The Tension of Faith

Or mistaken. That aside...

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the Gospel of John is anonymousJohn is usually dated to AD 90—110.[17][Notes 6] It arose in a Jewish Christian community in the process of breaking from the Jewish synagogue.[18] Scholars believe that the text went through two to three redactions, or "editions", before reaching its current form

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Could have been anybody and probably was more than one. It certainly had an agenda for which a story involving miracles was helpful.When you can't even identify the author and establish him as an eye witness and find that the words are a concatonation of several people's ideas which have then been edited by anonymous others, you are left with zip as far as evidence goes.What you have is a story and a an extremely suspect one at that.

I understand that you don't like the information, but either ignore it or provide a rational response.

I'm wondering which is most lacking in persuasiveness, the one line shot to nothing or the 2,000 word, baseline return slug out over irrelevant, hair-splitting trivia.Good grief. Or something like that.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Definite improvement, I still skipped a bit, but maybe that's more me than you... I get bored very quickly with hair splitting word games that don't add value to anything.

For what it's worth, I came across the term 'unused material' which is information not considered evidence by either side in a court trial. (Technically, it's stuff gathered by the prosecution that they don't need and/or can't use. If it could be of use to the defense the prosecution must make it known to them.)The stuff we're talking about is just material, not evidence.

That's not an argument Phat, it's just another statement of belief. Phat you're priceless :-) Of course you are. Why would it matter how many people believed something? The history of our civilisation is absolutely stuffed full of things millions of people believed that were wrong.And the reverse is true too, many of our most influencial historic discoveries were made by a single person. You can name lots of them. Loads of people believed all sorts of things about disease before people like Pasteur came along. My mum still believes some of them.You can even include Jesus Christ in that list, was what he said any less or more true when only a dozen people believed in him?Truths about the world don't depend on how many people know about them.In the scientific world it's slightly different these days, things have got very complex and consensus among experts about things that can't be simply proven is important. The important thing is that data is shared and results can be tested and repeated - evidence based, not beliefs.

It's definately evidence that someone - we don't know who - wrote something. It's not evidence of a miracle. At best, it's evidence of a claim of a miracle.But it really doesn't matter, even if we agreed that it was evidence it's of no value whatsoever in supporting a claim that miracles happened. Which is the entire point of the discussion - despite the dozens of pages of faux erudite bullshit preceding.

And the difference between your book and this book is....?

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The Book of Mormon is a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which adherents believe contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from approximately 2200 BC to AD 421.[1][2] It was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.[3]

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Book of Mormon - Wikipedia

Well spotted :-) Yes, but the question is of what. We can both agree that it's evidence that someone wrote a book. In this case the evidence is far stronger than the the bible as we actually know who wrote it. It's evidence, we agree. We probably both agree that it's evidence of fraud.But the only thing we're interested in is whether what is written in it is true. You find the 'evidence' of the bible pursuasive but not the 'evidence, in the BoM.Now I accept that we know much more about how the BoM came about than the bible which has given us both reasonable cause for doubt - but they both claim to be true. You say that there is strong evidence for one but not for the other.The point is that we know more about the provenance of the BoM but trust it less than the bible even though they make similar claims. Now suppose the BoM was 1,000 years old and lacking our modern day evidence. I'm guessing you'd still not trust it. What is the difference between the 'evidence, that makes you dismiss one but not the other? Assuming the providence equal.Our point is that for something to be evidence, it has to be evidence of something specific and it has to be more than something outrageous written in a book.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

You have this the wrong way around.Religions are the result of mankind attempting to understand nature. In primitive times they did this by inventing prime movers that could 'explain' everything. We need explanations, gods were the best we could do at the time - that's why we created so many of them. Thousands of them that do everything from creating weather to love and war.Then, of course, people worked out that they could derive power, wealth and influence by exploiting people's need for belief and religious empires were created. It's all quite simple really. All you are able to do is repeat your belief, not explain why you maintain it against the evidence.

This doesn't make much sense to me.Miracles can only happen in the natural world, because if they didn't we'd know nothing about them.Something that happens in the natural world can be observed and if it can be observed it can be tested by science.The transubstantiation of wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ at every Catholic mass is a claimed miracle. It's not a metaphor, it's claimed to be real. Science tells us that it's utter bullshit. As it's shown every other miraculous claim to be that has been able to be tested.

You're going to have to explain that.

It explain that something that can't happen, did happen. That's what we call a miracle. No. What we would know is that a man can change the physical nature of wine just by talking at it. And we know that that is impossible. So it would be a testable, reproducable miracle, not just something we don't understand yet.

It's not a claim, it's a fact. Wine can not be changed into blood by somone talking at it. We know this, it's not a mystery. We now know that it is impossible to turn wine into blood just by talking at it. And we also know why. So if it actually did we'd know it was a miracle.It would still just be something we do not understand.

Don't be an arse. I saying quite specifically that turning wine into blood by talking at it is impossible. Tell me I'm wrong. That's because no one has ever turned wine into blood. Despite Catholics saying that it happens at every mass. But if it ever happened it would be a miracle.