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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Tension of Faith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Interestingly, Faith has given a somewhat similar definition several times (e.g., Message 681, "Blessed are those who did not see and yet believed."), even though at other times she has insisted that faith be supported with evidence, which is what you seem to be saying, too. You appear to be missing the context here of Jesus' showing His wounds to Thomas, and then telling him that it would have been better for him to believe the disciples who had told him about the resurrection. There is still evidence but it's witness evidence he should have believed instead of insisting on seeing for himself. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
How easy it is to impute such stupidity to people two thousand years ago that they would mistake a natural occurrence for a miracle, on the one hand, or such lying deceit that they would make up a miracle that didn't exist -- to impress the reader or what? If you had bothered to find out what we were talking about (which, you know you could do by reading a couple of Bible verses) you would know that the only miracle is people thinking that they have seen Jesus. In some sense. There’s not even a claim that the sightings were miraculous in those verses. Sorry about that then, but it sure reads like a typical response to claims of miracles anyway, so as a response to that it's quite apt. But I guess your normal intelligent people aren’t bright enough to manage that.
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jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: Raising the dead and healing blindness are not within the powers of demons -- and you need to remember that imputing demonic powers to Jesus Christ is the unforgivable sin. And no, John did not say he gave the evidence to "impress" anyone, he gave it so that people would recognize that Jesus is the Son of God with the power and authority to give them eternal life. But there again, you are just making stuff up. The Bible itself says that demons and false prophets can perform miracles and even if what you said was true it is not evidence that what happened was a miracle rather than just unexplained. And read your second sentence. John is definitely saying that Jesus' miracles were simply advertising Jesus' divinity according to you. The author of John was simply marketing the Christianity the author of John was trying to create.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
but calling it evidence that miracles are real or evidence that the events described actually happened does not seem fine. Why?
Evidence is about support for what is true, and when John says that Jesus turned the water into wine we know that isn't true, and that therefore John could not be evidence that he did, however weak. How do you know it isn't true? It sounds like you are weighing the evidence here. On the one hand we have a written testimony. But it conflicts with evidence of science. So you favour the latter. But you are still weighing the evidence. Because John is evidence, its just not good enough to overcome the objections.
Is John evidence that Jesus even asked the servants to fill the jars with water? Yes. If Jesus asked the servants to fill the jars, someone writing that Jesus asked the servants of jars is consistent with that. If Anne Frank wrote that her father asked her mother to fill jars this too would be evidence of this event.
That's unverifiable So? That doesn't prevent it from be evidence. It just makes it unverifiable evidence. Uncorroborated evidence, you might say.
I'm as unfamiliar with the Code of Hammurabi as the next guy (except I can spell it). It's actually spelt 𒄩𒄠𒈬𒊏𒁉
Does it really contain "a variety of supernatural claims?" If so, I don't see why anyone would ever want to accept something known to be false as evidence, Yes.
quote: How you decide to weigh this evidence may differ from say, an ancient Babylonian. You can see more of such text in the Code discussed in Message 530.
Similar to science, our confidence in what we know of history depends upon how tightly interwoven is the supporting information. Exactly. But that doesn't make a single strand not a strand. It just means it isn't interwoven.
But concerning some of the miracles John isn't alone. Jesus walked on water in Matthew, Mark and John. If John is evidence of Jesus walking on water then so are Matthew and Mark. Isn't this, for you, evidential corroboration? To some extent, but other considerations weaken the corroboration - such as the disagreements between John and the Synoptics, and the evidence of a shared source of the synoptics means using them to corroborate one another is questionable.
Sorry to repeat myself, but if the written word is evidence, and if other accounts of the same thing add corroboration, then it seems to me that you're forced to accept the obviously false. Just because something is evidence, it doesn't mean one has to accept it as true. Sorry to repeat myself. In law, two parties present evidence - the jury decides the facts.
Clearly you're not going to accept the miracles corroborated by multiple accounts in the Bible as real, but then what is you're justification for rejecting their reality? I don't accept something as true just because there is some evidence. There are conflicting pieces of evidence, there are pieces of evidence which call into question certain types of other evidence. We are both skeptical of eyewitness evidence, and one reason you have already cited is DNA evidence.
If you have real world evidence then it is genuine evidence. The Bible is real world evidence. It exists right here in the real world. Most of history as we know it is derived from studying writing.
The gathering of that evidence might represent a considerable effort combined with evidence not readily available, such as verifying Einstein's general theory by observing the effects of the sun's gravity on starlight, or verifying the existence of the Higgs Boson statistically by observing particle interactions. But it *is* genuine evidence directly derived with the help of instrumentation from the real world. The written word does not often have that quality and in many circumstances seems inappropriate to consider as evidence. Yes, the written word isn't scientific evidence. It's historical evidence. It certainly is less persuasive than direct experiential observation.
I'm using the religious definition of faith. Not really. You are using a definition of faith that means 'without evidence'. That is: 'blind faith'. But that's trying to win the argument by defining yourself right. Faith simply means 'trust'. Trust in certain authors, trust in God - trust where they might not be the kind of justification for that trust that we might have in other areas. But not trust without any justification at all.
I didn't quote the next sentence from here, it was a bit too specific so I left it out, but here it is in case there's any doubt this is speaking from a religious perspective: "Faith is a belief that one-day we will stand before our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." Also from that page:
quote: From wikipedia:
quote: Or
quote: from the same source;
quote: Someone writing that "a lot of other people saw it too" is horrible evidence, and in my view not even evidence at all. I don't believe a lot of people saw this impossible event, or that it even happened, so how could there be evidence of it, however weak? What does your belief have to do with whether it is evidence? The only evidence we have for many things is written. You either trust the author, or you do not. Not trusting the author does not make it 'not evidence' it makes it evidence you believe is incredulous or unreliable.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Not really, but we can’t expect you to know that. Most explanations don’t make the witnesses stupid or accuse the reporter of lying - unless there is evidence. There are many ways miracle stories can get started.
quote: Echoing my words is a more effective response when it is appropriate. When it isn’t - I wasn’t the one making claims about normal intelligent people - it just looks silly.
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LamarkNewAge Member Posts: 2423 Joined: Member Rating: 1.2 |
quote: The Samaritans existed long after Acts (they still exist to this day) They were very much a part of history during the Byzantine Empire. Samaritan revolts - Wikipedia The history does not show mass conversion to Christianity in the early 1st century. Perhaps you should look into search engine terms like this: SAMARITANS CHRISTIAN CONVERTS ACTS 7 I just don't see how Acts can be considered accurate history (at least the bulk of the material before the later ministry of Paul). The miracles aren't supported even indirectly (which is my point when I notice that important background details - 1st century Samaritans being Christian - aren't supported)
quote: Do you have any evidence of Samaritans becoming Christians? Where was this massive Christian presence in Samaria? Any textual evidence (Josephus?)? Any?
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
My position is that written documents are evidence. And so is mine. Good.
Of course some written documents are evidence, a policeman's note book can be read in court, a handwritten contract is still a contract, a bill of sale is evidence someone sold a pig, the Dead Sea Scrolls are evidence of time date and place and so on. The issue is evidence of what? An account that proclaims events actually happened is evidence those events actually happened. It's not proof, of course.
When a jury hears evidence - written or oral - the quality of the evidence has already been assessed, 'evidence', that is known to be unreliable - such as hearsay, or that the defendant has a known but old or unrelated criminal past - is disallowed ie it's not evidence, it's something else - quite what I don't have a name for, 'random stuff people say or write' covers it. The jury can not hear it. It's assessed, but not totally. The jury still hears conflicting evidence and has to decide between them. Historians don't have a filter like in the court analogy - they are the lawyers and the judges and the jury of history. They assess the evidence using various methods - sometimes conflicting methods, sometimes weighing different methods as having different weights, to reach their conclusions. Historians don't just ignore written documents as 'not evidence'.
This is my point, quality matters. And I, and historians, agree.
There is a point when the stuff you call evidence, or historians call evidence, is just Philip Pullman writing about daemons. Fantasy is not evidence. There's a difference between something intended to be understood as fiction, and something intended to be understood as history. The approach one takes when dealing with them are different. There's no need to assess the historical reliability of Aesop's fables, but the historical reliability of Al-sīra is a different question.
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
quote:I guess your inability to follow the context is acting up again. You apparently can't even describe the context, let alone understand the rather simple exchange quoted at the top of Message 676.
quote: Funny how you haven’t found a single genuine example then. Sure I did. I guess your memory is failing you, too. This is from Message 676:
Percy in Message 767 writes: PaulK writes: And yet you have said all the things I attributed to you. And yet I haven't said all the things you attributed for me. For example, in your Message 650 you said:
PaulK in Message 650 writes: Percy has clearly rejected modern-day scientific and legal standards as inadequate. Tangle and I both indicated that we couldn't see where I'd ever said anything like that. quote: Then why are you the one making all the mistakes ? (Here’s a hint it is because I DO look back at the previous messages) If you were truly looking back at previous messages then you wouldn't be so confused, and you would be quoting from them to support your position. The reality is that you're making all the mistakes, and I'm the only one quoting from old messages illustrating your mistakes.
quote: I thought it was pretty well known that ancient astronomical records were used in working out chronologies. Chronologies of what?
And i5 obviously is an example of written documents being used as evidence. There you are expressing yourself poorly again. What is "i5"?
quote: Hardly. Objecting to your confused and often - to be generous - error-ridden arguments seems entirely reasonable. Right, you want a pissing contest. Noted.
quote: They certainly aren’t invented. They certainly didn't happen, either, except in your imagination.
quote: Since your view keeps shifting it seems misstatements are inevitable. Only in your warped little world would continual efforts to find common ground with you be misinterpreted as shifting views and misstatements. So I'll stop trying to find common ground with you.
Are written documents evidence but we mustn’t call it that ? You mean a written document like a technical paper? No, they're not evidence. Only the results of the experiment or investigation constitute evidence. The technical paper is not itself evidence. However it describes the evidence and how to reproduce it.
Evidence for some things or not for others ? Not evidence at all ? Right, not evidence at all.
Is it the case that the mere possibility of error is sufficient to disqualify a putative fact as evidence or is it not ? All science is tentative.
quote: In fact I turn out to be right - if you read in context. You appear to be reading at random rather than in context.
The question - with the context filled in was why is it necessary to work which part of a largely false account is true? You know, it's extremely easy to provide a link to a message. Where is this coming from? Or is this just your latest version of what you really meant, an ungrammatical one at that. I'll assume that where you said "work" you really meant "work out". So your question becomes, "Why is it necessary to work out which part of a largely false account is true?" You follow your question with this clarification:
If the truth of the document doesn’t matter - for that use - then it is obviously not necessary. And that was the point. That is the reason why a largely false account may be useful evidence. Did you think you just said something coherent? When you can express yourself clearly enough to articulate something rational please try again.
quote: Says the guy who has made numerous mistakes and many false accusations. You have a vivid imagination.
quote: A funny way to reply to a perfectly rational point. If a point only makes sense to you and no one else, guess what...
Since this distinction is one you’ve invented and one that goes against normal usage (and where technical usage in philosophy tends to skew the other way) it seems to be just an idiosyncratic personal use that will inevitably cause misunderstandings without actually contributing anything useful Well now you've finally said something comprehensible, partly true and useful. Yes, what I've proposed isn't normal usage. I haven't been hiding that, in fact I've said several times that I was trying to look at what qualifies as evidence in a new way. And yes, invariably such proposals can cause misunderstandings. I disagree that it doesn't contribute anything useful.
quote: And that doesn’t really solve the problem. It IS evidence of Jesus turning water into wine - it’s just hopelessly inadequate evidence that can be rightfully disregarded. Nah, I can't buy that nonsense, which says that science fiction is evidence of humans piloting extra-galactic spacecraft and traveling through time, and fantasy is evidence of hobbits and trolls and magical rings, and fiction is evidence of fictional people and events, and false testimony is evidence of events that never happened. No, real evidence comes from the real world, and information that cannot demonstrate that it originated in the real world is not evidence.
quote: If you admit that all you are doing is creating a new definition - and you should have said that right up front - ... It shouldn't have been necessary. It was clear if you read from context.
...then the whole thing is pointless. It achieves nothing. Especially when it isn’t even clear what qualifies and why. Yeah, it is disappointing that I can't work out all the details in just a couple days.
quote: And yet another error. We weren’t talking about things bein* true, we were tslkin* about things being likely and - as I clarified in the next line I was talking about a priori likelihood (which would have been clear if you actually understood the - quite simple - argument in the first place) Yes, I confess to not understanding your incoherent argument.
And it is quite obvious that you still don’t understand it since your criticisms all miss the mark. Yes, that's true, I still don't understand your incoherent argument.
And still we have no reason why you insist that my explanations are not a priori likely events which adequately explain the account. Anyone want to tell me what this means? Anyone? A little help here, somebody.
quote: It is certainly plausible because the supposed miracles can be adequately explained by natural events that were (mostly, anyway) likely to occur anyway. As I keep pointing out. If you want to argue for the plausibility of complete invention that is your job. You're arguing for the plausibility that the likelihood of explanations whose nature you do not and cannot know explain the interpretation as miracles of events that you don't know and cannot know what they were. The mere description of what you're postulating is sufficient to indicate a complete lack of plausibility. As to the plausibility of invention of the miracles, I've already done that. Miracles, the suspension of physical laws, are impossible. If you want to argue for the plausibility of miracles, that's your job. And that's a pissing contest. You wanted it, you fought for it, you got it. Anytime you'd like to return to constructive discussion I'm ready and rarin' to go. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Faith writes: SO remarkable that millions of normal intelligent people, and even some very very educated intelligent people as well, have regarded the Bible's evidence as sufficient to utterly commit their lives to Jesus Christ over the last two thousand years, and in so doing made the world a better place. Truly remarkable that silly people today judge their forbears so cynically and arrogantly. Even more millions of normal intelligent people, and even some very very educated intelligent people as well, have regarded the evidence of non-Christian religions as sufficient to utterly commit their lives to those religions over many thousands of years, and in so doing made the world a better place, particularly the Buddhists in comparison to the Christians. Truly remarkable that silly Christians today judge those of other religions so cynically and arrogantly. --Percy
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Tangle Member Posts: 9512 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8 |
Modulous writes: An account that proclaims events actually happened is evidence those events actually happened. My entire point is that that statement is erroneous. It is, at best, an allegation. Evidence is what supports or denies the claim. Otherwise Philip Pullman writing that people have personal daemons is evidence of personal daemons. It is not.
It's assessed, but not totally. The jury still hears conflicting evidence and has to decide between them. It is not assessed by the jury, it is dismissed by the court as inadmissable (because it is not safe, ie not evidence.)
Historians don't have a filter like in the court analogy - they are the lawyers and the judges and the jury of history. Well it was your analogy and I'm pointing out why some form of 'evidence' should not have the accreditation that the word holds. Worthless is the word that springs to mind.
There's a difference between something intended to be understood as fiction, and something intended to be understood as history. Right so we DO have methods of working out what is real evidence and what is not. Good.Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Faith writes: You appear to be missing the context here of Jesus' showing His wounds to Thomas, and then telling him that it would have been better for him to believe the disciples who had told him about the resurrection. There is still evidence but it's witness evidence he should have believed instead of insisting on seeing for himself. Yeah, I know the association with Thomas, and sometimes you mention him, sometimes you don't. See Message 681 - no mention of Thomas. And as you expressed it - "Blessed are those who did not see and yet believed." - it's a pretty good way of expressing true religious faith. You might have noticed the other quote I found that is well expressed, "Faith is acceptance of what we cannot see but feel deep within our hearts." Faith that requires evidence isn't really faith. The endeavor that actually requires evidence is science. If you make religion into something that requires evidence then what you end up with, given the lack of consistency of many religious beliefs with reality, is people fooling themselves about the evidence. --Percy
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
My entire point is that that statement is erroneous. And my point is that it is not.
It is, at best, an allegation. It is indeed.
Evidence is what supports or denies the claim. The claim is 'Jesus performed miracles'. The support is that several people testified that Jesus performed miracles. If the Gospels didn't exist, there would be no evidence that Jesus performed miracles.
Otherwise Philip Pullman writing that people have personal daemons is evidence of personal daemons. It is not. If Pullman testified that he sees those daemons, and/or reports what witnesses to those who have are saying about them - then it would be evidence. Crap evidence, but evidence. He does not do this.
It is not assessed by the jury, it is dismissed by the court as inadmissable (because it is not safe, ie not evidence.) No, you've missed the mark here. Some evidence does not get regarded as legally admissable for reasons. Sometimes because it has no relevance to the crime in question but may prejudice a jury, for instance. The jury, I assure you, still does assess evidence. That is the point of them. They don't assess evidence that does not get admitted, obviously. But they still hear conflicting evidence. This witness says this, this fibre suggests the other, this CCTV supports this notion, this evidence questions the integrity of the time stamp on the CCTV....
Well it was your analogy and I'm pointing out why some form of 'evidence' should not have the accreditation that the word holds. The analogy was to point out that evidence can be conflicting and it needs to be assessed. As a jury does:
quote: Maybe you should stop elevating the word evidence, instead? It is just data that is interpreted by someone. Interpretative methods vary, and thus the conclusions about what the interpreted data (evidence) supports and to what degree also differ.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Except that the problem is yours. You - at best - forgot the context of the discussion and tried to claim that you hadn’t said things attributed to you in one message - by attacking a statement made in another. That’s hardly my mistake.
quote: No, I knew all about that false claim of yours.
quote: Except that you aren’t proving any mistakes. But if you want to convince me that you are engaging in intentional misrepresentation this is a good way to go about it.
quote: The Chronology of the Ancient Near East would be an example although it’s often broken down into separate entries (e,g, Assyrian Chronology)
quote: Trust you to pick on a typo. Which, if you must know is due to changes in the iOS keyboard with iOS 11, of course reading in context could tell you that the word should be it
quote: Since i’m not referring to your attempts to find common ground it seems that you have just made her another mistake,
quote: I mean any written document at all since that is what you seem to be talking about. But this leaves all the examples where written documents are useful evidence unaddressed.
quote: It comes from the context you left out - before your full quote.
...a lot of interesting questions have little or nothing to do with the truth of the stories.
Message 678 quote: I know I did. As I have pointed out 1 Corinthians is useful evidence for Early Christian belief whether it is true or not. False documents can be useful evidence - for some things.
quote: It certainly isn’t a good way to convince people of anything, let alone Faith who can’t even accept that the Biblical accounts are of low quality as evidence. And yet you said that you were trying to convince her. Redefinition don’t bring anything new to the table. It seems more like an attempt to delegitimise genuine (if weak) evidence by playing a definition game.
quote: You haven’t even got the basics worked out.
quote: The mere fact that I listed likely explanations in Message 579 and I am concerned only with explaining the claims made in the cited verses. Which I note do not explicitly interpret the events as miraculous.. Thus I know the nature of the explanations, and all I need know about the miracles.
quote: But the plausibility of miracles is not in question. The question is the plausibility of my explanation versus your idea that the whole account is fiction. Assuming that the account contains explicit miracles is simply wrong, and yet another of your mistakes. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
SO remarkable that millions of normal intelligent people, and even some very very educated intelligent people as well, have regarded the Bible's evidence as sufficient to utterly commit their lives to Jesus Christ over the last two thousand years, and in so doing made the world a better place. For a good amount of that history there were incentives for many people to say they found the Bible persuasive, and punishments for saying they didn't. Even now - there are many places where professing broad scepticism in the Bible may harm your career.
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Modulous writes: but calling it evidence that miracles are real or evidence that the events described actually happened does not seem fine.
Why? Can you give me a bit more to go on? In what I wrote that immediately preceded the part you quoted I gave examples of what seemed appropriate about considering the Gospel of John as evidence, and I offered those to show how different they were from the supposed evidence of miracles to make clear why that doesn't seem like real evidence. I don't know what more you're looking for.
Evidence is about support for what is true, and when John says that Jesus turned the water into wine we know that isn't true, and that therefore John could not be evidence that he did, however weak. How do you know it isn't true? Because it's a miracle. I just got back from Mars. I wrote it, so in your book that's evidence. How do you know it isn't true? I think the problem may be that we just throw around the word evidence willy-nilly oftentimes with insufficient justification. One dictionary's definition of evidence is "that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof." Nothing in John tends to prove miracles or be grounds for belief in miracles. John isn't evidence for miracles. John is an origin story for Christianity.
Is John evidence that Jesus even asked the servants to fill the jars with water? Yes. If Jesus asked the servants to fill the jars, someone writing that Jesus asked the servants of jars is consistent with that. I don't see it as evidence. Tangle used the word allegation, and the word statement also seems to fit well, sort of like many Trump tweets, also not evidence, by the way.
If Anne Frank wrote that her father asked her mother to fill jars this too would be evidence of this event. Well, The Diary of Anne Frank and the Gospel of John are completely different beasts. The likelihood of finding accurate information in a diary is far, far greater than finding it in a religion's origin story full of the supernatural.
That's unverifiable So? That doesn't prevent it from be evidence. It just makes it unverifiable evidence. Uncorroborated evidence, you might say. This again makes me feel like we throw around the word evidence indiscriminately. Everything written or asserted isn't evidence. A lot of it just is - I don't know what to call it, but evidence is the wrong word. Is certainly isn't anything that proves or disproves anything. It's just an unverifiable statement.
I'm as unfamiliar with the Code of Hammurabi as the next guy (except I can spell it). It's actually spelt 𒄩𒄠𒈬𒊏𒁉 Displays as boxes in Chrome, but Safari displays it. Neat that there's Cuneiform.
Similar to science, our confidence in what we know of history depends upon how tightly interwoven is the supporting information. Exactly. But that doesn't make a single strand not a strand. It just means it isn't interwoven. Sure, but is it really a possible strand of true history, say a possible part of a document signed by William the Conqueror at Old Sarum? Or is it line from a script from The Man in the High Castle? Calling one possible historical evidence and the other fictional historical evidence just seems, well, wrongheaded. One might be historical evidence, while the other is without question not historical evidence.
But concerning some of the miracles John isn't alone. Jesus walked on water in Matthew, Mark and John. If John is evidence of Jesus walking on water then so are Matthew and Mark. Isn't this, for you, evidential corroboration? To some extent, but other considerations weaken the corroboration - such as the disagreements between John and the Synoptics, and the evidence of a shared source of the synoptics means using them to corroborate one another is questionable. But John being non-Synoptical is just an excuse to evade the question. There are miracles that appear in all three Synoptics, so choose one of those. Isn't that, for you, evidential corroboration? If not why not?
Sorry to repeat myself, but if the written word is evidence, and if other accounts of the same thing add corroboration, then it seems to me that you're forced to accept the obviously false. Just because something is evidence, it doesn't mean one has to accept it as true. If there's no reason to accept it as true, maybe it shouldn't be considered evidence.
Sorry to repeat myself. But you didn't repeat yourself, at least not in this message. I was apologizing for repeating what I'd just said in the previous paragraph. I only realized it after I wrote it, so I added the apology.
In law, two parties present evidence - the jury decides the facts. Well, like I said, I think the word evidence is overused. Information is presented to the jury. Some of it is evidence. And juries aren't that good at deciding facts. I offer expert witnesses as Exhibiit 1.
Clearly you're not going to accept the miracles corroborated by multiple accounts in the Bible as real, but then what is you're justification for rejecting their reality? I don't accept something as true just because there is some evidence. There are conflicting pieces of evidence, there are pieces of evidence which call into question certain types of other evidence. We are both skeptical of eyewitness evidence, and one reason you have already cited is DNA evidence. But my question was about the Bible. For you the Bible contains multiple corroborative accounts of evidence. How do you reject their reality?
If you have real world evidence then it is genuine evidence. The Bible is real world evidence. It exists right here in the real world. Most of history as we know it is derived from studying writing. The Bible exists in the real world, and it is evidence of some things, but it wasn't what I mean by real world evidence. I mean evidence as the results of events in the real world, as opposed to the written word that is a product of people and that has passed through our perceptual/cognitive system. But you also mentioned history, so I would answer in the same way as I addressed the comparison between The Diary of Anne Frank and the Gospel of John. The likelihood of finding accurate information in a genuine history (say, The Histories) is far, far greater than finding it in a religious book full of the supernatural.
I'm using the religious definition of faith. Not really. You are using a definition of faith that means 'without evidence'. That is: 'blind faith'. But that's trying to win the argument by defining yourself right. Faith simply means 'trust'. Trust in certain authors, trust in God - trust where they might not be the kind of justification for that trust that we might have in other areas. But not trust without any justification at all. To paraphrase Juliet, "Not by Faith, inconstant Faith." When she was talking to me (as opposed to berating me) in this thread she kept describing a process whereby faith developed from evidence, and from that faith developed a faith in things unseen. Since the entire chain of faith depended upon evidence at the outset I never could see the distinction between the two types of faith, except as an excuse for believing in the unevidenced, and I still haven't been able to reconcile these claims with her statements something like, "Blessed are those who believe in things unseen." So I'd prefer to not use Faith as an example because I'm never sure what she really thinks. Half the time when I think I'm only echoing her statements back to her I'm called an idiot or some such. So, please, no Faith. Whether adherents wish to acknowledge it or not, all faith is blind faith. They might believe in their hearts that they have evidence, but there are many religions. Their adherents can't all be right about their supposed evidence, and undoubtedly all are wrong. Faith is belief without evidence.
Also from that page:
quote: Yeah, I wasn't sure what to think about that because it contradicts the other quote. But besides that, it doesn't mention evidence.
From wikipedia:
quote: Again, nothing about evidence.
Or
quote: from the same source;
quote: Good stuff, but we already know that evangelicals believe their religion is based upon evidence. You're not going to have any trouble finding stuff on the Internet attesting to that view.
Someone writing that "a lot of other people saw it too" is horrible evidence, and in my view not even evidence at all. I don't believe a lot of people saw this impossible event, or that it even happened, so how could there be evidence of it, however weak? What does your belief have to do with whether it is evidence? The only evidence we have for many things is written. You either trust the author, or you do not. Not trusting the author does not make it 'not evidence' it makes it evidence you believe is incredulous or unreliable. Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but I still see it as dissonant to view all occurrences of the written word as evidence of the real world, particularly that which is already known to be fantastical. --Percy
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