Why so friggin' confident?

The religious have only themselves to blame for this one. It was often the case that in a debate somebody would press a question like "What evidence is there that Mary was a virgin?" and after 'It says so in the Bible', and the follow up 'What evidence is there that the authors of the Bible never lied?", the fall back for theologians was "This is not something we require evidence fore, it is simply a matter of faith."I am glad to see that more and more people are conceding that this is an intellectual dead-end. Incidentally 'Judeo-Christian' is a silly term, you just mean 'Christianity', don't you?So, since you are thankfully not going to use 'faith' as a get-out of answering the question for free card, what evidence suggests that I should trust all the accounts that are related in the canon edition of the Holy Bible?Let us take the account that Mary was a virgin. I am assuming the only evidence upon which you base this belief is Biblical in nature. What evidence should compel me to accept this as a true?To provide counterpoise I will also be holding up the Glorious Qu'ran. So if your evidence is 'Well there is extra-Biblical evidence of the existence of Jesus, Joseph and Mary.' as a starting point - I will point out that the Qu'ran also includes these characters, and it includes the character of Muhammad, the extra-book evidence for whom is much more compelling than for Jesus and I would then point out that there are claims in the Qu'ran that you do not believe.So let's play:
"What evidence is there that Mary was a virgin?"
if you don't like that one we can try the much more important:
"What evidence is there that Jesus was actually a deity in human form?"Now most people I have asked questions like this of have eventually collapsed back on some variation of the 'faith' based argument we are deriding here (where faith based essentially means, 'no evidence needed, I just believe it because I do' or something along those lines).As you can see from the nature of the questions, I am not asking broad questions about 'Why do you believe the universe has a Creator', but specific questions unique to the Christian religion. What evidence compels you to believe those tenets and why does similar evidence from other religions not compel you? I appreciate you might be busy with replies - but I'd be grateful if you could give it a try, thanks.

Hello again, has it been so long? No. No. I look forward to hearing your answers to the questions I asked you. I am not sure what you mean by starting with 'this first one' so I wouldn't know to what I am agreeing.You spoke earlier that the evidence suggests that the sun will rise tomorrow and not explode and so you believe the former over the latter. I could ask "Why so friggin' confident?" and we could go into a discussion on the power of induction, and some astrophysics like the way stars work according to well tested laws of nature etc etc. We won't do that of course, but we know how the answer would look.So that people who are reading won't get lost as to what my questions were, here is a brief summary of my Message 151, tempered by some things you replied with:Is it your position that the evidence suggests that the Jesus was God in human form and not that Jesus was the penultimate prophet of God? If so, "Why so friggin' confident?" You suggest that you have faith that is supported by comprehensive evidence. What do you mean by 'comprehensive'? Do you mean that all evidence that could possibly support the Godhood of Jesus exists and you have gone through it all? Do you mean that the evidence inevitably leads to the conclusion that Jesus is God?

I could argue that Yahweh, as presented, has many problems such as a changing character which reflects the culture that writes about him. That he commands things I would deem to be atrocities and has the gall to claim moral superiority. That he seems to be an amalgamation of various deities that the evidence would indicate were worshipped in the middle east before he was but with a few new twists. That he is the kind of deity that wants us to believe in him, but didn't reveal himself to us until hundreds of thousands of years into our existence, and then only to comparatively small number of people. I might suggest that free will and prophecy have a certain tension that is difficult to resolve. That the existence of evil becomes increasingly difficult to resolve as the Bible story goes on and more and more boasts about the awesomeness of Yahweh are built up. Finally I could say that there has been so much written by Yahweh, that did not make it into the canon, that I couldn't even be sure of what I was meant to be believing in.Well, you asked for a couple of specifics so there are a few. However whether we can call them valid reasons to positively reject Yahweh is another issue (each on its own certainly isn't, though as the reasons pile up it is valid to suggest that there are plenty of reasons to doubt and that in totality this in itself might become a valid reason to disbelieve). I simply don't believe in the existence of any entity unless someone gives me a reason to do so, usually in the form of evidence which is so compelling that to withhold provisional assent would be perverse, to paraphrase Gould. I know you said that was not what you wanted, but that is the only valid reason that I find necessary to not believe. Hmm, unusual question. I hold the belief that the theory of evolution is an incomplete but shall we say broadly correct explanatory framework that describes how evolution occurs. I don't know that it is correct 'for a fact'. I do accept that life has changed dramatically on earth over the last few billion years as a fact. The part after the or statement is not one that I understand.I don't have faith in the sense that I described the religious people using it earlier that the information says it did. I have read a good deal of the available information for myself, conducted some experiments on my own time and spoken with scientists/good friends who have conducted more in depth experiments and tests of the theory. This would stand in contrast to believing that Mary is a virgin as a matter of faith. I certainly have, so at least in my case it is. The evidence would suggest that the vast majority of the world likewise is capable of believing things for which they do not have absolute proof. I look forward to you answering my questions after I have answered all of yours. I trust all of these counter questions will be of relevance to the topic.

In that case, no - as best as I can tell the God hypothesis is unfalsifiable. Several versions of God have potentially been falsified to certain levels of confidence. An honest God that wants us to believe both that he exists and created the World 15,000 years ago is probably false. There is certainly something that compels you to believe in God. And it is this something I'd like to get to grips with. What is it? It is certainly reasonable to deduce from what you are saying that you believe that your belief is supported by good evidence. The problem is, that whenever we look for at the totality of related evidence I can not find a reason to be compelled to be accept the Christian view over the Islamic view. So why are you so friggin' confident that the Christian view of the Creator being is the right one?If I had two theories, both of which I felt had the same level of evidence in favour of them - I wouldn't arbitrarily pick one to believe in - so why have you? Right - but on exactly the same grounds it would also be equally reasonable to believe that if God does exist, he didn't at least in this case create a miracle. So why are you so confident that, in this case he did? I'm not sure you've given much in the way of reasons. At the moment you seem to have1. I believe in a being that can create miracles because the universe is a miracle.
2. Since the virgin birth is a miracle it is possible that this being did it.
3. Therefore I am confident that the virgin birth did in fact happen.But that reasoning can't be everything. After all, you don't believe that every single proposed miracle that as ever been dreamed of is true, do you? Do you believe that Muhammad flew around the Middle East on a horse?And by incomplete I do not mean does not have conclusive evidence, sorry. If I say that computers work by processing 1s and 0s I would be broadly correct but very incomplete. If I say they work by a series of transistors processing various voltages which are later logically translated into 1s and 0s and later these are translated into the various outputs that a computer has I would be being a little more complete (but still incoomplete) and still being broadly true. I mean the evidence in favour that statement is so strong and uniquely compelling that it would be perverse to deny it as a fact. Nearly. I consider that evolution happened/happens is a fact and I am confident that the theory of evolution can explain at least partially how it happened/happens. That's fine - I've not used it. I merely pointed out that in debates and arguments in the past religious people have simply refused to discuss their reasons and evidence for believing specific things like the virgin birth and have retreated to statements along the lines of 'it's a matter of faith, I don't need evidence' and said that is why there is the disparagement of this kind of thing. But why do you believe that but you don't believe that Muhammad flew around on the back of a horse? What criteria are you using to be so confident of one, and not of the other. If it isn't the old 'its a matter of faith', then what is it? Evolution of course, does not explain anything and the theory of evolution certainly doesn't explain existence - it just explains how life changes.When it comes to explanations for how the universe came to exist, how life came to originate I have no confidence in one particular theory because as you say there are many. Some look more promising than others, and some could just be made up in someone's head for all we know.The question is - since there are so many, why are you so friggin' confident that yours is the right one? A bit of confusion there Bertot. Sorry about that, my fault. My sentence about saying that I didn't understand the part after the 'or' was poorly worded. I was referring to your sentence where you said:

quote:

---

Second one, do you believe (know for a fact) that the theory of evolution is true, or do you just have faith (in the sense you fellas use it) that all the available information says it did.

---

I was just saying I didn't understand that section, the next paragraph I wrote was me trying to translate and answer it as best I could:

quote:

---

I don't have faith in the sense that I described the religious people using it earlier that the information says it did...

---

Though I appreciate you don't know how he did it, how do you know that he did do those things, but he didn't help Muhammad's airborne equine activities? To paraphrase you, "Is there any material or physical reason that would disallow the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?"But yes - I don't doubt that given the amount of confidence you have in these statements you believe that there is available evidence that Mary was a virgin and that there are reasons why you are confident that this was in fact the case.There are the Gospels, I don't remember which ones explicitly state she was a virgin was it two of them? OK so that's our evidence the writings of people who for the sake of argument we'll concede were witnesses. I'm fairly sure they didn't do a gynaecological check but they were witnesses to other miracles and presumably they believed Jesus or Mary or whoever told them of the virgin birth when they said that was the case. So the virgin birth is at best, second hand. No problem there.There were witnesses to the Muhammed horse flying expedition that wrote about it. And Muhammad himself dictated words confirming that he was in direct contact with God.So, what makes you confident that1. Mary was a virgin
2. Muhammad didn't fly on a horse.

---

No rush on replying. I'm in Scotland away from the internet until approx Wednesday.

1. If the age of the book is a valid method of criticism, why do you accept the NT, which even a casual reader and any thinking person can see that is much younger in textual evidence and that it borrows heavily from the Old Testament and Babylonian mythology and laws in its content
2. Of course it contains less historical/archeological value (not sure what the latter means, but I'll run with it). The Qur'an is only the size of the book of Genesis. If you want to criticise it based on this, you should also include the Hadith etc. Then you'll find discussions of battles and people which have been confirmed archaeologically.
3. I'm not sure how the composition can be used to determine its truth value. You say they seem to be strung together with no logical order but given the context it seems just as logical as anything in the NT to me. How are you making this discrimination? Do you reject the Book of Revelation since it is not logical, not historical etc etc?
4. The Qur'an is a book that claims to be dictated from God himself. Why would God write a book of history? The early Muslims wrote their history separately to the Qur'an. If the historical writings of the early Muslims, in the Hadith or elsewhere, turn out to be accurate, does this mean the claims of the Qur'an are accurate?
   

You might have been, but I wasn't. Obviously if we have decided to believe in a being that can create miracles, it follows that we could reasonably believe that any miracle thought of was true. The question is, why do you believe a certain set of miracles, but disbelieve others? Why confident that the set of Christian miracles is true but the set of Islamic miracles (the ones that that aren't also believed by Christians) is false? I'm just trying to understand why you believe x but disbelieve y and have so much confidence in so doing. I haven't mentioned my reasons since you asked about them. You misinterpreted my number 1 - maybe my brevity was to blame. Let me try the construct it again.

1. You believe that the evidence points to the existence of God, you believe that the material universe itself is evidence enough of this: "Gods existence is BELIEVABLE because the material, its order and finitness, indicate his existence."
2. Such a being that can create the material universe can manipulate the material universe (ie., can perform miracles)
3. Since the virgin birth is a miracle it is possible that this being did it.
4. Therefore I am confident that the virgin birth did in fact happen.
   

You mistake my intention. I posted this because you said "If my REASONS for holding such beliefs are still not valid and not evidence thus far..." and I was just pointing out that so far, the above construct was the only reasoning you had provided. I am not suggesting that was everything, just that you had 'thus far' not given what could reasonably called valid reasons.Once we accept the miracle working deity, we also see that Muhammad flew around on a horse. Why are you so confident that this did not happen whereas the virgin birth did? Once again, evolution doesn't explain how evolution happens. The theory of evolution explains this. Gravity does not explain anything, but a theory of gravity would.I am confident in the theory (but not as confident as you proclaim to be...I hasten to add that I subscribe to fallibilism/tenatitivy), because it is coherent with other pieces of knowledge gained about reality, it corresponds with the evidence significantly making accurate testable predictions, it is falsifiable and yet has not been falsified, and it is pragmatic in that it can be put to practical application. It is also parsimonious in that it does not propose entities that are not strictly necessary to achieve the explanation. I'm happy to get involved in a discussion on the relative confidence levels between the religious persons declaration that Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus versus the philosopher's declaration that the theory of evolution tentatively explains at least in part some of the phenomenon of evolution. I'm not sure it would advance your position too well though. I haven't disputed this one iota. I'm just trying to get a sense of the nature of this evidence. You suggest that a written text possibly written by witnesses is good enough under certain conditions. If the text is logically set out, contains historical information and genealogies - you seem to think this gives it veracity enough to be very confident that it is true. If it does not contain these things or enough of these things, according to some as yet undisclosed measure, you are confident that it is untrue.This is what you have used to discount the Qur'an, though it might cause problems for some books in the NT that do not contain all of the above, it might not necessarily discount the Qur'an if we allow related supportive texts that do contain these things (so if Acts can be used to support the Book of Revelation, then the Hadith can do likewise to the Qur'an), and I'm not sure how we can discount the Iliad at this point either. No we should not. You asked the "material/physical reason that would disallow the existence of God" question before we got onto supporting evidence for the existence of said deity. I was just mirroring it to show one of the reasons the FSM gets brought up. So what is the material/physical reason that disallows his existence? I'm not asking why you don't believe in the FSM, I'm asking if there is any physical or material reason that would preclude its existence. What evidence would that be? There were witnesses, they wrote it down. Supportive witnesses (and perhaps the same ones) discussed other confirmed historical events, genealogies and so on. What evidence exists that Muhammed did not fly around on a horse? You do not use the same system that scientists use. Scientists reject witness accounts as unreliable. They reject unfalsifiable statements as essentially meaningless. They reject unparsimonious statements. I will explain to you a final time, hoping that you will not misunderstand me again. I know perfectly well what faith means. However, SOME religious people, when put under pressure to discuss the evidence for SOME pieces of dogma such as Mary's virginity will comment that they 'do not require evidence, and that it is a matter of faith'. It is these lilly-livered debate opponents that crop up all the time that are to blame for the criticism that religious faith is getting here. They are the ones, who through usage, have given the word 'faith' the meaning that is 'I don't need no stinking evidence.'.This usage does exist, whether you think it is is etymologically accurate or not. It is these religious people, who use the word 'faith' in this fashion you should be calling misguided. Not myself, who simply pointed this fact out to you. I don't care what definition you are using for the word faith. I just want to know what criteria you use to decide which texts are true and which ones are not, and why you are so confident in the conclusions of these criteria and why you are so confident in the criteria themselves.Just to be clear: I understand what you mean when you say 'faith'. Would you disbelieve me if I told you that my mother was a virgin when I was born?All available facts includes such facts as

1. People lie
2. Religious charismatics lie
3. Supporters of religious charismatics lie
4. Being born of a virgin is a common religious motif
5. Human beings biologically require two human parents to create a child. Given the time and technology surrounding Jesus' birth this would almost universally imply sexual intercourse
6. People especially lie about sex
7. Religious authorities lie a lot about sex
8. Being born of a virgin, under a certain Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament would seem to fulfil certain prophecy - so there is ample motivation for those Greek speaking types that are trying to convince us that a religious authority was God/born of God/divine in some fashion/was 'the anointed one', to lie about or simply make up information about the religious authority's mother's virginity.
9. etc
   

So the question is - given all the available facts, how can you be so confident that Mary was a virgin? I'm not asking 'why is it reasonable to believe that she was?' The theory of evolution has all the qualities I previously described for a solid theory (coherence, correspondence, pragmatism, parsimony, testability/verifiability, falsifiability) and so on. Any theory I've seen with names similar or the same as the ones you mention are either lacking in the above, or go contra the above (ie, are falsified, cannot be used practically etc).If you want to discuss the merits of the philosophy of science in a sister thread - I'd be happy to participate.Your statement 'There are many qualified scientist that say it may not have occured after all' is falsified by the evidence. There are very few qualified scientists that say that the theory of evolution does not explain the fact of evolution, nor are they are many qualified scientists who deny the facts of evolutionary history as described in natural history (ie., common ancestry or what you have termed 'Macro evolutionary theory). Once again, another thread would be in order to go into that. If you want to create such a thread, I'd like the OP to include a count of how many of these qualified scientists are called Steve. It is really unbelievable that any man might want a whole bunch of young naive girls to do with as he pleases. Any book that talks about men with multiple wives or concubines is quite laughably unrealistic :-DIncidentally it is 72, I think. And like with possible virgin mistranslations with the NT, they might not necessarily be virgins. I'd rather have 72 virgins nagging me for eternity than spend it playing harp music sitting on fluffy white clouds under a regime of forced worship of God (that is to say - it would be wise to make sure you are accurately portraying the paradise of another religion before you try to mock it).Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

So are you saying that it would be wise to make sure you are accurately portraying the paradise of another religion before you try to mock it? I think that was kind of my point...

Which wasn't the question I asked. To answer yours, since you decided not to answer mine, you might choose not believe me - or at least retain a level skepticism based on the high degree of rarity of virgin mothers. Especially if I went on to tell you that this happened in 1783. There are very very few virgin mothers that gave birth to sons in 1783 that survive to this day.I did allude to this possibility in my post of course, by pointing out that

quote:

---

Human beings biologically require two human parents to create a child. Given the time and technology surrounding Jesus' birth this would almost universally imply sexual intercourse

---

Now this is not necessarily true, but it is broadly true enough that under normal circumstances would cause someone to think that the story wasn't true. If Henry VIII claimed that he was born of a mating between a bull and a lioness, we might be skeptical for similar reasons. Even if 10 people attested to the fact, and those 10 people accurately recorded the political ongoings in the court of Henry and throughout Europe we would still be justified in not being "friggin' confident" in Henry's claim and we would question those that were "friggin' confident" as to why that was the case.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Here's the thing: You don't use the same epistemology that I do, otherwise I would believe the same things you do and you would believe the same things that I do. This is not the case, therefore we don't. QED.As I explained in my lengthy post, and I will no doubt see you tackle later, my system of belief (ie., epistemology) does not permit me to assent to believing all parts of a story which contains elements that are unfalsifiable or unverifiable even if other parts are verified especially when those elements postulate entities which themselves cannot be confirmed etc etc.You seem to be under the impression that all people have always used the same epistemology for all time. This is not the case. While I agree that it is possible for Mary to have been impregnated by the direct intervention of God without Mary engaging in any sexual practice at all I am at a loss as to why someone would be as confident in this proposition as some religious people claim to be.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Touche, though you still didn't answer the question. Assuming the answer is 'no', how confident are you of that answer? (I will give you fair warning, even my answer to the question 'Was your mother a virgin on your day of birth?', would not have the level of confidence that I seem to detect when talking to certain Christians about the virginity of Mary or as a side note, the divinity of Jesus.) I didn't. I claimed to be born in 1783. Why? Right - but you are missing the overall point by only coming in the middle of a lengthy discussion. This can be quickly broken up into two points:

1. Assuming that miracles exist and can happen, how can you be confident that this miracle did happen and some other miracle did not.
2. Taking into account all facts, including the dishonesty of human witnesses with an agenda to push, why are you confident of the Mary virginity miracle? (rather than say, Jesus was just a revolutionary religious guy with a mundane birth that his followers embellished to make it look like he fulfilled prophecy and was a God-child etc)

By all means return to my original posts to get a sense of the fullness of this argument which I summarize here only to give a sense of it. Perhaps, you could call him what you like I guess - such a thing has never to my knowledge existed - you could try Catcow which has a certain ring to it. He'd have probably preferred 'Your majesty'. If you are unable to deduce my answer to that question based on what you know of me, or what I said in my previous post to you then why should I waste my time trying to discuss epistemology with you? Hopefully this post should settle it. If not...Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

So I'm proposing a physically unlikely situation. Something that would likely require a miracle to achieve - either massive longevity or I travelled forwards in time at some point.Since you believe miracles can happen - why have you little to no confidence in this one? Yes - the type Bertot was inclined to call 'misguided' earlier (not in their religion but in their understanding of what faith means). I still extend the hand out to you 'Why so friggin' confident?". The question is neutral on the issue of evidence, it is just that Bertot holds that evidence is the reason to be so friggin confident.You hold that 'It is simply something I believe.'. Which might simply be a discussion killer normally, but I'm happy to dig deeper at your leisure. I know that you believe it, I know the approximate sequence of events that preceded your belief (according to your testimony at least) the questions I have are entirely different though:Did you develop this belief and actively decide to not question it? Was it more of a passive decision? Or have you questioned it? On what basis did you question it, if not on grounds of evidence then was it reason? Ultimately - I know you are friggin' confident, but why are you. Did you engage in any reasoning process or something that can be explained to gain this confidence? If you didn't - what makes you confident that you have the right kind of belief and would you be a Muslim were it not for the quality of the circumstances surrounding the development of your belief? If you had a similar experience with Islam as you did with Christianity, which do you pick?This last one is particularly of interest since I have had many tremendously moving religious experiences from a wide variety of different religions. I believed completely that the religious tenets as I was aware of them were True, but I no longer maintain those beliefs. Why do you maintain yours and how would you pick between them if you had the dilemma I described?

That doesn't really seem to be an answer to the question. Unless you are trying to tell me you endorse the Concorde Fallacy? I'm fairly sure I did. Is there some answer there to the questions I posed that I missed? Great. But why are you so friggin' confident? Are you trying to tell me that because you got into it when you were highly suggestible, and because you have believed that suggestion for sixty years - you have to be confident otherwise the decades of believing will seem very foolish to you? Or something else? It is a shame. I can assure you, they are all very powerful and have their own unique flavour but with very much common themes. If you had a rival religious experience - on par with the one that resulted ultimately in your sixty year stint of belief, how would you decide which one to believe was true? Right so you started believing something and part of that beilef was that you had put your spirit in God's hands and that he gave you faith and given you all you need etc Why are so confident that this is in fact what happened? So occasionally you have doubted but you have managed to suppress those doubts? Why are so confident that it was the devil and not the way I describe it? I am truly sorry for you - who has never experienced Kensho or satori who has never seen the perfection of Allah and his revelation, who has not come to experience the fullness of reality as a divine being, and who has never traversed the beauty of the astral plane to discourse with the Elders or any other of the strange/wonderful/surreal but ultimately powerful and beautiful religious experiences that I have, some of which were not strictly 'religious'. Only having had the Christian variety seems so impoverishing and one level it seems self-evident that you would continue to believe it completely.
Why not spend a year or two seeking a powerful religious experience from another religion - you might be surprised at what you might find.

If I asked him why he was a carpenter and he answered '40 years of experience' you could see why I might have a problem with that answer. I'm not trying to gauge how experienced you are at believing - unless you are trying to tell me that long experience at believing something is true is reason in itself to be confident that it is true? Other than the obvious psychological reasons, is there any epistemological reason why this should be the case? Not really, it just opens me to asking the question again, sorry. You came to believe something when you were very young and you did not question certain aspects of that belief. That explains the psychology of why you believe confidently, but it doesn't answer the epistemological question which is what this thread is driving at. On what grounds should 'I believed it since I was young, my mother was an alcoholic, I lived on a farm and had a book to read...' should be able to justify confidence in the proposition 'The earth is made of jelly' - it might explain why a person is confident in it, but it doesn't explain the philosophical grounds for that confidence. Do you understand the difference?I mean 'because I am mentally ill' justifies the confidence in the proposition "I am Napolean" - but it isn't really the kind of answer that would be satisfying for the purposes of this thread, right? Why are you confident that this is in fact what happened? Well, that is exactly what someone might say if they have had doubts and they have subsequently suppressed those doubts. So how can you be confident that the devil has tested you rather than this explanation?

---

I reread one of your posts and thought that I'd expand on things a little. You said that "I heard those three verses {John 3:16-18} for the first time as they went through my mind. I simply believed God.", perhaps it might help you understand my issue if I phrased it thus:Why were you confident that the words of John 3:16-18 were in fact a true reflection of God's words, deeds, or position and not just made up by somebody? Did God speak to you directly to confirm their validity? If so, what makes you confident it was God?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Bertot - if you want to email me the full thing, and only post some of it here I'll be happy with that (assuming Percy's sanity weighs on you). Failing that Percy - my next reply is likely to be in the guise of a summary of my position and why I am dissatisfied with the 'other side's' position (Assuming Bertot doesn't knock me on my ass and convince me otherwise), so should hopefully distill the core points as much as is possible (for me...). If the discussion continues at that point at least it will have gone through a bottleneck of sorts

I assure you Bertot that I am not trying to redefine belief. I do believe that different people have different criteria for believing something. I had attempted to keep this short, but that proved difficult.

Falsifiable

You make the statement of belief. You attempt to cross the bridge. The bridge collapses. Your statement is falsified. Also, for fun your additional statement that "Everything is unfalsifiable, essentially", is falsified by the single example you provided yourself. Even if you don't believe that it was falsified, you agree that in principle all that needs to happen is for me to produce one falsifiable position in order to falsify your statement, and that this must therefore mean that your position is falsifiable?

Tentative

Of course I may be mistaken. If this was a thread about why are evolutionists so friggin' confident I'd give you very specific and in depth reasons both scientific and philosophic as to why I have the level of confidence I do have in macro-evolution. It isn't so I will simply reiterate that I may be wrong about it. However, you should be giving me reasons as to why you are so confident in the virginity of Mary/miraculousness of Jesus' conception (or similar 'article of faith').

Why Bertot is so friggin' Confident

I've had to do a lot of the work so far since you have been rather vague on the details with me I have the following

1. The material universe is evidence of the existence of God
2. God can perform miracles
   ​
   I am assuming the following are additions:
   ​
3. Two Biblical authors claim the conception was miraculous (Matthew and Luke, does anybody else, I don't remember) (Muhammed also claims it, but you reject him as a source).
4. Those two Biblical authors can be relied upon to never lie or be mistaken about anything.
5. Therefore, since it is possible, and we have perfectly reliable authors/witnesses attesting that it did - we can have absolute confidence in the statement 'The conception of Jesus was miraculous in that Mary was a virgin'.
   

Does this just about cover why you are so friggin' confident?If so, can you give me a similar example of this in the world of science? For example, do you propose that scientists believe that macroevolution has occurred based on the testimony of two or three scientists who they regard as perfect?

My epistemology

You engage in something of a rant about my epistemology or 'method of belief'. You had previously warned me that I was subtly moving the topic towards discussing my own reasons for believing or disbelieving. If you want to criticise my epistemology, start a thread and I will defend it as best I can. I guarantee that if I manage to take part in the debate I will be more specific than you have been with me so far

Incompleteness of proof, confidence in belief

Agreed. Thus my confidence is in proportion to the limited evidence that exists AND that I have been exposed to, but remains forever tentative.Once again, you are insisting on talking about the shortcomings of my own epistemology which I accept exist (fallibilism remember?), instead of the strengths of your epistemology and the confidence in your beliefs. Since you have yet to really describe why you are confident, in any real depth (other than vague hand waving about having evidence and following the epistemology laid down by analytic philosophers/philosophers of science with little specific detail), and you are continuously trying to engage me in discussion on the problems (real or imagined) in the things that I believe, I can only conclude you are deliberately trying to avoid this issue because (presumably) you cannot address the issue any better than you have already done.You know what to do: Propose a new Thread. Perhaps I can show you a little bit about what I was trying to get from you. You can see if I am like the lilly-livered debaters who were afraid of presenting evidence and just cried 'faith' within a few minutes. If you like you can make it a Great Debate. I have to say you have spectacularly failed to make any real progress in describing any specific reasons that anyone might have for being confident in the belief that Jesus' conception was miraculous. You began by asking questions of me, then by broadly answering that you have confidence in the same way I have confidence in my beliefs, then suggesting that my beliefs can not be made with any confidence anyway because the way I have confidence in things is fundamentally flawed in some fashion.No doubt you fail to see the problem with this sequence.You later said "The content of your questions seems to imply that I should prove all of this to absolutely, while yourself and others need not do the same.", I do not need absolute proof at all I am just asking for specific reasons that one might be confident in the specific claim that Jesus' birth was miraculous. Why do you put so much stock in the claims of Matthew and Luke (and Muhammed in this case)?What has 'Matthew' or 'Luke' done to earn your complete trust as a perfectly reliable, never mistaken, never lying piece of evidence? Is there some other evidence you have neglected to so far mention that I am missing? You go on to say "Its only the Christians and Jews here required to demonstrate things without any shadow of doubt.", I don't know about the Jews but I certainly demand the same level of evidence for all claims from anybody. How many Jews do we have debating around here anyway? Never mind that - as pointed out in the OP - the Christians are making claims in such a way as to imply that they have no doubt. There is no doubt that Jesus' conception was miraculous, there is no doubt that Jesus is divine etc. It is these Christians (and of course some Muslims and any other religious group that has dogmatic tenets of faith) that set themselves up to demonstrate that the level of confidence they have (no shadow of a doubt) is met by the reasons or evidence for it (ie., prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt). That is the reason for this whole thread!If you accept that there is no way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was conceived in a miraculous fashion, then you will accept that you cannot go around believing it with that level of confidence and the threads topic no longer applies to you (that is, if you believe the claims of Matthew and Luke with the same kind of fervour as say you would a couple of Roman scribes/historians who makes claims about the divinity of the Emperor, then I imagine you don't particularly believe the claim with a great deal of friggin' confidence)

Islam

The Qur'an is God's addendum. In it he reaffirms the content of the scriptures, corrects a few errors that have crept in due to corruption or simple mistakes and then gives specific guidance on how to live (very little is about scriptural history, since it simply suggests you read the Testaments to get that information). The question is, why would you disbelieve a book that directly transcribes the Word of God as it is spoken over the words of men remembering the words of God sometime after they were spoken? "No one in their right mind would operate in this fashion, it would make no logical sense".An argument can be made both ways. Why are you so confident that your conclusion is correct? As you say "if we are going to use the antiquity as a source of reference, the scriptures wins hands down." but if we are going to use claimed directness to the Word of God as a source of reference (as well as pointing out that the greater the antiquity the greater the potential for the text becoming corrupt), the Qur'an wins hands down...especially since the Qur'an basically agrees that the Scripture 'wins hands down' it just says that there it is time for the complete Word of God to get written down so that there'll be no further confusion between Word of God and Word of Man. Had we gone into this earlier, we might have had an interesting voyage of discovery ahead of us. I will point out that the hadith (Ibn Ishaq's Sirah Rasul Allah) discusses and even quotes the Constitution of Medina and that there is evidence of a city called Medina. You'll have to excuse me, this is the kind of evidence I normally when discussing the Biblical reliability and I haven't spent a great deal of time looking into all the sources of Muslim history or indeed Christian history (I personally don't think being able to accurately record contemporary events is an indication of reliability to make extraordinary claims about the causes of those events. A man born in in 1920 might have once written a book about WWII in which he describes all the battles and major generals/politicians etc, but then claims it happened because of a voodoo curse...I wouldn't believe the curse claim just because he was around during WWII and I doubt you would believe him either).

On the absurdity of religious discussions

Yeah - but then when we look at other religious leaders (Jewish and Christian specifically) trying to work out complex matters of protocol and belief we get equally silly discussions as what to do if you fart during prayer. For example, can you believe in the Talmud there is an argument about whether a child who had been raped before the age of three could be considered a virgin or not for the purposes of dowry/marriage etc?

quote:

---

It means this: When a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing, for when the girl is less than this, it is as if one puts the finger into the eye; but when a small boy has intercourse with a grown-up woman he makes her as 'a girl who is injured by a piece of wood

---

Source and

quote:

---

IF ONE WAS YOUNGER THAN THIS AGE, INTERCOURSE WITH HER IS LIKE PUTTING A FINGER IN THE EYE. It was asked, Do the features of virginity disappear and reappear again or is it possible that they cannot be completely destroyed until after the third year of her age? In what practical respect could this matter? ” In one, for instance, where her husband had intercourse with her before the age of three and found blood, and when he had intercourse after the age of three he found no blood. If you grant that they disappear and reappear again [it might well be assumed] that there 'was not sufficient time for their reappearance, but if you maintain that they cannot be destroyed until after the age of three years it would be obvious that a stranger cohabited with her

---

Source I assume you realize that Christian scholars have faced no less inane difficulties with trying to reconcile their texts?

Normally when I make a decision, I can later explain why I made that decision. What things I weighed, the pros and cons, and why I weighed in favour of one side over another.It sounds, to me, like the answer to the question "Why are you so confident of these statements of faith?" in your case is,
"No reason, I just am."You can understand Reality Man's frustration:

quote:

---

So please, someone explain to me what Rational belivers justify all that epic story material to be fact. I need substance people, and please don't say that God wrote the Bible, or that God placed the ideas into some dude's head

---

and why he might ask

quote:

---

The root of intelligence is to be able to define one's position in the world

---

and go on to clarify:

quote:

---

what it is about faith that makes people so determined that what they believe in is as real as the keyboard I'm typing on... I want someone to baby spoon feed me the rational (the key word here is 'rational') reasoning behind the strong belief people have for things that as of yet have no substance, physical or theoretical, or have such an abstract application to reality.

---

Can you now see, how your rationale ("I just decided to...") is not the kind of thing Reality Man wanted - he'd probably not characterise you as a Rational believer as he defines it. It would be no better to explain why I believe I have a parrot on my shoulder named Captain Flint is to point at a few paragraphs of Treasure Island and say that I made a decision to assume a few sentences of description applied to me. It took a thousand posts to explain this to you, and you are still getting a little confused over it. "The Universe simply exists" was a statement of position from the point of view of the Standard Big Bang and a few related models. It is not necessarily a statement of belief. Where some people might believe that is the case, and you asked them how confident they were in that belief - you'd commonly find that the answer was, to keep it related to this topic, "Not as confident as you are that Jesus is able to save you from damnation" and with better justification than 'I just decided to accept it as true'" What makes you/made you confident that the words were offered to you, and that the person offering them was in a position to do so? If I wrote "Have a Porsche for $50" you might decide to accept the offer and consequently you might send me $50 and expect to receive a Porsche; but I might not have been making that offer to you and more importantly I might not even have a Porsche to offer.