You earlier cited the section of the video (YouTube) from 16:45 to 21:20. However, the problem with this section is that it contains multiple errors such as misrepresentation of Licona (which has been confirmed by Licona himself Are Paulogia’s Videos Deceptive? Cameron & Dr. Loke Respond - YouTube 25:50) and false analogies e.g. about Frank Zappa and American Election (see Who Saw Risen Jesus? Dr. Andrew Loke Responds to @Paulogia - YouTube ; from 2:17:00-2:24:30).
Now isn’t it sloppy reasoning on your part that, instead of replying to my arguments for why they are imperfect analogies, you simply reply by asserting ‘Those are actually perfect analogies…’ without responding to my arguments?
And I still cannot find where (you claimed) ‘Allison confirming that he does not believe we can know what the Corinthians knew about this alleged event involving 500 people, contrary to what you claim.’
Now isn’t it sloppy reasoning on your part that, when I asked you ‘Can you give the exact timestamp?’, you simply reply by asserting ‘It’s the part where Allison says stuff in that excerpt’ without providing the exact timestamp?
You wrote ‘But since you have already admitted that Allison said this to you personally in an email, I really don’t understand why you are making a big deal about this.’
In reply, what Allison said to me in his email is actually more complicated than what you claim I admitted, since he did explain his reasons for concluding (as I do) that there was indeed ‘resurrection appearance’ to the 500 which overlap with some of my own reasons (see my reply to Mikkel below), but in any case the reason why I am making a ‘big deal’ is because WHAT started this whole chain of discussion between Mikkel, you and myself in this thread IN THE FIRST PLACE (see post 44 above) was Mikkel’s accusation that I misunderstood Paulogia when discussing Allison’s CLIP (not his email!), thus it is important that I demonstrate that I did not misunderstood Allison’s clip. But after I demonstrated this point, Mikkel and yourself shifted the discussion to other issues without acknowledging that Mikkel’s accusation was false! Isn’t this evidence that we have a group of atheists here who are biased in favor of one another’s sloppy reasoning, and without any accountability for the words which they have carelessly written?
In your earlier post you also wrote ‘Paulogia’s argument is that your argument is insufficient to convince us that there were 500 people who witnessed the resurrected Jesus. And Allison clearly agrees, as you admit yourself.’
I asked: But where in the video did Allison says he ‘clearly agrees’ (and that I admit he agrees)?
You replied: ‘As to where you have admitted this yourself, I will just again quote from your own comment: Andrew_Loke: ‘Now Allison’s video clip was about whether WE could confirm the details of what the 500 saw (Allison doesn’t think we could, and he restated this point again in his email), yet Paulogia cited Allison’s clip to argue against my point which is about whether the CORINTHIANS could confirm whether there were 500.’
However, what I admitted above was ‘Allison doesn’t think that WE could confirm the details of what the 500 saw’. This is not equivalent to ‘Allison doesn’t think that the CORINTHIANS could confirm whether there were 500.’
You replied: ‘The issue under debate is whether there is sufficient evidence for us to know that Jesus was resurrected. What the Corinthians may or may not have known is immaterial to that question, because we are not in a position to know what they did or did not know.’
In reply, there are two issues under debate: (1) whether I have misunderstood Paulogia when discussing Allison’s CLIP as Mikkel accused (2) whether there is sufficient evidence for us to know that Jesus was resurrected. How often must you and Mikkel confound these two points in order to excuse yourselves from having falsely accused me?
As I explained in my videos, what the Corinthians may or may not have known IS relevant to BOTH questions, but you haven’t been bothered to check out my videos and respond to my arguments but merely have been relying on Paulogia’s misrepresentations of it. This is abysmal reasoning on your part.
To illustrate the above distinction between ‘Allison doesn’t think that WE could confirm the details of what the 500 saw’, and ‘Allison doesn’t think that the CORINTHIANS could confirm whether there were 500’, consider another scenario: I know that somebody/some people must have seen my great-great grandfather before, even though I don’t know who he/she/they were, where they were, and what they saw, and there isn’t any surviving first-hand account from any of them. Therefore, I don’t think we could confirm the details of what they saw. However, this does not mean I don’t think they could confirm the details of what they saw.
You replied ‘I want to prove that my grandfather was wearing a grey fedora on March 16, 1945,’ but how is that relevant to my arguments for Jesus’ resurrection? Which argument in my book require us to prove (say) that Jesus was wearing a particular coloured clothing?
I missed out the earlier reply by Mikkel because it was hidden earlier. I prefer to type on the text of our previous discussion in my word document and copy-and-paste here, thus I don’t use the forum quote function. My reply to Mikkel below:
In my earlier post I wrote
‘Now Allison’s video clip was about whether WE could confirm the details of what the 500 saw (Allison doesn’t think we could, and he restated this point again in his email), yet Paulogia cited Allison’s clip to argue against my point which is about whether the CORINTHIANS could confirm whether there were 500.’
Mikkel replied ‘No. The disagreement is obviously about whether ANYONE has good reason to actually believe there were 500 witnesses…’
I replied ‘*Isn’t it the case that, to understand what the disagreement is about, you need to understand the context? And haven’t I already explained that the original context was about whether the CORINTHIAN Christians could confirm whether there were 500?
Mikkel replied: ‘You have asserted as much, but it is irrelevant to the point Paulogia is making, and the point I am making.’
In reply, Mikkel has confounded two issues: (1) whether Paulogia’s use of Allison’s CLIP for the purpose of rebutting my original argument was a misrepresentation of Allison’s clip (2) whether we should believe in this claim that there were 500 witnesses of the resurrection.
Mikkel replied ‘Nothing is being confounded. I am addressing both issues in my responses.’
In reply, addressing both issues without distinguishing them IS confounding. Looking back at earlier discussion, it is clear that I started talking about (1), and Mikkel replied ‘No’ and ‘False’ but he was talking about (2), which missed the point I was making.
Mikkel replied by insisting ‘False. I have addressed both of these misleading claims appropriately.’
In reply, as explained above Mikkel has confounded those two issues, which is inappropriate because it shows that it was Mikkel who didn’t do the homework of ensuring he properly understood the context and purpose of the argument I was making (i.e. about 1 rather than 2) before responding to me.
Mikkel replies by asserting that it is a ‘meaningless red herring’ even though he was the one who emphasized on the importance of understanding the context and purpose of the argument, and when he himself has failed to do so he claimed that it is a ‘meaningless red herring’. His excuses are becoming ever more abysmal.
Mikkel then goes on to repeat his assertion that ‘When Allison explains that we know next to nothing about these people, we can agree with that and use it in an argument.’
However, Mikkel fails to distinguish between ‘Allison doesn’t think that WE could confirm the details of what the 500 saw’, which is what Allison meant in the Clip and which is not equivalent to ‘Allison doesn’t think that the CORINTHIANS could confirm whether there were 500,’ yet Paulogia presented it as if it was the latter, which is a misrepresentation. Does Mikkell know the meaning of misrepresentation? Definition from Oxford Languages: the action or offence of giving a false or misleading account of the nature of something. Now of course he and Paulogia can ‘take some fact that Allison states, agree that it is a fact, and then use that fact in an argument to support our case,’ but my point was that this should not be presented as ‘Dr Andrew Loke vs Dr Dale ALLISON’, since (as I have explained) Allison’s reasoning is not even relevant against the argument I was making to which Paulogia was responding. To present it as ‘Dr Andrew Loke vs Dr Dale ALLISON’ (which Paulogia did) is to give a false or misleading account of my reasoning and Allison’s reasoning, which is a misrepresentation.
Mikkel replies by saying ‘ A youtube video has a clickbaity title? ’ Which is another abysmal excuse: attracting attention is not a good reason for giving a false impression and misrepresenting scholars (not only Allison but also Licona, McDowell and myself)
On Allison’s mentioning ‘his passing reference doesn’t sound like a fiction to me,’ Mikkel’s reply '‘Who would believe someone on their say-so if they thought their words sounded like fictions?’ missed Allison’s point, which is that, contrary to Paulogia’s reasoning about the lack of details, Allison’s point is that it is the passing nature of the remark without needing to elaborate on details which indicate that Paul was appealing to known facts. This materially alter the point as understood by Paulogia and Mikkel.
As for (2), I mentioned previously that I have already answered all of the points Mikkel raised in this video: Who Saw Risen Jesus? Dr. Andrew Loke Responds to @Paulogia - YouTube .
But instead of checking it out and reply to my arguments there, Mikkel replied by repeating his points which I have already answered, and repeating his question ‘So did you find out who they were, where they were, and what they saw, by finding first-hand accounts from most of them?’ without answering my question ‘how are these questions relevant to the arguments that I offered’ other than asserting ‘Red herring’ without explaining why is it red herring in this case.
Let me add one more question: Is Mikkel assuming that, in order to conclude that x saw y in the past, one has to find out who x was, where x were, and what x saw, by finding first-hand accounts from most of members of x?’
Mikkel answers: ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.’ But why think that the evidence needs to be ‘extraordinary’ in the sense of answering who x was, where x were, and what x saw, by finding first-hand accounts from most of members of x?’
Now I have argued in my previous post that the assumption 'in order to conclude that x saw y in the past, one has to find out who x was, where x were, and what x saw, by finding first-hand accounts from most of members of x?’ is clearly false. E.g. I know that somebody/some people must have seen my great-great grandfather before, even though I don’t know who he/she/they were, where they were, and what they saw, and there isn’t any surviving first-hand account from any of them.
Mikkel replies ‘That’s because having great-great grandfathers is as mundane as anything. Coming back alive from having been fully dead for days is not. Here the claim itself is not in proportion to the evidence.’
In reply, I was not talking about having great-great grandfathers. I was talking about some people must have SEEN my great-great grandfather before. And why think that with regards to the claim that there were 500 who claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus ‘the claim itself is not in proportion to the evidence’? After all, atheists would agree that it is quite common throughout history to find groups of people claiming to have seen a miracle (how we explain their claim and/or what they have seen [if they did see something] is another matter).
The reason why I know that somebody/some people must have seen my great-great grandfather before is based on inferences. Likewise the reason why we know that there were the 500 is based on inferences which I have explained in the video here Who Saw Risen Jesus? Dr. Andrew Loke Responds to @Paulogia - YouTube .
Here Mikkel replies by asserting that I am ‘chasing down your castles built on thin air, etc’ without replying to the arguments which I offered in the video.
And after asking him 4 times Mikkel still hasn’t replied to my previous question to him on this thread (and all his atheist friends in this thread seem to have excused him for not answering my question):
Isn’t it sloppy reasoning when you claimed that I didn’t understand the context and purpose of the argument Paulogia was making, and when I replied by explaining that I did understand Paulogia’s argument and responded to it (see Are Paulogia’s Videos Deceptive? Cameron & Dr. Loke Respond - YouTube 1 ; from 37 minutes onwards), you simply reply ‘Haha, oh my. My days of having taken you seriously have come to an end’ without responding to my explanation?
Isn’t this evidence that we have a group of atheists here who are biased in favor of one another’s sloppy reasoning, and without any accountability for the words which they have carelessly written?
Finally, you asked about my response to the argument Paulogia makes in his most recent video. I would like to update you that after a long delay Paulogia has replied to my earlier email and agreed to have a written debate. So I will write a written response and (according to the debate rules) post my written statements on Capturing Christianity website: https://capturingchristianity.com/ , while Paulogia will be posting his statements on his Facebook page: Paulogia - Home | Facebook .
I hope to post my first statement before the end of next week (if there is no more delays caused by Paulogia or other unforeseen circumstances), and you will see that the answer to your questions is actually pretty simple (within the context of responding to his entire video). So watch out for it. Until then, goodbye to all of you here.
