No. Because that argument is a non sequitor (a formal Logical Fallacy).
By which I mean that your conclusion is not a logical consequence of your premise.
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In scientific epistemology, no hypothesis or theory is ever considered to be proven. All conclusions are tentative.
How have you tested this hypothesis?
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Except many apologists insist that science is not the epistemology to use when considering miracles.
They leave open the question of what, if any, epistemology is proper in this situation. Confusingly, they will also then use science to rule out things like the mass hallucination or swoon theories regarding the âresurrectionâ even though they just said science has no place here.
Itâs difficult at times to avoid the conclusion that they are using their own peculiar epistemology that could be called âMake It Up As You Go Along, So Long As You Reach The Answer You Want To Reach.â
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Correct. I restated your argument using different language. You stated a logical fallacy here.
Historical method. Then once you determine the historical timeline is correct, you move on to motivation of why they believed what they did and bring in psychology.
You have not given a historical timeline we can even discuss that you think is more likely than the one given by Christians.
The historical method does not consider miracles as plausible explanations. If you disagree, please give an example of a miracle that is endorsed in most standard history textbooks.
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Then itâs ruling out the possibility of the existence of God and so are you if you wonât consider it.
Are you open-minded enough to consider that a miracle could be a plausible explanation for history? Then you will be willing to test whether your hypothesis is a more plausible explanation. Once youâve weighed them, youâll know whether the miracle is worth believing in or not - whether itâs very reasonable or completely stupid or somewhere in between.
Once the possibility of the miracle is otherwise demonstrated, sure. Otherwise, âmy mind ainât so open that anything can walk right in.â
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Iâd agree. Thatâs what Case for Christianity, Case for Christ, other apologetics attempt to show. Itâs a reasonable possibility.
Not at all.
Thatâs not the issue. The discipline of history does not consider supernatural miracles as explanations. Your question is like saying âAre you open minded enough to consider that âBanana!â could be an answer for a multiplication question?â Itâs pointless question, because âBanana!â is not a number, and so cannot be an answer to a mathematical problem. Thatâs not because mathematicians are close minded. They are just required to follow the rules of math in their work.
Similarly, historians have to base their conclusions on things that are known to happen thru the scientific method. They can no more conclude that a resurrection happened than they can conclude that the Pythagorean Theorem is wrong.
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It surely is what they attempt to show. Unfortunately, when one attempts to show it via historical evidence, one is barking up the wrong tree as historical evidence is incompetent to do the job.
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Iâm not sure how many times I have to repeat myself and say in various words that youâre not open-minded to prove to you that youâre not.
But if youâve ruled out every possible rational way to know God exists besides Him standing in front of you. And even then I wonder if youâd say it was a hallucination.
If you want to keep pushing back on me, feel free. Iâll keep repeating myself. But youâre not open to the possibility there is a God.
I find the notion of âopen-mindednessâ a bit funny as it is commonly used. There is âopen like a sewerâ and there is âopen to persuasion by the presentation of evidence of a kind and character suitable to the claim.â I am the latter. I am not the former.
I havenât, of course. But you havenât offered any rational ways to know that any of the gods exist. Once I throw good mental habits out the window by giving credit to stories of the miraculous, I immediately have a thousand religions to believe, not one. And yes, neurological explanations DO reach a lot of the phenomena associated with visions â we see this in the way that paranoid schizophrenics, in some cultures, become shamans, among other things, and this is just one of the reasons why historical evidence is so utterly valueless on such questions.
Whether I would subjectively believe, after experiencing a vision, would not influence the truth or falsity of the proposition that a god exists. And it certainly would not be good evidence for me to run off and try to convince Faizal_Ali. What I do know is that any suggestion that the gods ought to manifest themselves in any particular way results in the people who see themselves as being in possession of a âsophisticatedâ theology telling me that I am demanding something a god would not ever lower itself to do, which is interesting given that itâs typically a central claim of their religion that this is precisely what gods have, from time to time, done.
But I think you mistake me entirely. I am not looking for anything to believe, nor am I looking for anything to not-believe. Iâm interested in the history and nature of Christian thought. I have no dog in this fight. If I knew that there was a god, I am sure I would not be inclined to worship it anyhow, so it makes rather little difference to me.
No, Iâm open to the possibility of any god, apart from those where the associated claims are empirically falsified. But being open to it doesnât mean becoming lackadaisical in scrutinizing the paranormal claims of various religions: again, if I do that, Iâve got a heck of a lot of contradictory things suddenly to start believing, plus the need to hide out after dark so that the vampires donât get me.
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Thanks for replying. My answers would have been totally different to you perhaps because @Faizal_Ali and I have had a longer conversation. I suggested he use the historical method to explain how Paulâs letter, Acts, and Polycarpâs letter came about within his hypothesis and why that hypothesis is more plausible than people actually seeing Jesus risen from the dead. As far as I understand his argument, heâs refused to so, as he assumes miracles canât actually happen in history; therefore his hypothesis does not need to be proven to be more reasonable, as all miracles are unreasonable no matter the historical evidence. Hereâs kind of the start of that conversation: The Validity of Christian Religious Experiences - #494 by thoughtful
Iâm not sure how you reconcile the two statements above. If there was a god, you would not choose to worship him/it anyway? Wouldnât that depend on what kind of God existed?
Thatâs close, at least, to my view. I think Thomas Huxley put it very well in his essay on The Value of Witness to the Miraculous. It is not that I assume these things to be impossible; itâs that I have no reason to think they are possible, ergo, I cannot weigh the reasonableness of an explanation which includes them against one which does not. Historical judgment is all about examining evidence in the light of human experience and probability.
And, of course, when the point of proving that the supernatural event actually happened is to make the case for the existence of gods, one can hardly expect to start by assuming the existence of gods. Itâs clear enough that if you start out with the assumption that gods exist, you will find that they exist.
I donât really think worship is an appropriate relationship. I am not particularly into kink. I do know people who are, and some of them are quite pleasant people, but I have just never been into the whole dominance/submission thing. If a god existed Iâd be very interested in learning more about it (about the god, that is, not about kink), but if I were into kink, Iâd probably just hire a dominatrix and work that out of my system that way. Worship just seems entirely beside the point.
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Of course, you just have to be open to the possibility, or you will always find that they never exist if your skepticism meter says theyâre impossible.
Some possibilities - there are a lot of Abrahamic faith people running around today saying they have evidence in their holy books. Two - why is what you think is good better than what someone else thinks is good? Three - we are talking about a dilemma about God on this thread, Side comments on Euthyphro - #42 by thoughtful
I explain this logical dilemma about God is a false dilemma because God can be possible in a certain way. Logic proves God is possible, so itâs worth thinking about the possibility.
I think you have a misunderstanding of how Abrahamic faiths; Judaism, Christianity, Islam; worship.
Yes, and I am always open to that possibility. However, it is only a bare âphilosophicalâ possibility until evidence competent to bear upon the subject, and of persuasive character, is present.
Logic doesnât actually prove propositions bearing upon the real world. Empirical questions are very different from questions of pure reason. Pure reason will get you to âcogito ergo sumâ and then youâre just about done. Evidence, coupled with empiricism, is what does the rest.
I wish I did. But, no, the idea of a god that wants worshipping does have its analogue in our experience. As Iâve said, if there were a god, it would certainly be a worthwhile object of study. If it wanted worshipping, thatâd be downright weird.
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Quran Surah
54:1 THE LAST HOUR draws near, and the moon is I split asunder!1 (54:2) But if they [who reject all thought of the Last Hour] were to see a sign [of its approach], they would turn aside and say, âAn ever-recurring delusion!â - (54:3) for they are bent on giving it the lie,2 being always wont to follow their own desires. Yet everything reveals its truth in the end.3
1 Most of the commentators see in this verse a reference to a phenomenon said to have been witnessed by several of the Prophetâs contemporaries. As described in a number of reports going back to some companions, the moon appeared one night as if split into two distinct parts. While there is no reason to doubt the subjective veracity of these reports, it is possible that what actually happened was an unusual kind of partial lunar eclipse, which produced anequally unusual optical illusion. But whatever the nature of that phenomenon, it is practically certain that the above Qurâan-verse does not refer to it but, rather, to a future event: namely, to what will happen when the Last Hour approaches. (The Qurâan frequently employs the past tense to denote the future, and particularly so in passages which speak of the coming of the Last Hour and of Resurrection Day; this use of the past tense is meant to stress the certainty of the happening to which the verb relates.) Thus, Raghib regards it as fully justifiable to interpret the phrase inshaqqa 'l-qamar (âthe moon. is split asunderâ) as bearing on the cosmic cataclysm - the end of the world as we know it - that will occur before the coming of Resurrection Day (see art. shaqq in the Mufradat). As mentioned by Zamakhshari, this interpretation has the support of some of the earlier commentators; and it is, to my mind, particularly convincing in view of the juxtaposition, in the above Qurâan-verse, of the moonâs âsplitting asunderâ and the approach of the Last Hour. (In this connection we must bear in mind the fact that none of the Qurâanic allusions to the ânearnessâ of the Last Hour and the Day of Resurrection is based on the human concept of âtimeâ.)
2 Lit., âthey have given [it] the lieâ: an allusion to the prediction of the Last Hour and the Day of Resurrection. The use of the past tense indicates conscious intent or determination (cf. surah 2, note 6). For my rendering of sihr as âdelusionâ, see surah 74, note 12.
3 Lit., âeverything is settled in its [own] beingâ: i.e., everything has an intrinsic reality (haqiqah) of its own, and is bound to reveal that reality either in this world or in the next (Baghawi, on the authority of al-Kalbi); hence, everything must have a purpose or âgoalâ of its
own (Zamakhshari). These two - mutually complementary - interpretations reflect the repeated Qurâanic statement that everything that exists or happens has a meaning and a purpose: cf. 3:191, 10:5 and 38:27 (particularly, see note 11 on 10:5). In the present context, the phrase relates both to the truth referred to in the preceding verses and to its rejection by those who are âwont to follow [but] their own desiresâ.
So Iâm curious whatâs your reaction to these Bible passages? In what way is it weird? Is it evidence evaluation or no?
Matthew 14
So He said, âCome.â And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. 30 But when he saw [e]that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, âLord, save me!â
31 And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to him, âO you of little faith, why did you doubt?â 32 And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.
33 Then those who were in the boat [f]came and worshiped Him, saying, âTruly You are the Son of God.â
John 20
Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said to him, âWe have seen the Lord.â
So he said to them, âUnless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.â
26 And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, âPeace to you!â 27 Then He said to Thomas, âReach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.â
28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, âMy Lord and my God!â
29 Jesus said to him, [f]âThomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.â
While the first passage contains the word âworship,â it actually seems more like astonished praise than worship. And the second passage seems like astonishment and joy, not worship. So Iâm not sure what these have to do with the point. The reactions of the people in these stories do not seem weird in relation to the events related, but that sort of observation bears only upon the internal coherence of the story, not upon its truth.
Now, when you say âis it evidence evaluation or no,â Iâm not entirely sure what youâre asking. I regard the gospels primarily as sales literature, making claims which must find their substantiation elsewhere. As evidence they are good for very little even on the non-supernatural details, and the fact that they are advocacy documents and that they say so many things which appear to be impossible erodes their credibility on the non-supernatural matter considerably. Since both of these accounts are miracle stories, however, historical evidence is incompetent to support them and they must find support elsewhere before the historical claims can be worthy of examination.
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