paperwork and the card back to the customer, the customer signs the receipt in your absence and leaves. You never get to see if his signature matches the one on the card. It's just trust. And many stores don't check signatures for amounts below a certain threshold, so there's more trust.
The result of this trust? A great deal of credit card fraud.
Can contracts, which consist of nothing more than the written word, be trusted? All it takes to break a contract is sufficient money to hire a good law firm.
Can the rule of law, also consisting of nothing more than the written word, be trusted? Again, all it takes is sufficient money to hire a good enough lawyer. There's a reason OJ went free (the murders, not the memorabilia theft).
Can the answer to the question, "Does this dress make me look fat?" be trusted? (Actually, I think some guys do answer this question honestly - they're called ex-husbands. )
Can history be trusted? How do we know anything about history if we can't trust the written word? Well, the only way we can really know anything for sure is through evidence, and the problem with the past is that it begins disintegrating the moment it forms. Someday our sun will turn the Earth to a cinder, and then without doubt all evidence of everything we accomplished with the exception of a collection of dead space probes will be gone, but long before that all evidence of all human history up until now will already be gone. A billion years from now the current continents won't even exist, and certainly all the recordings of all the news and documentaries of our time here in the 21st century will be long gone. We can write stuff down and hope it survives, but written material, besides being as ephemeral as evidence, isn't trustworthy, and it isn't evidence.
Can the news be trusted? How do we know anything about the news if we can't trust the written word? Well, there's the New York Times and the Washington Post on the one hand, and then there's all those alt-right sites and Breitbart news and so forth. Which you accept is based upon trust. And here's a great example of how the Twitterverse can affect the news: Did a Woman Say the Washington Post Offered Her $1,000 to Accuse Roy Moore of Sexual Abuse?, which I use as an example since Roy Moore is in the news. What we read in the news (assuming we understand the difference between the news pages and the editorial pages) is based upon trust, because the news doesn't contain the evidence that it is true. And obviously they make mistakes, because they (or at least the NYT and WP) post corrections at the bottoms of articles all the time.
The problem for evidence is one of permanence. Some evidence lasts a long time (the pyramids), some disappears in a second (a bird call). The problem for the written word is reliability - it is notoriously unreliable and can't be validated without evidence.
Combining these two problems of permanence for evidence and reliability for the written word, where does that leave us? Not in very good shape for establishing the truth and accuracy of what happened long ago. Or even not so very long ago - how many people shot at JFK?
Bottom line about the written word: people cannot be trusted to write honestly or accurately, and there's often no way to know when they are or aren't without real evidence. What people say or write is not evidence.
quote:
PaulK writes:
Just saying that it could be complete fiction and ignoring it is not really a sensible view.
I'm not saying that anything in particular in the Bible is "complete fiction" and should be ignored.
You are certainly suggesting that the appearances of 1 Corinthians could be complete fiction. And could be is the wording I used.
Yes, they certainly could be a complete fiction. It cannot be denied that that is one of the possibilities. Given that Jesus had died several days before, it's impossible. Granted I'm trusting one part of the story (Jesus died several days before) and dismissing as balderdash another part of the story (that Jesus returned to life and began appearing to people).
But I actually responded because you suggested that I was saying it should be ignored. I never said it should be ignored. Calling it a fiction is not the same thing as saying it should be ignored. How could I relate the story of the appearances, even if I don't believe it, if I ignored the appearances? I'm dismissing them as factual, not ignoring them.
That the articles do not contain sufficient evidence to resolve their dispute does not mean that they are not evidence at all.
The articles do not contain any evidence at all (unless they contain photos). Evidence is a result of things that happen, not what people write about what they think happened.
That might be a sensible argument if I was uncritically accepting the claims. However, simply dismissing my evaluation does not make it go away. I am not uncritically accepting the claims, I have reasons to think them largely reliable - in what little they actually say (in part because it is so little).
I guess you're referring to that 1 Corinthians passage again. What "evidence" does it contain that leads you to believe it reliable? None, right? The beginning of it is, as KBertsche points out, merely boilerplate, a familiar statement of Christian belief, unsupported by any evidence. In the remainder Paul adds his own experience, again unsupported by any evidence. There's no evidence any of it ever happened. You're inventing mundane explanations for miracles that were likely invented because people of the period found miracles convincing.
quote:
I wasn't expressing doubt that they hate Clinton. I was merely echoing your own words when I said, "That they hate Clinton to the point of irrationality is your unevidenced argument.
And you completely missed the point. The evidence is readily available - and well known enough that it hardly needs repeating when it is not even the subject of discussion. That is the point. Simply because - for the sake of time - I did not produce the evidence in my post doesn’t mean that it does not exist and I am sure that you know it exists.
You chopped off the important part of my quote, and so your response doesn't address my actual point. But the whole thing isn't sufficiently germane to the topic to be worth straightening out, so I think I'll just drop it.
quote:
Your explanation is mundane, but that anything like it ever happened is unevidenced. Paraphrasing your line of argument, "We can accept the Biblical passages as correct because it is always possible to invent mundane explanations for anything fantastical." For all you know you're inventing mundane explanations for complete fictions.
That is somewhat distorted. I am not inventing explanations - I am pointing to known phenomena that adequately fit the description given.
You are pointing to "known phenomenon that adequately fit the description given" but are not what the passage describes - you're inventing alternative non-miraculous explanations.
And let us note that you ARE resorting to the could be fiction argument to disregard the text.
We're not doing the same thing. You're calling the events real but misinterpreted as miracles. I'm calling the events fiction straight out, like much that humans write.
Of course, 1 Corinthians doesn’t mention Jesus rising to heaven.
For me that short passage from 1 Corinthians was the basis for only a single issue, not the topic of this whole subthread. For the most part I've been talking about the entire NT, and hopefully when I was just talking about 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 I've said so.
However, isn’t it reasonable to say that 1 Corinthians 15 is evidence that early Christians believed that Jesus had died and been resurrected ?
Yes, of course. I'm on record as saying that the written word is a record of our thoughts, which of course reflect our beliefs. Much of the writing about early Christian beliefs appears genuine and consistent on the large details, and there seems little reason not to believe that that's what Christians believed. That doesn't make the accounts evidence for the fantastical events they relate, or even the mundane ones.
And that the appearances are cited as evidence of that resurrection ?
Yes, of course.
And that the appearances - because they are so feeble as evidence of that - could easily be things that actually happened and explain why Jesus’ followers came to believe in a resurrection ?
You're asking me if it's reasonable to believe that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to a number of people? No, I don't believe it's reasonable. And feeble evidence is the opposite of what is needed for such an amazing event. It seems to me that the best way to make miraculous claims seem reasonable is to surround them with as much of the undeniably true as possible, not yet more miraculous claims.
The only evidence that lets you tell that the Flood story in the Bible is derive from the Flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh is there in the writing. Just chanting writing isn’t evidence like a mantra doesn’t change that fact.
What I've actually said is that writing isn't evidence of events of the real world, but of course writing can be evidence about itself. Your own writing contains evidence that you place a space before question marks. It contains evidence that you prefer the [quote] dBocde to the [qs]. It contains evidence that you're fairly meticulous in responding to people's messages. But this is all internal to the writing and is not evidence of real world events, just as the tales of Noah and Gilgamesh have no evidence of real world events.
Then that would be a clear mistake on your part. Parsimony is an important criterion - and departing from it is necessarily going beyond the evidence.
Not sure why you think you have a point here. Interpretations of completely fictional events can be completely parsimonious.
But in fact it is clearly credible that the early Christians believed in the appearances. And - given that there are highly likely events that could be described as such - it is credible that something of the sort happened.
I'm not sure which "highly likely events" you're referring to. The rising from the dead part followed by appearances to many do not seem like "highly likely events" and don't seem credible, including "something of the sort" types of things. Or are you referring to your mundane reinterpretations of what the accounts actually say? In that case, why are they things that had to have really happened? Given that miracles were a powerful device of persuasion, and given the unlikelihood of these "misinterpreted as miracles" mundane events conveniently occurring just three days after Jesus' death, and given the unreliability of the writing of people with an agenda, I'd say invention is far, far, far more likely than anything else.
If the naturalistic explanations were unlikely or inadequate I would tend to agree.
Well, first I don't share your opinion that your naturalistic explanations weren't unlikely or inadequate. And second, you have no evidence that the events you're trying to explain ever took place. They're miraculous and part of a religion origin story, not to mention a collection of multiple inconsistent contradictory accounts. Those facts alone argue *for* unlikely and inadequate, not the opposite.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typo.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 618 by PaulK, posted 11-13-2017 2:36 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 636 by PaulK, posted 11-14-2017 2:13 PM Percy has replied
 Message 643 by kbertsche, posted 11-15-2017 8:02 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 627 of 1540 (823613)
11-14-2017 10:21 AM
Reply to: Message 621 by GDR
11-13-2017 3:44 PM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
Percy writes:
I couldn't make sense of this paragraph, but let me take another stab at it by rephrasing it. Would it be an accurate paraphrase to say, "I think your argument disproves itself. What you call information is evidence. If the information wasn't evidence then there would no longer be the need to look for further information to verify the original information."
I'm not really sure why this is more clear than what I wrote but I'm fine with it put that way.
But as I went on to say, I didn't understand my attempted rephrasing either. Here's what I said:
Percy in Message 569 writes:
Hmmm. I thought rephrasing would help me understand what you were saying, but I still can't make sense out of it, at least not as a response to what I said. I'll try explaining again.
A newspaper article that says, "The fingerprints at the crime scene matched the suspect's," is presenting information, not evidence, and wouldn't appear at trial. Images of the fingerprints at the crime scene and the fingerprints of the suspect is both information *and* evidence, and would be introduced as evidence at trial. The Bible contains information, not evidence.
You didn't respond to this, so I still don't understand what you were trying to say.
I disagree. What you are looking for is further evidence to either confirm or question the reliability of the original evidence.
Yes, I know we disagree. To me writing is a recording device of such poor quality that it cannot be considered evidence. It is at best the real world filtered through someone's mind to produce something of questionable truth and accuracy, and at worst just made up stuff. It definitely is not the results of events of the real world that leave evidence behind.
I agree with your understanding of Paul's message. I only mentioned the military succeses of the failed messianic movements because the Jews of that era predominately believed that the messiah would lead them militarily against their enemies. Jesus, as you say preached a message of loving your neighbour, and your enemy for that matter, and that ultimately love is all that defeats evil.
Amen (sincerely, not sarcasm).
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 621 by GDR, posted 11-13-2017 3:44 PM GDR has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 628 of 1540 (823614)
11-14-2017 10:32 AM
Reply to: Message 623 by GDR
11-13-2017 5:32 PM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
GDR writes:
Of course we don't know who the authors were but here is an account of what happened to the twelve apostles from National Geographic.
...
How Did the Apostles Die
The National Geographic accounts of the Apostles deaths is very credulous, giving far too much credence to the NT, to church tradition, and to the apocrypha. It's a believer's accounts of their deaths, as is the accompanying article Jesus and his Apostles a believer's account of their lives.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 623 by GDR, posted 11-13-2017 5:32 PM GDR has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 629 of 1540 (823616)
11-14-2017 10:48 AM
Reply to: Message 624 by kbertsche
11-13-2017 10:15 PM


Re: ting Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
kbertsche writes:
Percy writes:
kbertsche writes:
In the creed, Jesus' burial is presented as evidence that he really had died, and his appearances are presented as evidence that he had risen from the dead. Yes, there is certainly evidence presented in this early creed.
Where is there any evidence that Jesus existed, let alone that he was dead and buried and arose and appeared to many? Where you see evidence I see only words. If words are evidence then, "Jesus never existed, the miracles never took place, and Christianity is the invention of Paul," is evidence contradicting your claims.
The evidence presented in the creed is Jesus' burial and appearances, as I said above. When the creed was written, just a few years after the events, Jesus' burial and appearances would have been known and verifiable.
It's still just words on paper. There's no evidence, unless you're talking about Paul, for whom some evidence seems to exist. There seems to be some evidence of Peter, too.
But as you say, things are different today. Our main evidence today for Jesus' burial and appearances is in the biblical text. So we need to determine whether or not the text is historically reliable and accurate.
Right. Given that all the evidence has long ago turned to dust, and given all the many modern claims about Jesus and his followers (tombs and claims of "this happened here" and so forth) equivalent to the many "Washington slept here" claims, how are you going to establish what is "reliable and accurate"?
However, doubting the existence of Jesus is just as ridiculous as doubting the existence of the holocaust.
I'd say it's more like doubting the existence of King Arthur.
You'll find a few fringe agenda-driven "historians" who doubt both, but their arguments are flawed.
Who are these "historians", and why do you think their arguments flawed, given that they're presumably not colored by a believers need for validation of belief?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 624 by kbertsche, posted 11-13-2017 10:15 PM kbertsche has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 634 of 1540 (823625)
11-14-2017 1:49 PM
Reply to: Message 631 by Faith
11-14-2017 1:19 PM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
Faith writes:
I'm sure you wouldn't feel free to give your utterly uneducated opinion on some authoritative scientific treatise, in fact you'd be very polite and deferential to those who have studied it more than you have, but for some reason ignorami feel quite free to slather the Bible with their ignorance.
Ah, the fallacy of argument from authority. In other words you have no answers, only fallacies and insults.
Millions of people...
There's that "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" fallacy again.
...who revere, believe and follow the revelations in the Bible, even the source of all the blessings westerners receive in this world, should be enough of an answer,...
Fallacies aren't much of an answer.
...but arrogant antiChristianity...
I'm just having a discussion here. All the arrogance is coming from you.
...rules the world today.
So in your view antiChristianity rules the world today, even though Christianity is the largest religion in the world.
Well, it's the largest before you subtract all the Christian sects that to you aren't truly Christian.
And that includes the "scholars" who make it all up as they go along too instead of submitting to it as God's word.
You know, you haven't ended up actually saying anything, just like your previous post. There *is* a discussion taking place here. Did you want to say anything germane to the discussion? Maybe respond meaningfully to what I said in Message 609 to KBertsche that the Gospels lack evidenced facts and are a combination of truths, fallacies, unverifiabilities, internal and external contradictions, and impossibilities.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 631 by Faith, posted 11-14-2017 1:19 PM Faith has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 635 of 1540 (823626)
11-14-2017 2:00 PM
Reply to: Message 632 by Faith
11-14-2017 1:22 PM


Re: How Faith is based on evidence and yet a gift
Faith writes:
Sorry, a simple descriptive report of a miraculous event is a simple descriptive report of a miraculous event, it's history.
Well, there's a healthy non-response. We already know your opinion - the question concerns whether you can provide any support for it. All that study you did, all those books you read, all those people you conversed with, all those videos you've watched, everything that provided you the evidence for your faith, you can't bring any of that into the discussion?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 632 by Faith, posted 11-14-2017 1:22 PM Faith has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 638 of 1540 (823634)
11-14-2017 6:15 PM
Reply to: Message 636 by PaulK
11-14-2017 2:13 PM


Re: The Evidence Of 1 Corinthians 15:5-8
PaulK writes:
Well, that is riddled with errors and falsehoods and unsupported assertions.
Gee, I had no idea discussion was so easy. Just skip all the arguments and get right to the smears.
But to deal with the central point, evidence does not have to be infallibly true.
Reality is always infallibly true. Evidence that results from real events is reliable, dependable, true. The written word could be true, false, anywhere in between, or a combination.
That something might be wrong or untrue is not a good reason to disregard it as evidence - ...
That something might be wrong or untrue, especially something like the written word that has a long and well-established history of often being wrong and untrue, should be setting off alarm bells, not leading one to argue that it should be accepted as evidence anyway.
There is a profound difference between evidence produced by real events versus what is produced by filtering reality through the meanderings of the human mind, or not even involving reality at all.
... because everything we use as evidence MIGHT be wrong or untrue.
Reality cannot be wrong or untrue.
It feels like you're arguing this way only because you believe the NT is true on the general details except where they misinterpreted some natural phenomena as miracles. You *want* to believe the NT, so you have to believe it somehow represents evidence. It doesn't. It's a typical religious work, like the Old Testament, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita, etc.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 636 by PaulK, posted 11-14-2017 2:13 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 639 by Phat, posted 11-14-2017 7:26 PM Percy has replied
 Message 641 by PaulK, posted 11-15-2017 12:21 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 644 of 1540 (823669)
11-15-2017 9:52 AM
Reply to: Message 639 by Phat
11-14-2017 7:26 PM


Re: Reality is never wrong but we are.
Phat writes:
I have never seen examples of the written word being wrong or untrue. Can you elaborate?
I'm not sure why you're asking this question that seems to have so obvious an answer, and it's not just the written word, it's also anything people say. The written word is receiving more attention in this thread because we're focused on the Bible, which is the written.
How's this for an example of "the written word being wrong or untrue":
quote:
"We’ve signed more bills -- and I’m talking about through the legislature -- than any president ever."
Or this:
quote:
"But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides."
Or this:
quote:
"I'm like, wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people."
However, our perception of reality might be warped.
While I think our perception of reality is inaccurate, I wouldn't myself use the term "warped." I'd more say something like it is colored and filtered through our own biological senses and cognitive processing.
I have not dismissed the possibility of a fallen human nature.
Our biological deficiencies are shared by the rest of the animal world, and I don't see any fallen nature, human or otherwise.
Sometimes what you write makes it seem that you feel as if there's a devil inside yourself that is your own fault and that you blame yourself for. I'd say accept and love who you are. If you're like me then you also have standards that exceed your reach and that make you regret not being better, but that regret doesn't mean we're not already being the best person we can be, and we shouldn't blame ourselves for not being able to perform miracles and transform ourselves into someone we're not.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 639 by Phat, posted 11-14-2017 7:26 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 707 by Phat, posted 11-17-2017 9:09 AM Percy has replied

  
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