Straightforward, hard-to-answer-questions about the Bible/Christianity

And at some point Protestants are going to burn Catholics at the stake, and Catholics are going to burn Protestants at the stake. And Muslims are going to crash planes into the World Trade Center. And apparently everybody hates the Jews. Yes, I "see the need" for an "absolute standard". But I do not see why that "absolute standard" should be the one that you preach.Nor do I suppose that because I need such a thing that it should therefore exist. Being hungry does not prove that I have bread.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

That's an odd interpretation of my behavior. And wrong, but it's the oddity that I'm now going to think about.I am not trying to annoy you, I'm just trying to debate with you. If I ever really want to annoy you, then believe me you'll notice. No, of course not.You seem to be trying to put up a false dichotomy: either I believe in the God that you believe in, or I have no morality whatsoever. That is not actually how it works.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But you still haven't followed me. Yes, I see the need for an absolute moral standard.But that doesn't mean that I think that one exists. I just wish that one did and that someone could tell me what it is.And so you ask me what is my "idea of a absolute moral standard". Well, darned if I know. I'd just like there to be one. But apparently there isn't. You might as well ask me what color I think unicorns are.

Well, I think that that is hitting at the crux of the matter. If you have any questions about this concept, I'll be happy to answer them. This is true enough. It is also true of Christians. Indeed, Christians are obliged by their religion to belive that this is true of them. So what's your point?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Apparently, the atheists.I don't have to waste a moment of my time thinking: "Hey, that woman's cute, I should rape her ... oh, wait, but that's immoral"; or "Hey, I'm short of money, so I should mug that little old lady ... oh, wait, but that's immoral".The people who have to think about morality a lot are the people who are led into temptation a lot. I hardly ever have to think about morality except in abstract discussions of it on Internet forums.So I can spend my time thinking about stuff that is way more interesting. Why should I have to think about morality?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Then this debate is useless.How can we agree that the scientific method is useless? It abolished smallpox, it put men on the moon, and it is the reason why we have computers that can communicate over the Internet. We couldn't even be having this discussion if not for the fact that the scientific method totally kicks ass. I do, but not if I first have to agree as a premise that "the scientific method is useless".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Yes, those were my words. Would you like to argue with them rather than just confessing yourself "nonplussed"?Otherwise this isn't so much a debate as a walkover. Again, yes, that's what I wrote. Would you like to argue with me instead of just quoting me? ... then I did so. I acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural. Without reservation, without conditions. I allow for the possibility of supernatural existence. Yeah, it was kinda simple. I await your counter-argument. Agreed. But your point (1) is false. I am happy to conceive of the concept of God, just as I am happy to conceive of the concept of pink unicorns. It causes me no problem to imagine a pink unicorn. The thing that I find difficult is to discover evidence of a pink unicorn. Um ... now you're making stuff up. I did not name a fallacy. As a matter of fact, I paraphrased Matthew Arnold.I would point out that if you don't like imaginary people making imaginary statements naming your fallacies, then maybe you should stop committing fallacies, and then maybe the imaginary people who live in your head will shut up. No, that is not what I told you. Yes. I wish there was one, just like I wish that there was a God, and just like I wish I was a millionaire and that there was a pill one could take that would cure cancer.What's your point?If I find something desirable, that doesn't give me a shadow of a shred of evidence that it's trueI wish that there was an absolute moral code, and that I knew what it was, but this doesn't lead me to think that there actually is one, and that I know what it is. I didn't. I get what it offers. But I am unable to believe that it is true. Well, those "rules" are what it means to have a discussion.If you can supply me with evidence that there is a God, then I'll think about it with an open mind, and maybe I'll argue with you, and maybe I'll dispute your evidence, and maybe I'll dispute the conclusions that you draw from the evidence, and maybe I'll try to pick holes in your logic ... and so on. That would be a discussion. You might even win.If you can't get to stage 1, where you put up some evidence, then what is there left for us to talk about?It'll just be you saying: "There is a God, there is a God, there is a God", and me saying: "I don't believe you". If we can't discuss evidence and its interpretation ... then what else is there for us to discuss?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Then I guess we're done.I'm open-minded --- if someone wants me to believe in ghosts or fairies or unicorns or God then I will listen carefully to their evidence.But if you decline to provide me with evidence, then what do we even have to talk about.Your non-evidence for the Christian God is indistinguishable for your non-evidence for the Muslim God and your non-evidence for the Easter Bunny. If you refuse to supply me with evidence for your opinions, then we literally have nothing to discuss.So yeah, we might as well stop. Because if you will not put up some shred of a scrap of a scintilla of an argument for your views, then there is nothing, nothing whatsoever, that we have left to discuss.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Oh yes you do. Claim all you like.The fact that you make this false claim is the only difference between us. You attribute your moral standards to God, whereas I admit that my moral standards are mine. That.The only significant difference between us is that you believe that your morality is God's morality, despite your inability to read God's mind or to present me with any evidence that he even exists.Of course your morality is "self-derived". Blaming it on your imaginary friend does not make that fact less true.

I didn't say that.What I would say is that there is no reason to believe in something that has no observable effects. It's like Carl Sagan's invisible dragon: It chokes the discussion of things that don't exist. It wouldn't choke the discussion of gravity or aardvarks or cheese or jealousy or Belgium or umbrellas or the national debt.But I have asked you to suggest an alternative. What else is there to discuss? Apparently you would like to convince people of the existence of God, but without supplying them with any evidence for the existence of God. Now since evidence by definition is whatever is relevant to the truth of a proposition, there doesn't seem to be anything else to talk about.So what's your plan B? Perhaps you could give us a sample couple of paragraphs of non-evidence-based argument, just so's I can see what it looks like.

Like Sagan's dragon. And unlike the deity described in the Bible.There's no reason a priori why we can't observe the effects of the supernatural. We can perfectly well imagine a god who constantly sent squads of angels to Earth to go about singing his praises and smiting wrongdoers. We'd notice.The fact that we live in a universe in which there is no evidence of a god is, then, not because a god is a sort of thing for which there should necessarily be no evidence. Rather, this observation is consistent with the hypothesis that we live in a universe without a god Oh yes there is. There's scope for the hypothesis that there is no god, just as our failure to observe unicorns leaves ample scope for the hypothesis that there are no unicorns. Yes. Prediction: we will never make any observations supporting the existence of a god.

This assumes that everyone would be both willing to study the proof and able to understand it; and my experience on these forums and elsewhere tells me that there is practically nothing, no matter how perfectly simple and obvious, that people can't manage to either ignore or misunderstand if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.Look, here's you managing to misunderstand something utterly simple which must have been explained about a zillion times on this forum: * shakes head * No. Consider, for example, the whole talking snake question. Can you call any eyewitnesses? OK, how about some material evidence?It wouldn't get to a court of law. It wouldn't get past a grand jury. It wouldn't get through the DA's office.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You do however need at least one piece of admissible evidence.

(1) Should I also apply this same reasoning to classical works of Chinese history ... or to the works of Herodotus ... or of Geoffrey of Monmouth ... or Homer?(2) You suggest extrapolating from the reliability of some parts of the Bible to "other parts ... where we just have no proof". But what about parts of the Bible where we have proof to the contrary, such as the Flood myth?By analogy, if you had an informant who had always proved reliable in the past, then you might be inclined to believe him if he told you he'd witnessed the murder of Jimmy Hoffa in 1975. But you'd just laugh at him if he started telling you how he'd witnessed the murder of Barack Obama in 2009, however reliable he'd proved to be on other subjects.Even if he made a claim not actually contrary to observation, you would also be dubious about a supernatural claim. Suppose you had an otherwise reliable informant, whose stories had checked out perfectly on every other occasion, who told you that I'd killed someone using black magic. Now, although you of course do not rule out the existence of the supernatural a priori, how convinced would you be by his claim? How ready would you be to take it to court? Could you be more coherent?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, I don't think so. The supernatural is that which supervenes the regular laws of nature. Turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead, and so forth, would in fact be supernatural --- they'd only be natural if everyone could do it by following the correct procedures.