I’ve no time to re-read the previous comments because there are so many! Please summarize which points you think I haven’t address and I’ll address them here.
Which ‘meaningful variation’ is not captured by the logically exhaustive list in my book?
Oh, but I’m expected to read your entire book. Yeah, that’s really fair.
But I’ll play by your rules. Here, I’ll just re-quote my comment:
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You’re just repeating a question which Josh has already answered on my behalf. See the points I made about identification of miracle and evaluation of natural impersonal causes on pages 174-6 of chapter 8. I thought I asked you to read Chapter 1 as well. See page 34 where I state ‘While science
by itself cannot identify a miracle, science can be used by philosophical argument to rule out certain naturalistic alternatives as one of the steps towards identifying a miracle.’
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You still are not understanding my point.
I am not questioning how you rule out possible naturalistic explanations for the “resurrection”.
I am asking how one can rule out possible explanations once one has dismissed (methodological) naturalism as a means of assessing possible claims.
Here is how the argument is going:
“I believe the claimed resurrection of Jesus did not happen, because the available evidence shows that resurrections do not happen.”
“You can’t do that. That’s begging the question. You can’t presume off the bat that resurrections are don’t happen.”
“OK, well, why couldn’t the claims of Jesus’s resurrection be the result of legendary development?”
“Because the available evidence shows that legendary development could not occur over this span of time.”
“You can’t do that. That’s begging the question. You can’t presume off the bat that legendary development could not occur over this span of time.”
“No, that’s wrong.”
“Why is it wrong? I just said the same thing you did regarding my argument.”
How would you respond at this point?
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As I said before, the response is in pages 174-6 of chapter 8:
‘In particular, it should be noted that the objection against the reasonableness of miracles based on the apparent infrequency of miracles does not work. When evaluating rare hypotheses, infrequency is not the main consideration; the main consideration is the reason for the infrequency. In the case of evaluating natural impersonal causes, infrequencies can help us exclude natural impersonal causes and naturalistic alternatives to Jesus’ resurrection given that natural causes are supposed to act in predictable and law-like ways. For example, by thinking about the law-like causal pathways that are required to produce perceptions, we can determine that, without a corresponding external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ, the mental states internal to each person within a group of people would not agree on various details concerning their experience of the external world. Given this reason it is no wonder that a recent study by Bergeron and Habermas (2015) concludes that collective hallucinations are not found in peer-reviewed medical literature. However a miraculous event is supposed to be caused by a supernatural personal free agent, and it is not unreasonable to think that an infrequent event happened as a result of a personal agent freely choosing to act in a certain unique way only on a special occasion.’
In other words, your statement ‘I am asking how one can rule out possible explanations once one has dismissed (methodological) naturalism as a means of assessing possible claims’ is a misrepresentation of my methodology. I do NOT dismiss (methodological) naturalism as a means of assessing possible claims. Rather, it depends on WHAT KIND OF possible claim we are considering. If we are considering the probability of a naturalistic hypothesis, then of course we may use methodological naturalism to exclude it. However, if we are considering the probability of a supernatural hypothesis (‘a miraculous event is supposed to be caused by a supernatural personal free agent’, who may ‘freely choosing to act in a certain unique way only on a special occasion’), then it would be unreasonable to use methodological naturalism to exclude it as explained above. The means that you use to assess a claim must be appropriate to the kind of claim that is being assessed. Your fallacy lies in failing to understand this point.
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Exactly. You use one set of standards to assess the conclusion you wish to reach, and then a completely different set for the conclusions you wish to deny.
That is not an intellectually defensible way to go about addressing a question.
Anyway, thanks for giving me enough information to realize that reading more of your book will not be a worthwhile use of my time, as it just commits the same basic error made by every other apologist for the “resurrection” that I have already encountered.
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I have already explained why the set of standards should be appropriate to the kind of claim that is being assessed. You reply by simply asserting that is not an intellectually defensible without explaining why it is not intellectually defensible, and without replying to the explanations that I gave. You thereby commits the same basic error made by many atheists that I have already encountered, namely making assertions without justification and without replying to objections. This is a sign that you are running away from God.
Atheists are not running away from (your) God. One does not run away from something that does not exist.
This is the same basic error made by many apologists that I have already encountered.
You will never convince any atheist that the resurrection occurred because your false assumption that atheists really believe your god exists will prevent you from even seeing the biggest hole in your argument and largest obstacle you need to overcome.
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No, it wouldn’t. Methodological naturalism(a misnomer, really) isn’t really restricted to only observing naturalistic phenomena. Nor non-free agents. I can observe right now that, if God exist, God isn’t choosing to supernaturally make the sky purple and green in stripes and dots. As far I can tell, God has never chosen to supernaturally make the sky purple and green in stripes and dots. So nothing prevents me from making inferences about what God is or isn’t doing, and hence likely to do or not, in the same way nothing prevents me from making inferences about what “nature”, or other free agents is or isn’t doing.
All the world’s human free agents, every living person, could in principle decide to all simultaneously go throw themselves in the sea and drown, or run into the streets and dance, or give all their money to charity, as a certain “unique event”. They could have done this unique event at innumerable opportunities in the past. But so far they haven’t, so it’s perfectly reasonable to infer that it is a priori extremely unlikely for them all to decide to do it now or at any point in the future. There’s are entire branches of science dedicated to the studying quantitatively what both human and animal free agents are likely do in all sorts of circumstances, called things like sociology, ethology, psychology, economics, marketing/advertising, and so on. Trying to understand and predict trends in behavior of “free agents”.
The thing about the God hypothesis is that if God wills it, it obtains. If God wills that the sky should be filled with unicorns as a unique event, the sky will be filled with unicorns. I observe that the sky isn’t filled with unicorns, hence if God exists it’s very unlikely he’s going to decide the sky be filled with unicorns.
God doesn’t appear to spend a lot of time making me or anyone else who ever lived 100 feet tall, it is a priori unlikely that anyone who claims so, have actually been 100 feet tall by the aid of God.
Same on naturalism, it doesn’t appear that anyone has ever grown to be 100 feet tall, hence it is a priori unlikely that anyone who claims so will be able to grow to 100 feet tall.
God doesn’t appear to be wanting to run around and supernaturally resurrect people all the time. And so on.
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You simply assert that God does not exist without responding to the arguments I presented in my book. This is the same basic error made by many atheists that I have already encountered. I did not assume that atheists believe God exists. Rather, my point is, by making assertions without replying to arguments, many atheists are refusing to consider the evidences for God.
I’m sure you are being honest in saying you believe you have done so. But you haven’t, and I lack the patience to try to explain further as you seem quite impenetrable to any explanations.
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If you’re going to invoke the resurrection as evidence for God’s existence, we first need to try to estimate the probability that the resurrection even occurred. The form of the argument seems to be something like the following:
Only if A is the case(God exists) and for no other reason, would we expect B to be the case(the resurrection occurred). B is the case(the resurrection occurred), hence A(God exists) must be the case.
Now obviously you can’t just say that the resurrection is likely to have occurred because God exists. And God is likely to exist, because the resurrection is likely to have occurred. That would be straightforward circular reasoning.
As an atheist I obviously don’t grant the premise that God’s existence is likely. Hence if you want to show me that God exists by appealing to the resurrection, you need to show first that the resurrection even occurred, and that only if God exists is that likely to have occurred.
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I think the objections raised to your reasoning are completely legitimate, but I also thought the disagreement was substantive, meaning that I thought one could simply disagree with your reasoning processes without concluding that there were other reasons to disregard your arguments.
Then I read this: “This is a sign that you are running away from God.”
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Hitchens’ razor is an epistemological razor expressed by writer Christopher Hitchens. It says that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
Hitchens has phrased the razor in writing as “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
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Sigh…another assertion from you without replying to the arguments that I gave.
Let me first summarize my argument against Faizal’s claim before responding to yours. My argument is, given the presence of a phenomenon (i.e. ‘The historical evidence indicates that there were people in mid-first century CE who claimed that they had seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion, they truly saw something, what they saw was not caused intramentally but extramentally, and the extramental entity was not anyone else but the same Jesus who died on the cross. Therefore, Jesus resurrected’ as argued in my book), should we use methodological naturalism to exclude the hypothesis that ‘God resurrected Jesus’ as an explanation for the phenomena? I have explained that we should not, because ‘it is not unreasonable to think that an infrequent event happened as a result of a personal agent freely choosing to act in a certain unique way only on a special occasion’ (p. 175). Whereas we can use methodological naturalism to exclude hallucination as an explanation for the phenomenon ‘they truly saw something’ because ‘In the case of evaluating natural impersonal causes, infrequencies can help us exclude natural impersonal causes and naturalistic alternatives to Jesus’ resurrection given that natural causes are supposed to act in predictable and law-like ways. For example, by thinking about the law-like causal pathways that are required to produce perceptions, we can determine that, without a corresponding external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ, the mental states internal to each person within a group of people would not agree on various details concerning their experience of the external world.’
However, in your examples such as ‘I can observe right now that, if God exist, God isn’t choosing to supernaturally make the sky purple and green in stripes and dots’, ‘I observe that the sky isn’t filled with unicorns’, you are referring to the absence of phenomenon to be explained (absence of purple sky, absence of unicorns). Therefore, these examples are disanalogous to the case of Jesus resurrection where there is presence of phenomenon to be explained, as noted in the paragraph above.
There is a longstanding debate between determinists and indeterminists whether humans are really free. I personally affirm that humans have limited libertarian freedom; I emphasize that this freedom is limited e.g. if someone suddenly step on my toes really hard, I would not have the freedom not to say ‘ouch’. I therefore agree that in many cases it’s perfectly reasonable to infer that it is a priori extremely unlikely for humans to decide to do some things now or at any point in the future, and that is because humans are not supernatural nor perfectly free, rather their freedom is limited by many natural factors which can be studied by psychologists, sociologists, etc. I myself state on p.202 that ‘No group of people would be willing to sacrifice everything for what they do not believe to be true and be condemned by God after death for being false witnesses.’
Things are different when it comes to whether God would choose not to resurrect most other people but resurrect Jesus. In this case we do not have evidence to think that God’s choice not to resurrect most people is limited by natural factors which can be studied by psychologists, etc. Hence this would not be a valid reason to conclude that the prior probability that God would raise Jesus is low.
Yes as you say it is unlikely that anyone who claims to be able to naturally grow to 100 feet tall would naturally be able to do so, because we know that is not how the natural works when it is left on its own and given certain circumstances.
You tried to argue that it is likewise unlikely that anyone who claims to be able to supernaturally grow to 100 feet tall would supernaturally be able to do so, because we know that is not what God often chooses to do.
I disagree that ‘we know that is not what God often chooses to do’ is a good explanation for the unlikelihood of God making just ‘anyone’ taller. First, we need to consider who this anyone is. Is he as special as Jesus? (see the discussion of religious context of Jesus in Chapter 8). We cannot read the mind of God like a psychologist to rule out the possibility that a particular person X is specially chosen by God to manifest a miracle and reveal Himself within a specific religious context. Thus we might say that the prior probability is indeterminate (Swinburne argues that the prior probability of God doing a miracle given Jesus’ religious context is in fact high, but let’s set aside Swinburne’s argument first).
Second, in the absence of evidence the claim is indeed unlikely, not because we can read the mind of God to know that the prior probability that He would not make him tall is low, but because we know that there have been many mistaken claims of miracles. In other words, there are common naturalistic alternatives which—in the absence of evidence to rule them out—are very likely, and given that the probabilities must all add up to 1 this would imply that the miraculous claim is unlikely.
Nevertheless, in the case of Jesus’ resurrection there are evidences to rule out all the naturalistic alternatives as I argue in my book. I wrote on p.184 ‘one should ‘distinguish between the probability of a miracle claim considered apart from the evidence and the probability of the claim given that evidence’ (McGrew 2013). Therefore, while there have been many mistaken reports in general, one should consider the evidence that is specific to the particular case of Jesus’ resurrection and think about the possible ways by which the reports concerning Jesus’ resurrection appearances could have been mistaken, and these ways have all been excluded by the considerations explained in the previous chapters’.
We can arrive at the probability of the resurrection by using the logically exhaustive list formulated in my book and using argument by exclusion, without having to first assign a number for the prior probability of Jesus’ resurrection which (as I explain above) is indeterminate. As I wrote on page 185-186: ‘the probability of each of the seven possible categories of explanations concerning the claims of Jesus’ post-mortem appearances—viz. legends, no experience, intramental, mistaken identity, swoon, escape, and resurrection—must add up to 1. Since each of the six naturalistic alternatives has negligible probability and that the probability of the disjunction of six negligible probabilities is negligible, it can be concluded that the resurrection of Jesus happened (i.e. the probability of Jesus’ resurrection has negligible difference from the probability of 1)… Even if one disagrees with my assessment that each of the naturalistic alternative hypotheses has ‘negligible probability’ or ‘vanishingly small probability’ (to use McGrew’s term), one can still say that each of these naturalistic alternatives has been shown to be very improbable. For example, even if one assigns to each of the six naturalistic alternatives a probability of one in a thousand (which is very generous and much higher than the vanishingly small probability calculated by McGrew), that still leaves the resurrection with a probability of 99.4%.7 This should warrant assent from a reasonable person.’
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I’ve already bear the burden of proof and presented the evidence in my book, but it seems that some atheists here are ignoring it.
I don’t understand what you mean by ‘one could simply disagree with your reasoning processes without concluding that there were other reasons to disregard your arguments’. Why do you disagree with my reasoning?