The Tension of Faith

I think Tangle and I share a similar perspective on this. Calling religious works like the Gospel of John evidence of what an early Christian community believed seems fine, or calling it evidence that Jerusalem existed at the time seems fine, but calling it evidence that miracles are real or evidence that the events described actually happened does not seem fine. We can cast serious doubt on the veracity of religious works because we're familiar with the nature of religious claims, and we're familiar with human nature. 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.Is John evidence that Jesus even asked the servants to fill the jars with water? That's unverifiable, and I don't think that should be considered evidence either. To me it feels like something else, a mere story that may or may not be true, we'll never know. The above paragraphs already covered this. I'm as unfamiliar with the Code of Hammurabi as the next guy (except I can spell it). 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, no matter how weak. Similar to science, our confidence in what we know of history depends upon how tightly interwoven is the supporting information. 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? If not why not? We probably answer this in different ways, but for me the answer is that just the fact that something is written down doesn't make it evidence. 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. 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 see problems with accepting anything written as evidence. Yes. I think I've described the Bible a number of times as a combination of the true, the false, the unverifiable, the internal and external contradictions, and the impossible. Conflicting evidence is one reason I took the avenue I did. The real world can not contradict itself. If you have real world evidence then it is genuine evidence. 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. I'm using the religious definition of faith. I went through the same thing earlier with someone else. You're using the definition of faith that goes something like, "confidence or trust in a person or thing." When speaking about religion it's a different definition of faith that goes something like, "belief that is not based on proof." And in my previous post I gave a definition that went, "Faith is acceptance of what we cannot see but feel deep within our hearts." 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." Right, I already understand the point and Faith's position. I just don't agree with it. 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? Looking back on what you said, I think I must have misinterpreted what you meant by "engineered". You must have been referring to the "engineering" of the journey itself, not the "engineering" of the story about the journey. I understand now.--Percy

You apparently can't even describe the context, let alone understand the rather simple exchange quoted at the top of Message 676. Sure I did. I guess your memory is failing you, too. This is from Message 676: 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. Chronologies of what? There you are expressing yourself poorly again. What is "i5"? Right, you want a pissing contest. Noted. They certainly didn't happen, either, except in your imagination. 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. 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. Right, not evidence at all. All science is tentative. You appear to be reading at random rather than in context. 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: Did you think you just said something coherent?When you can express yourself clearly enough to articulate something rational please try again. You have a vivid imagination. If a point only makes sense to you and no one else, guess what... 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. 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. It shouldn't have been necessary. It was clear if you read from context. Yeah, it is disappointing that I can't work out all the details in just a couple days. Yes, I confess to not understanding your incoherent argument. Yes, that's true, I still don't understand your incoherent argument. Anyone want to tell me what this means? Anyone? A little help here, somebody. 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

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

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

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Displays as boxes in Chrome, but Safari displays it. Neat that there's Cuneiform. 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 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? If there's no reason to accept it as true, maybe it shouldn't be considered evidence. 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. 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. But my question was about the Bible. For you the Bible contains multiple corroborative accounts of evidence. How do you reject their reality? 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. 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. Yeah, I wasn't sure what to think about that because it contradicts the other quote. But besides that, it doesn't mention evidence. Again, nothing about evidence. 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. 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

Mistake? I didn't say anything about a mistake. I was referring to your inability to describe even a bit of context or understand the quote at the top of Message 676. You didn't even attempt to make a case, and still haven't. All you can seem to do is invent vague fictions. "That false claim?" Why, how specific of you, but certainly consistent. Denying your obvious mistakes while blaming others. Tut tut. I mentioned Tycho Brahe and you skipped over to ancient historical chronologies and expected me to follow? What a wingnut you are.By the way, in my quote of your text I fixed the typo in your broken link to "The Chronology of the Ancient Near East." Check out your Message 733 if you don't believe me. It's very visibly and obviously broken. Normally I fix people's broken links for them, but I left this one undisturbed since I'm probably not the person you trust most at this point. You *really* should proof your posts. If nothing else reading your own words would show you what a poor job of explication you're doing. Ah, poor baby, they changed your keyboard. You're obviously failing to read in context again. By the way, your new iOS keyboard layout is also causing you to end a lot of sentences with a comma. I was wondering why you were doing that. Have you ever considered proofing what you write, or do you just type it up and throw it out into the void? No it doesn't, because you're using the wrong definition of evidence. There you are with your "context" again. I think your definition of context must be, "Things I wish I'd said but forgot." Well, hallelujah, you did a message link. Congrats! Nah, sorry, there was nothing coherent there. Maybe it made sense to you, but that's it. I agree and have said precisely the same thing. Really! I'm fascinated, please go on. Yes, good points, but doing the same old dance with Faith once again was already a proven failure. Sure I do, you just lack the necessary comprehension. Well that's a load of nonsense. You don't even know what natural events stood in for the miracles, so you couldn't possibly know "the nature of the explanations." But you've got conceit, I'll give you that. Nope, sorry, the mistakes are all yours.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I don't know that I'd used the term incredulity. I think rigor is better. A broad declaration of, "Everything is evidence," has no rigor.Obviously my message isn't, "I don't believe miracles can happen." That's just an excerpt from the discussion about the specific example of the Gospel of John. My message is that the view that everything is evidence is flawed.Take the example where I asked you whether, "I just got back from Mars," is evidence. You said it *was* evidence, easily disproved, but still evidence. But whoops, I lied, it's actually the first sentence of my new novel. Is it still evidence? Of what? Whoops, I lied again, it's actually something a resident of the local assisted living facility mumbled to me as I was helping them up the stairs. Is it still evidence? Of what?So obviously some rigor needs to be introduced. What's the context and provenance of the information, and does it qualify it as evidence in that realm? Tangle and I haven't exchanged any messages about this, but I've read his messages, and perhaps if they weren't too long he's read mine, and I still think we're saying something fairly similar. I don't know if he agrees or not. Regarding John and the miracles specifically, I think I've already explained this. The suspension of natural laws renders it false immediately. That it's part of a supernatural religious origin story alone casts suspicion on its credibility. Deeming it evidence of the impossible is a serious mistake.In a broader sense what this means is that you have to understand the context and provenance of the information you're considering to be evidence, so that you can judge the credibility. Would you really interpret the Gospel of John as potential evidence in the context of physics? How about in the context of history? How about in the context of a religious origin story? How about in the context of the beliefs of an early Christian community? How about as fiction? How about as an aggregation of earlier accounts, both oral and written?For each of these contexts you need to be able judge its appropriateness to be considered as evidence. Unless I've misjudged your religious proclivities, for someone of your level of knowledge I provided precisely the information you need to know it's false. Many people think the sun goes around the earth and can't name the three branches of the US government (Americans, I mean). What many people think isn't an argument. But when you say "as do most other people" you don't really believe that something as important as the nature of evidence should be a matter of opinion. I think we throw around the word evidence far too indiscriminately. Everything isn't evidence in every context. Many things are simply nonsense as evidence in most contexts. It seems obvious to me, but not you, that John is nonsense as evidence of physics, but it is certainly obvious to both of us that a picture of my house is not evidence that matter is made up of quarks. Context matters. From the Wikipedia article on the historical reliability of the Gospels:

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The historical reliability of the Gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four New Testament gospels as historical documents. Some believe that all four canonical gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability; some say that little in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable...the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. Elements whose historical authenticity is disputed include the two accounts of the Nativity of Jesus, the miraculous events including the resurrection, and certain details about the crucifixion.

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Seems to be a bit of disagreement among historians, including of the miraculous events. Interestingly, the word "evidence" appears a mere 7 times and only in innocuous ways in the main body of the article. Nowhere does it refer to Gospel text as evidence of what it says.Here's something for Faith:

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In the majority viewpoint, it is unlikely that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel of John. Rather than a plain account of Jesus' ministry, the gospel is a deeply mediated representation of Jesus' character and teachings, making direct apostolic authorship unlikely. Opinion, however, is widely divided on this issue and there is no widespread consensus. Many scholars believe that the "beloved disciple" is a person who heard and followed Jesus, and the gospel of John is based heavily on the witness of this "beloved disciple."

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No, it's not really history. It's quite clearly religion with all the accompanying claptrap of most religions. It's certainly legitimate to study a religion's history based upon available legitimate evidence, but religion isn't history. A written witness statement is unsupported claims. If support for the claims is identified then the claims can become evidence. This is vaguely worded. I don't know what the second use of "either" applies to. You mean the mundane versus the miraculous? The diary versus the Gospel? Anyway, regarding the mundane, obviously it's information about things that may or may not have happened. Maybe they're accurate, maybe they're made up, maybe they're misremembered, maybe they happened but on a different day or with different people.Testimony is one of the worst forms of information if you're seeking accuracy. When you get together with your family this Thanksgiving (oh, wait a minute, you're in the UK - well, the next time you get together with your family) try the exercise of recalling the details of past get togethers. There won't be much agreement about anything, including things like what you ate, when you ate, who was there, who arrived when, who stayed over at your place, who went to motels, what you did, what you talked about, etc. (referring to photos is cheating). Testimony as evidence - pah! Yes, we're in agreement. And now we're not in agreement. Every cockamamie claim about the past is not evidence. Conspiracy theories are a good example of claims about the past that are not evidence of anything, although they're interesting examples of people's ability to bend evidence to their wills. Did I tell you about the study of voters that presented the crowd photos from the Obama and Trump inaugurations and found that 1 in 6 Trump voters identified the Trump photo as having more people? Too bad it wasn't a double blind study so we could see how many Trump voters picked the Obama photo when told it was actually the Trump photo. No, I don't think evidence means "'supports something to a degree that causes me to either believe it - or at least come close to that'. I think evidence is, as I said before, something shown to have relevant context and provenance. If everything is evidence, which is the direction you're going, evidence ceases to have useful meaning. It's just a synonym for everything. Well, first off there's one very important thing to get straight - if I were to kill any cat it wouldn't be somebody else's cat, it would be my own. If you met my cat you'd understand. But seriously, there's no evidence here. There's not even evidence of a dead cat. There's just people saying stuff. Some of it is possible, some of it absurd, but none of it is evidence. Testimony with evidence would be more like, "I witnessed Percy killing my cat using the knife on the table there labeled Exhibit A. The blade end has my cat's blood on it, as shown by the lab analysis also on the table labeled Exhibit B, and the handle end has Percy's fingerprints on it, which I understand will be covered in detail by the fingerprint analysis expert who is scheduled to testify later."That's evidence. Why the Nazis again?Anyway, does it make sense to you that that portion of Goering's testimony that was self-serving lies was evidence of anything? Again, does it make sense to you that the portions of testimony that are of questionable reliability be considered evidence of anything? You didn't evade it? You certainly didn't answer it. But anyway, you gave as your reason for not answering, "the disagreements between John and the Synoptics." This implies you felt the agreement between the Synoptics was sufficient, but when I proposed you choose a miracle common to the Synoptics to remove the objection about John, that apparently wasn't good enough either, since you replied, "But this is a pointless rabbit hole to go down surely?"I don't agree it's a pointless rabbit hole. The question wasn't intended to be about a specific miracle, but was for the purpose of giving you an opportunity to describe how you'd address corroborations about miracles between different books of the Bible. You demurred again. One demurring, okay. Two demurrings? Why?So just to be clear, the question concerns how you'd address a miracle corroborated across all three Synoptic Gospels. If in the end you decide it wasn't a miracle, what does that say about the accounts' status as evidence. You've judged them false - how could they be evidence of anything? I didn't say you did say there was "no reason". There are no quotation marks around were I said "no reason", and it's not in a quote box. What I was doing was posing to you the inevitable conundrum that arises when you say, "Just because something is evidence, it doesn't mean one has to accept it as true." I'm not following this. Is there a "not" missing in there somewhere, because as written it reads like you're saying, to trim it down a bit and mildly paraphrase, "Whether I accept that the evidence sufficiently supports the claims to elicit my belief in them doesn't mean the evidence isn't evidence." That last part appears to be calling the evidence into question, so I must be parsing this sentence wrong, because why would judging the evidence sufficient call it into question. Can you clarify? Well, like I've been saying, it's a nomenclature thing. I disagree with how indiscriminately we use the word evidence. The witnesses statement is testimony, not evidence, even though we often refer to it as "giving evidence". Some of what he says in his testimony may turn out to be relevant evidence, some not. Oh, I agree, the way you're using the word evidence is the normal usage, at least in the sense of how it's used in normal conversation. And while dictionaries should follow usage and not vice versa, at least at present the dictionary definition is a bit different than what seems to be normal usage.Anyway, I'm not arguing about what's normal usage and what's not. I'm arguing that the "normal usage" has diminished the value of the word evidence, turning it into a term that can apply to literally anything. The dictionary doesn't define it this way. You're just dressing up the same argument in different clothing. The jury should decide what testimony and evidence (meaning things like fingerprints, blood stains, etc.) combine to build the evidence deciding the case. They shouldn't be deciding, "This evidence is true, this evidence is false." That's silly - false evidence isn't proof of anything. Rather, they should be deciding, "This testimony is true, this testimony is false," and the true testimony is evidence that added to the physical evidence helps decide the case - or not, since maybe there's not enough evidence. Good example for me, since as a homeowner I have over the years had to occasionally face the question, "Where did this water come from," or "Why is the basement floor wet," and so forth. The wet path in your example is evidence, physical evidence. We have complete agreement about that. Now the problem becomes tracking down the reason.But someone, a person with all the normal issues of the human perceptual/cognitive system, saying, "The basement floor is wet," is not evidence that the basement floor is wet. I've actually had it happen that one of my children reported a wet basement floor that turned out to be a funny shadow from stuff we'd recently moved around. But that's actually a very good answer because it illustrates all the rigamarole you burden yourself with because for you everything written is evidence until proven otherwise, instead of taking the opposite course that nothing written is evidence until it has passed some minimum level of vetting. Well, probably it's just you and me, in which case yes, of course it's obvious, but there *are* other people in this thread, and I am discussing this exact same thing with PaulK, and Faith would definitely disagree, so maybe sometimes I cover possibilities with you unnecessarily. I don't think historians would decide on a binary acceptance/rejection of any unsubstantiated testimony. They would do what you've described a couple times (but that I'll describe in my own words), place all the testimony within a framework of various probabilities that call forth diverse scenarios, none of which are precisely true or false, any of which are possible. Yes, this is what I understood Faith to be saying. It's an evangelical approach, not a historical one. But if it's as I said, that they believe in their hearts that they have evidence, then to them it isn't myopic or credulous or insufficient evidence or idiosyncratic or delusional or psychotic. In fact, what they're doing is the behavior of normal human beings. I agree that it "can be approached, analyzed and used to try and arrive at the truth," but I disagree that the proper term for the mishmash of a thousand conflicting testimonies is evidence. That's interesting. You've obviously spent more time with the document than I have. I only read it through from beginning to end once, but its characterization of faith seemed to me a detailed marvel of consistency rather than multi-faceted. Yes it does, and didn't you quote that part before? Whether you did or not I have examined it several times:

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Faith is a belief that what is said in the Bible is true based on the eyewitness accounts and the peace that comes when we turn our lives over to God.

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It says that faith is a belief that the eyewitness accounts are true, not that they are evidence upon which to build faith. The word evidence doesn't appear anywhere on the webpage. I don't understand. Are you interpreting warrant as some kind of synonym for evidence? I'm not sure why you'd say that, I certainly don't agree with it, and it doesn't seem to follow any logic that you've presented anywhere. Evangelicals like Faith think faith involves evidence. Other branches of Christianity do not, believing something along the lines of that document. Well, if that's the way it looks to you and I haven't changed your mind in this post then I don't suppose there's anything more I could say that might convince you otherwise.--Percy

What is going on here is the destruction of civil discourse. Any time you're ready to return to it and eschew the barrage of accusations of mistakes and evasions and so forth just let me know. At the time I had no idea what you meant by "chronologies." I briefly considered the possibility that you meant when supernova and comets had appeared in the skies, but I didn't dwell on it. Obviously my mention of Tycho Brahe indicated that I had no idea that by "chronologies" you meant of ancient civilizations.Good grief, you screwed up a quote again. I'll do the same thing I did before, fix it here where I quote it, but leave it alone in your original post: What you should wish for is the ability to compose a comprehensible quote. This is woefully incomplete and confused at best and nonsense at worst. Again, congratulations on the message link, but it doesn't matter what you posted there. The problem for you is that what natural events stood in for the miracles, or the nature of the explanations for what people mistook for those miracles, is unknowable. I'm aware that you have the conceit to repeatedly claim you know them.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Jes followin' your lead, darlin'. You don't listen real well, do ya. I told you to let me know when you're ready to return to civil discourse. Is this a signal you're ready? Wow, "relevant context with proof." Congratulations! Any other delusions you want to tell us about? Confused as ever, I see. Your irrational argument, you mean?--Percy

Why thank you, but I simply couldn't accept your generous offer. My, my, but we do have an active imagination, don't we. Yes, we certainly do.--Percy

Oh, did I object to one of your precious arguments? Aw, poor baby. Like I keep saying, anytime you're ready to return to civil discourse just let me know.--Percy

Darn good advice - will you be taking this advice yourself, by the way?Like I keep saying, any time you're ready to return to civil discourse, just let me know.--Percy

I've characterized miracles in a variety of similar ways. Miracles are impossible. Miracles are a suspension of the laws of physics. An unwillingness to believe in the nonexistent is not incredulity. It's being realistic. And demanding evidence derived as directly as possible from reality is being rigorous.For me incredulity doesn't really capture my feeling about miracles. Maybe incredulity has a different feel for you, I don't know, but I feel the same way about miracles as I do about pots of gold at the end of the rainbow and spinning straw into gold, and incredulity definitely feels like the wrong word. I feel that my reasons for rejecting miracles go beyond mere incredulity, which is why I suggested rigor instead.But rigor also addresses your request that I "go further in your explanation." Rigor is what we need to bring to our determinations about what constitutes evidence and what does not. That's why I said, "'Everything is evidence,' has no rigor." They can be. And with all that doubt you still want to call it evidence? Then concerning rigor we may only differ on when it gets applied. You want to consider everything evidence and then apply rigor to discover the quality/credibility of the evidence, and even if it fails those tests you still want to consider it evidence, even though it is, in effect, evidence of nothing. I want to consider everything information and then apply rigor to discover whether it has sufficient quality/credibility to qualify as evidence. If not then it isn't evidence, because it isn't support or proof of anything. I suspect our views on science are fairly similar. Is incredulity how you'd characterize your view on the possibility of suspending natural laws? Maybe it is, I don't know. In any case, it certainly isn't the word I'd choose to describe my own views. My reaction to the headline, "Miracles proven," would not be incredulity or extreme skepticism. It would be outright rejection. I would consider it ridiculous. No, I'm not aware of any evidence that natural laws cannot be modified or suspended, except in the form of negative evidence in that it's never been observed. Generally I think that people use their knowledge to test information for it's value as evidence. I never said that what I think is an argument. I was responding to your use of the argument that "many people think..." by pointing out that many people think things that are wrong or contradictory. I think most people use the word evidence pretty much the way it is defined in the dictionary. There's a trivial sense in which it is true that "everything is evidence," for example anything is evidence of it's existence, but that's is definitely not what people normally have in mind when they use the word evidence. It isn't common usage. When people say evidence they're thinking of something that is support or proof or disproof of something. They don't think that evidence is anything that anybody scribbles down. What you said that I was concluding a response to was, "Nevertheless I happen to think a testimony is evidence, as do most other people - professional historians included," so if you were actually "talking about reliability of the evidence" then that definitely didn't come across.The point I was making with my Wikipedia excerpt is that the "professional historians included" you mentioned don't seem to have the consensus about "testimony as evidence" that you implied. Lots of written works mention people and events of history (A Tale of Two Cities, Julius Caesar), that doesn't turn them into history books.Anyway, are we still talking about John or the Gospels? If so then you seem to saying that want to consider them history or geography or biography or whatever else they might contain trivial elements of. Faith would say they're science books, too. For me they are what they are, religious origin stories. I don't think you'll find a dictionary anywhere that calls them anything other than stories of Christ's life.If you're talking about the entire Bible, especially the Old Testament, then there's a lot of history there with a fair amount of corroboration, and in some cases excellent corroboration. If you want to call some books of the Old Testament history then while I'd prefer calling them religious books that happen to include some history, it doesn't seem worth arguing over. Hmmm, we seem to have become reduced to trading opposing opinions. Oh, okay. In that case the exchange I quoted in Message 753 was: I see what you're saying now. I guess I don't agree. It seems like "the reliability or accuracy of the mundane events" in the diary and Gospels would be a key issue in their interpretation "using historical methods". To me they don't seem like different questions but very interdependent issues. Yeah, but this is reminiscent of the old joke about looking for the earring under the streetlight because that's where the light is, not because that's where the earring was lost. In other words, bad or false testimony can be worse than none at all. Speaking of testimony, give this a look: 15 men exonerated in one day -- and 7 Chicago cops taken off the street. Would you really call the testimony of these bad cops evidence? Is it really information that supports or proves anything that really happened, which is what evidence is? So would I be correct in saying that in your mind there's evidence, bad evidence but evidence nonetheless, that a secret group controls the world, that Obama is a Muslim who is not a citizen of the US, that the Bush administration blew up the World Trade Center, that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't work alone, that aliens are being held in Area 51, and so forth? If so, that's very interesting.In my mind these conspiracy theories have no evidence, only unsubstantiated allegations. People's ability to make stuff up doesn't suddenly create evidence out of thin air. I'm surprised to hear you say this. This isn't that different from the dictionary definition that you objected to earlier. Hey, we agree! But you think it's evidence because "everything is evidence," while I think it's evidence because it's "that which tends to prove or disprove something." Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?I've heard of Churchill and Montgomery, too. But today, do you still consider Goering's self-serving lies evidence of anything?And if not, as the veracity of Goering's statements was assessed, how does evidence become no longer evidence, and what is it that it becomes? Sorry, didn't mean to make you answer the same question over and over, but honestly, I couldn't recognize an answer. If someone were to ask me, "How did Modulous address the issue of a miracle corroborated across three Synoptics," I wouldn't have had a clue how to answer. I see you say some more about it now, so let me take a look. That was from when I first broached the topic, asking you to consider the miracle in Matthew, Mark and John about Jesus walking on water. You demurred because John was so at odds with the other Gospels, so I asked you consider a miracle common to the Synoptics. I'm not trying to annoy you. I'm just saying that, honestly, I still don't know your answer. If your intent was to fully answer the question then I'm thankful, but through some cross-up or just call me dumb if you like, no answer was apparent at my end. Oh, wait, your next paragraph provides an answer: So we agree that miracles are made up? If I'm interpreting you correctly and you do believe miracles are made up, how could there ever be any evidence of miracles, no matter how many independent or interdependent corroborations there are? It's about what I said just above. Someone writing about miracles isn't evidence of miracles, no matter how many other people write about the same miracles. I wasn't asking you to repeat anything. I said "Just to be clear..." to make it clear that I was restating the question in another way in order to, well, be more clear. Anyway, this appears to be more information, so let me take a look: That sounds fine, but how is a Gospel account of a miracle, something that is impossible and made up, evidence? Because everything is evidence? Well, we've been over this ground before, I'll stop there. Sorry to put you through all this. Oh. I thought you were emphasizing that you hadn't said "no reason".I'm truly making my best effort to understand you. When I get it wrong it isn't for lack of effort. I'm trying very hard. Let me emphasize this point by quoting this part from me Does that read to you like someone who's just giving a casual read to your posts and not making any effort to get things right?In any case, you replied to that with: So everything is evidence always. Anything that's been vetted as evidence, which involves context, and which means it provides support or invalidation or proof or disproof in that context. For example, John is not evidence of Boyle's Law. It isn't evidence of the Battle of Hastings. It isn't evidence of the origin of corn. It isn't evidence of the impossible. John is evidence of the beliefs of an early Christian community. It is evidence of the antiquity of several towns in the Middle East. It is evidence for the existence of several people of that period.If you want to say that everything is evidence of something then I guess I could go along with that, but in many cases it's trivial evidence like a pebble is evidence that the pebble exists, and it doesn't seem to me like a very useful definition of evidence. How do you reconcile "I don't think it [evidence] can apply to literally anything" with "anything that can be observed can be evidence for something"? They seem to be saying opposite things. About everything being evidence you say, "You certainly haven't supported that position," and yet there you are saying "anything that can be observed can be evidence for something." And I've agreed that this is true, but only in a trivial sense. Right, mostly. But I would vet the item first before calling it evidence. For example, you can't take the evidence box for one trial, take it into a different trial, and call it evidence for that trial. It's out of context. For that trial it is not evidence. But there's no tangle of meaning. As I said in my previous message (and that you address shortly), "But that's actually a very good answer because it illustrates all the rigamarole you burden yourself with because for you everything written is evidence until proven otherwise instead of taking the opposite course that nothing written is evidence until it has passed some minimum level of vetting." But the child's report wasn't evidence. It was a claim requiring vetting. Discovering actual water on the floor of the basement is evidence of a wet basement. A child's report is not evidence. Now my wife coming up the stairs and saying, "Water's come in again," during the period when we were having a problem would be evidence because the vettings already been done, since she was familiar with the problem, knew where the water was coming in and where to look for it, and as an adult was less likely to be fooled by shadows and such.Seriously, are you really going to treat the every utterance of a child as evidence? But they've got eyes and ears, and so you investigate their reports. "Grammy's coming, Grammy's coming," is evidence to me that Grammy is actually approaching the front door when it happens on a day when Grammy is actually coming for a visit, but on other days I would assume they've made a mistake and that while someone is approaching the front door, it isn't Grammy, more likely an older neighbor or evangelist. It's still evidence? Evidence of what? You're at an archaeological dig and there's a trowel of dust and debris in your sieve. Is it all evidence? Or is the dust and debris just dust and debris, while the little cylinder seal you eventually uncover is evidence? I notice we're doing that a lot, repeating our basic premise over and over. Right, but this phrasing just papers over our difference. What you really mean is, "No written evidence is to be believed until it has passed some minimum level of vetting, and whether it passes that vetting or not it is still evidence." Oh, sorry, I must have misunderstood you somewhere along the way. I had no idea you thought "belief is basically binary." I don't know why you think that way, but we were talking about historians, and historians definitely have to make acceptance/rejection of the various candidate hypotheses probabilistic. Some things have a probability approaching 1 with no other possibilities (the Battle of Hastings happened), while others have many possibilities of various probabilities (what really happened to the illegitimate nephews of Richard III). Well, let's not confuse things. The evangelical approach may be where we started, but it's not where most of the discussion has been spent. This is open to multiple interpretations. I won't venture a guess. I'm surprised to hear you say this. I thought this was something we agreed about, the horrible unreliability of eyewitness testimony. And there are many instances of eyewitness testimony in trial records where the eyewitness has later admitted that they spoke more about what they were coached to say rather than what actually happened. The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony is very interesting, here's one excerpt:

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In 1986, Chicago began using the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS. Soon after this technology became available, Newsome began campaigning to have the unidentified fingerprints run through the AFIS databases. This was done in 1989 and the fingerprints matched a man who was already in prison serving a life sentence for murder. However, this information was not revealed until 1994, when a court order forced the police to run the prints through the database again. Because these prints matched someone else, James Newsome was released from custody in 1995, having served over 15 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was officially pardoned by the governor a few months later. In 1997, he received $140,350 for wrongful imprisonment from a compensation claim with the state of Illinois. In 2001, he sued two homicide detectives who had framed him by coaching the eyewitnesses. He was awarded $1 million for each year he had been wrongfully imprisoned. This is the largest award which has ever been granted based on wrongful conviction (Vollen, 2005).

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The relevant portion is the coaching of the eyewitnesses. I gave you the dictionary definition of evidence: "that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof." I think that's the definition people generally have in mind when they use the word evidence. They definitely don't think "everything is evidence."--Percy

If you want to convince anyone of the reality of something, such as miracles, then you shouldn't be seeking the right words to say. You should be seeking the right evidence to present.--Percy

I don't think anyone believes phenomena with evidence are impossible. You're taking on an insurmountable task, one of convincing people of the miraculous not with evidence but with words from long ago when people believed many things we know today are not true.--Percy