Bible: Word of God or Not

Hi, mjfloresta. I agree that it is very important to insist on fine distinctions.First you write: Then you write: That seems odd: the position that allowed the apostles to know a fact does not allow the followers of Mohammed to know an equivalent fact. Also, you are eager to state facts that a few sentences later you admit are not in your possession.See how slippery facts are?Moving on: Or he wasn't dead to begin with...Did you know that American colonists in the 18th and early 19th centuries sometimes were buried with bells above their graves, the bell rope trailing down into the casket? You see, they had seen from exhumed caskets--floods, investigations, ghouls, whatever--that some people were apparently buried alive. They developed quite a horror of this possibility. Poe exploited that horror in his story, The Premature Burial.So I'd say the apostles had no way to know for a fact that someone was dead until that putative corpse began to swell and rot. There are medical conditions that so lower the metabolic rate that only the most subtle of examiners or instruments can detect life. Several times a year we are treated to tales of folks waking up in the morgue. Yes. Onto another delusional road that leads people over the cliffs to death like mad sheep.

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Thankee, sirrah.I'm not dead yet either.

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Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799) Save lives! Click here!
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I read your entire post several times; quoting it entire would have made it seem no less odd.As to your numbered points: you are asserting the recorded beliefs of others as matters of fact to support a belief you claim to be fact.No matter how many boards you nail together, scaffolds are not foundations.

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Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799) Save lives! Click here!
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Belief is cheap.Millions have died because they believed a lie. Magical armors against bullets have failed Chinese, Native American, and African believers, among others--all, interestingly, desperately fighting losing battles against invaders. Desperation is one breeding ground of belief.A willingness to die lends no credence to the prompting belief. People die for foolish reasons and mistaken beliefs every day.Oceans of blood--heroic, martyred, or foolish blood--do not establish even one drop of fact. It's just blood.

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Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799) Save lives! Click here!
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No, you continue to embrace a Christian exceptionalism that mistakes belief for knowledge.Many innocent men have gone to prison because witnesses swore, in good faith and quite persuasively, that they saw those man commit a crime. Those people were wrong. Eyewitnesses are intensely persuasive; eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. You may have seen the studies demonstrating this fact. If not, I'll locate references for you.The apostles believed they saw the risen Christ--perhaps they did. Or perhaps, like Dickens' Scrooge, it was just a bit of bad meat or an intense desire that provided their vision. Their certainty about what they saw is not evidence; even your evidence for their certainty is several times removed from the apostles themselves.Let me rephrase things for you. Millions have died--or lived--totally convinced of the truth of an error. You can repeat your claim of an epistemic exceptionalism for the apostles an umpteen times, but it is as hollow the umpteenth time as the first. Mr. Gullible, meet Mr. Inkjet.

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Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799) Save lives! Click here!
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I understood his point perfectly well. What made you suppose that I had not? His epistemic assumptions, contradictions, and exceptionalism are actually much larger; for example, consider the enormous conradiction between his certainty about the apostles' certainty and his readiness to recognize that his own consequent beliefs could be mistaken. Thus, in a debate of this sort, just who is confusing knowing and believing is acutely germane. Then I cannot imagine why you felt the need to comment. My interest in this debate concerns the relationship between knowing and believing, a matter near the heart of "Bible: Word of God or Not."The matter of martyrdom was a device of mjfloresta's choice to illustrate his view. Having seen a great deal of blood, I find the device totally irrelevant, moot, and morally hazardous. Given the relevance of knowing and belief to this thread, and the fact that mj continues to disagree and to offer new arguments, why wouldn't I continue to reply?I'm sure he sees it the same way, and rightfully so. After all, we are at a debate forum.

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Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at any time, madam, is all that distinguishes us from the other animals.-Pierre De Beaumarchais (1732-1799) Save lives! Click here!
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