Summations Only

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I suppose then that you can give us the chapters and verses?Well the Eightfold Path was written or dictate by the Buddha.The Mandalas of the Rig Veda are ordered by author and date. Ah tradition. And what is the evidence to support such assertions?

Phat, I'm not Theodoric, but how many problems to you want 10, 20.. I think I could get many more than that actually.
There are many, many issues in John. Anything actually in the bible is riddled with issues be it contradiction, errors, inconsistency or absurdity.Edited by Golffly, : Screwed up, again. )

And this is why I have such little respect for you. You think those who do not believe what you do are the enemy. I do not think of you as an enemy. There is no war between us, but alas you and the other fundies feel there is a war and will not be satisfied until non-believers, and those that believe differently, are utterly and totally defeated.It is a pity you and your ilk feel this way. It makes it difficult for all us to live harmoniously.

You are misusing the word infer. To "infer" is to draw conclusions from the evidence. We conclude that there is likely no Bigfoot because we cannot find him despite extensive efforts. What you are insisting on is that we assume John is the author despite some evidence to the contrary and no evidence in support.Besides that, your argument regarding Bigfoot is pretty twisted and does not seem to demonstrate your point anyway. Nice sleight of hand, ringo. The issue under discussion is authorship and not 'up-to-datedness'. A person presenting a will is required to provide evidence that the will is the testament of the deceased, and that issue is closer to authorship. The presenter will of course point to the signatures of the deceased and of the witnesses. The example of wills appears to be demonstrating my point rather than your own.In situations where we care about the result, we don't simply accept the authorship of documents at face value. We only do that when we don't care about the authorship.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You are not the enemy. The enemy is a spirit.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

So now you are calling me a tool. That isn't better. There is no war.

This one does.

So if there is no evidence that something/somebody exists, it is not possible to make the inference/conclusion that it does exist. No. I am suggesting that without any evidence that John existed we can not draw the conclusion/inference that he did exist. It's the same issue. A person presenting a will in court has to show that his version is authentic and more up-to-date. Who said we did?

Right, so why would we assume that a nonexistent person wrote the document? Have you forgotten your original position and have decided just to argue a question that is not in dispute? If that was all you said/suggested, I would not have bothered. Instead you actually posted this: How do you "infer" innocence with no evidence ringo? That is as senseless as assuming guilt.The purpose of "assuming" guilt vs innocence is not that it is easier, or more likely to be correct or somehow akin to "Occam's razor". It is because we must pick some starting point for a dispute in which both sides are going to provide evidence. Namely we give one side or the other the burden of producing persuasive evidence as a starting point, and not because we assume that defendant is more likely to be innocent than guilty.If you don't know who wrote John, and the matter is important to you, the answer is not to assume John wrote it, but to seek out evidence on the matter. You don't "infer" without evidence, and you don't simply assume an answer and then quit.

I'm sure I could give you chapter and verse if I had the time and the motivation, but you would just trash anything I say so it's not worth it. The only thing I'd say here is that the fact that other religions also have long traditions says absolutely nothing about the Bible's long tradition and the fact that the authors were regarded as authentic from the earliest days. I'm sure you accept the pagan accounts of their traditions but reject the Bible's anyway. This is of course exactly what we are to expect since the pagan religions are no threat to the devil but the Bible is.

More up to date than what, ringo?And why did you claim the opposite in your last post, ringo? You're just saying whatever comes to your head to continue an argument, aren't you. No the presenter does not have the burden of showing that a will is the most up to date version, because it is usually at least possible that a newer will has been executed that no party knows about. We would be looking for a challenger to do that. The executor must use the most up-to-date authentic will.

We have no reason to conclude that the purported author is the real author because we have no evidence that the purported author existed. Hence the reference to Jim Hawkins. What do you think my position is? Presumption of innocence doen't come from the goodness of our hearts nor is it some arbitrary starting place. It is based on the logical conclusion that if there is no evidence in support of a position, we should not be acting on that position. For example, if there is no evidence that the bridge exists, we should not be trying to cross it - or if there is no evidence that the accused is guilty, we should not be punishing him. You could make up some convoluted story about why the evidence is missing but that would be the superfluous entity to which Mr. Occam objects. Yes. And what do you think I said to the contrary?

Well, this is a debate topic on the Bible inerrancy. I'll note also that there really aren't that many verses, so it is not as though this is ab exhausting task.The chapter and verse evidence is extremely weak and requires an interpretation that cannot be justified, and for that reason, your position would indeed get trashed. Just to preview how that might look... All of the verses that people cite from John and Revelations, save John 21:24 merely mention "the disciple that Jesus loved" in third person. The plain meaning of John 21:24 on the other hand is that John is not the author and that the Gospel according to John is based on John's writings. Obviously the point is that a long tradition is not evidence of correctness and not that there is any value in pagan accounts that we all believe are quite silly. Nice job of missing the point, though.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

If you try to make sense, I'll be glad to clarify and/or elaborate.