The Mythical Bible

Yes. If it happens, then the "likelyhood" of it happening in that situation is "1/1". In other words, it's very likely, because it happened. In the absence of evidence that could lead you to a conclusion, it's fallacious to arrive at a conclusion.What part of "I don't know" do you have a problem saying? Why is coming to unsupported conclusions better than an honest admission that you don't know? Then you can't come to a reasonable conclusion. You can only come to a fallacious one. Remember that "fallacious" doesn't mean "false", it means "not supported by the premises."I don't believe that making shit up is better than saying "I don't know", and I don't understand why one would disagree. You can't, though. A conclusion not supported by the premise is fallacious. It's no better than making things up. Why would you prefer that to just saying "I don't know" and being honest? There's nothing reasonable about a fallacious conclusion.

I am assuming that you are an agnostic, and believe that we can't have knowledge of a supernatural power, if one happens to exist. How, if a personal God exists, could he communicate with you? I know that (groan). What I was saying is that given two ways an event could have occured, one likely and one unlikely, it is likelier that the likelier event occurred. Ok, say that you wake up in the morning and open your window. You hear you neighbor, Frank, shouting at you there is a bomb in you house, and you have just enough time to get out (which he maintains is a safe course of action) before the bomb goes off and levels your house. Also, Bob, from across the street, tells you that there are land mines completely surounding your house which will kill you if you set foot outside, but that there isn't a bomb in your house.In the past, Frank has never lied to you and Bob has never told the truth.How would you react, given that if Frank is right, you have about one half of a second to choose?(edited to fix mistakes)This message has been edited by JT, 07-22-2004 12:26 PM

The same way you do. Email, facetime, he could even drop a letter in the post.It's not possible to have a "personal God" who won't communicate directly with you. That's a contradiction in terms. Ok, but that says absolutely nothing about what actually happened. The likelyhood isn't the reality; statistics are descriptive, not perscriptive. I'd jump out the upstairs window and onto Frank's garage.In other words I'd find the solution that didn't require me to come to a fallacious conclusion.I keep noticing this tenor of "life and death" in your questions, and clearly you think those are the stakes involved. Isn't it possible that you're letting your fear of death (or the hereafter) make you accept fallacious reasoning? Is that really a reasonable approach to spirituality?This message has been edited by crashfrog, 07-22-2004 04:15 PM

What I meant was how could a supernatural power make you know that it was communicating with you? Supernatural communication classifies as a miracle, which you think would be undetectable. M-W online defines personal as "having the qualities of a person rather than a thing or abstraction ." A personal god has the properties of a person, in contrast with something like a life force.

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Ok, but that says absolutely nothing about what actually happened. The likelyhood isn't the reality; statistics are descriptive, not perscriptive.

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I am at the computer in the living room right now. Ten minutes ago I was in my room. I can tell you that way I got from my room to the computer was either A, a massively parallel quantum tunneling event, or B, I walked by the kitchen and got a snack.

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If I told you I would give you $100 if you could tell me how I got to the computer, A or B, how, and which option, would you choose?

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Since you have no evidence aside of likelyhood, likelyhood is all the evidence you have. Tautalougous, but correct (also a tautology).

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I'd jump out the upstairs window and onto Frank's garage.

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Darn it. I forgot to specify that the only options were the ones I listed. I guess I asked for that one. Oh well...

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In other words I'd find the solution that didn't require me to come to a fallacious conclusion.

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In reference to a conclusion about a biblical passage(actually any statement), I know of only three options:
1. Believe it
2. Disbelieve it
3. Ignore it

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The only choice possible, without coming to a fallacious conclusion, is number 3. In some instances, such as the example I gave with you, Frank, and Bob, (except restricted so that if you believe the wrong neighbor, you die regardless of any creativity) choice 3 isn't a reasonable option. To be at all reasonable you must commit a fallacy.

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There are statements in the Bible about life and death, and whether you believe or disbelieve them, you are commiting a fallacy; but if you ignore them, you're just not being very smart.

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So what am I supposed to do?

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I keep noticing this tenor of "life and death" in your questions, and clearly you think those are the stakes involved.

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Yup.

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Isn't it possible that you're letting your fear of death (or the hereafter) make you accept fallacious reasoning?

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You don't know me very well, and I haven't posted anything to the contrary, so it isn't unreasonable for you to think that. However, the only two philosophical views I've ever really considered have been christianity and naturalism/nihilism. If I came to the conclusion that there wasn't a God, I would have no belief in an afterlife of any sort, just a lack of conciousness, which personally doesn't scare me.

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Is that really a reasonable approach to spirituality?

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Nope.

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This message has been edited by JT, 07-22-2004 06:01 PM

The same way you let me know that you're communicating with me. Well, that's not really how it's used when my church refers to a "personal god", so if you meant something different, I apologize for misunderstanding you. How about you say "I don't know if that's true or not?" Why is saying "I don't know" so hard? What reasonable people do; say "I don't know" and keep thinking about it. Well, I'm glad we agree on that, at least.At any rate, I find your "likelyhood" examples so far have been simplistic in the extreme. So far we've agreed that there's at least two kinds of statements in the Bible - those that are verifiable, and those that are not.Even if we grant, for a moment, that you can do the kind of "reasoning-by-trustworthyness" that you're proposing, just because one source is trustworthy for one kind of statement doesn't mean that they're more likely to be right about another kind of statement. For instance it doesn't matter how trustworthy Frank is in general if he knows nothing about bombs and how to recognize them - he may never have lied in his life but that doesn't mean I should trust his every conclusion about everything. The other neighboor might be a cheat and a liar but if I also know that he's a veteran of an elite mine-clearing squad, I'm much more likely to take his word over Frank's.Regardless of how trustworthy you might believe the Bible to be, how can that possibly substantitate the accuracy of things that the Bible authors couldn't possibly have known?This message has been edited by crashfrog, 07-22-2004 09:30 PM

What I meant was how would you know it was a diety? How do you know that I am not God ?(DISCLAIMER: I am not claiming to be God. Not that it is likely that anybody would so misunderstand me, but just in case) Say, for example, that in this post I claimed diety. Also, that I wrote down everything that you had been thinking in the moments before you read this post. All of that could be attributed to my possesing a large ego and mind reading technology. What I am wondering is this: Could a supernatural power be able to convince you that it was communicating with you? "Your church"? This wouldn't be as puzzling if you would have said refered, past tense. You go to church?I believe that God is personal, i.e. has the properties of a person, and I also believe that God is personal, i.e. is aware of people and can, if he chooses, communicate with people. I meant the first, although I believe both, so your misunderstanding is understood. I should have been more specific. In terms of possible attitudes towards a statement, that is a definite possibility. What I meant is a little more complicated, and I didn't fully explain it (probably in connection to the fact that I didn't think it all the way through).Assume that for proposition P, if P or ~P, some action should be taken. There are four possible attitudes to take towards P.
1. Believe P to be true
2. Believe P to be false
3. Ignore P
4. Acknowledge uncertainty in regards to P's veracityIf attitude 1 is adopted, the person should do the action associated with P, while if attitude 2 is adopted, the person will do the action associated with ~P. However, if options 3 or 4 are taken, the person will do nothing. I try to make examples simple. The point of using an example is that they are simpler than the actual problem, but may shed light on it. I guess you think I've oversimplified, though. Very good point. In most cases, including your's and Frank's, that holds true. The Bible is unique, though, because it doesn't deal with neighbors, it deals with an omnipotent, omniscient being. If scriptures were divinely inspired, then it is God's knowledge that is being communicated, not that of the human authors.I'm leaving for a mountain biking trip in a couple days, and a vacation after that, so I might not be back for a week or two. Have a good weekend.

I dunno, what's a "deity"? Sure.Could a being substantiate claims of omnipotence - infinite power - with demonstrations of finite power? Probably not. I don't go, no, but I'm still a part of that community and it still has an influence in my life. So I guess I still consider it "my" church. Sorry if it was puzzling to you. Yeah, that is what I meant. I should have been clearer; I know that the purpose of an example is to be simpler, but fundamentally the same in some crucial way. I felt that your examples were too simple to be the same as the situation we're describing. Ok, but then it's even worse - what possible human writer could possibly be qualified to make judgements about an ineffable God? Even if that were originally true, those original scriptures are not availiable to us. There's still the translation problem.

Hey JT, I just wanted to say that this is one of the most satisfying arguments I've read here yet (which isn't saying all TOO much, as I haven't been here long ). If only fundies would take lessons from you on debating! You present arguments that are both convincing and well structured. You clarify your statements and admit errors in your reasoning when they are pointed out. You come up with scenerios that, at the very least, get me thinking. In fact, I would be hard pressed to find anything wrong with your arguments. I wish all Christians had your mindframe. Why is it so hard for others to debate this way?Anyways, I just felt the need to give out some kudos, as debates like this seem to be pretty uncommon.Edit: Fixed grammar/typo errors.This message has been edited by Glordag, 07-24-2004 08:14 AM

I think JT is being very clear, precise and strong.I think there are some holes in the logic but I'll wait to see how things unfold.

Glordag says: NosyNed says: Aww, shucks. Thanks guys, its nice to hear that I'm doing well. Back to the disquisitions, Crashfrog said: A deity is a god; a supernatural being. True, it couldn't conclusively demonstrate infinite power to you, a being with finite comprehension. However, would it be possible for said supernatural being to convince you that, were you to believe it to be supernatural, you would be acting in the most rational manner possible? No problem. It makes complete sense. Do you think you could fix the oversimplifications in my examples? (assuming they are fixable). I think that could lead to some very productive dialogue. If God wanted to communicate with us, he would have made us such that we could comprehend enough of his communication for it to be worthwhile.Also, this is where faith comes into the picture. We cannot mentally grasp an infinite being, so if one did exist, it is only by faith that we could believe in it. That is why I am dabbling with teaching myself greek, and I eventually might learn hebrew.I think, maybe, that what you mean is the propogation problem, i.e. after how many times the scriptures have been copied, how could they be accurate?The copiers (monks, etc.; not xerox machines) had elaborate systems to ensure accuracy. After having copied a manuscript, they would check it (using complex systems involving counting letters and stuff), and if an error so little as to involve a single letter was discovered, the entire manuscript would be completely destroyed.Error checking is fallible, though, and some mistakes occured. However, to escape the rigourous checks, an error would have to be very minor. Examination of the earliest manuscripts reveals rare, minor discrepencies, none of which change anything but obtuse, unimportant doctrinal points in the few cases when they change anything at all.

That doesn't help me much. What do those terms mean? Given a certain entity, how would I establish if it was a god or not? Maybe I'm not so sure now. Certainly a being could convince me it was communicating with me. I don't believe anything could convince me it was supernatural - it's not coherent with the definition of "supernatural" for such a being to be able to act in the natural world.The appearance of a deity-like being in the natural world would not be evidence that the supernatural exists; it would be evidence that there's some natural laws we didn't know about. I don't understand how you could expect to conclude something was supernatural without an exhaustive knowledge of natural law, which is something we'll never have. At such point as those systems were in place, yes.But much of the history of the text of the Bible predates those systems. In particular there's a considerable, unknown length of time in which the "text" of the Bible was transmitted only by oral history. If you've ever played "Telephone" you know what that can do to a narrative.In other words, I'm fairly sure that the Bible has survived relatively unchanged (except in some cases, I'm sure) since well before medieval times. Prior to that, however, there's little guarantee that the Bible resembles the "original", if there even is an original.As you said, it's an article of faith that God exists; the problem is that it's a different, separate article of faith that the Bible we have is his book, as he meant it to be. Literalist Christians often conflate these elements of faith but they are fundamentally separate. I guess maybe that's been my point the whole time.

It is impossible, under any circumstances, to establish with 100% surety that any given entity (or cause) is supernatural. Basically, if an effect has been caused which has no possible/ remotely plausible naturalistic explanation, then it may be attributed to a supernatural cause under some circumstances. I'll reply to that in the "What is supernatural?" thread. The problem I see with agnosticism is that it says "we can't know for sure, so we don't know at all." Take, for example, Julius Ceasar. You are willing to believe he existed because that belief is "the simplest explanation for a" whole bunch of evidence. Why can't you extend that reasoning to the supernatural? Going from "God exists" to "thus the Bible must be accurate in all regards" is a non-sequitor, but going from "the Bible is accurate in all testable regards" to "God exists" isn't (I do remember that the second strain of logic can be debated to fall under the "genetic fallacy").