It provides ordinary evidence of an ordinary event.  That people tell stories.  It provides no evidence of an extraordinary event, the supernatural - by definition beyond the range of ordinary, as all evidence of the supernatural would inexorably be.

If someone wanted to demonstrate that psychic abilities existed, they would work to show a success rate beyond the ordinary range described by brute force of statistics. Extraordinary predictive ability.
If someone wanted to demonstrate the healing power of a magical incantation, they would work to show a success rate beyond the ordinary rate of remission. Extraordinary medical efficacy.
If someone wanted to show that a god walked the earth........................................."there's this book......see......"

There's no point in proponents of the supernatural complaining that the bar has been set too high...they're the ones who set it there by definitively proclaiming something to be extraordinary in the first place. If they want to argue semantics, fine, but they're only arguing with themselves and their own silly ass claims.

It's amazing to me that Steve thinks every single Christian has come to it after rigorous investigation of it. Most people were born into it, with their entire support system having something to do with it. Others convert when they're emotionally vulnerable (recovering from addiction, after suffering a loss, etc.). Still others do it as a form of protest (Muslims converting, people in China converting, etc.). And there are still people forced into it by the promise of violence (see: the various shit holes in Africa).

So, not only is an appeal to popularity fallacious in and of itself (popularity has never been synonymous with truth), the notion that all, or even most, Christians arrived at their faith after serious investigation into it is equally fallacious, and laughable to boot.

I just don't get why you stubbornly stick with that. It's not doing you or your arguments any favors.

Sometimes the appeals to the religion's popularity sound too much like any kid who has ever whined that "everyone else is doing it!" Okay, Stevie, if little Johnny and all the other kids are believing it I guess you can too.

(July 27, 2017 at 9:27 am)SteveII Wrote:

(July 27, 2017 at 8:17 am)Harry Nevis Wrote: "have been compelling to a significant amount of people".  It all comes down to this, doesn't it?  Oh, and "evidence that someone believed it to be true" is the same as "it's true", as long as you agree with it.  You have no evidence that only points to your god, but a pile of evidence that has so many other explanations other than the one you chose makes your choice no more valid.

Go ahead--explain away all the points I made above. Make sure you don't leave any of them out--not explaining even one will knock your house of cards down in an instant. 

Until you do, I have a unaddressed body of evidence that BILLIONS (in case you were not clear on the size of the jury) of people have considered and determined that it meets the standard of proof they chose for themselves--whether that be "beyond reasonable doubt", "clear and convincing evidence", "preponderance of the evidence", "substantial evidence", or "some evidence".

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(July 27, 2017 at 9:04 am)paulpablo Wrote: I didn't demand or mention extraordinary evidence.

I said all claims require equal amounts of evidence.

What makes an extraordinary claim is that it has less evidence backing it up than a standard claim does to begin with.

A standard claim, such as I saw Alf today, I walked down the road, it rained.  

There's already evidence Alf exists (assuming there is), if you know me you'll know I have legs and can walk down a road, we know on this planet it can rain.

I might be lying about all these things but there's at least evidence of the possibility of these events.

If I say Zeus the god traveled faster than light through the halls of Valhalah, then the claim begins in a position of having less evidence backing it up.

Due to the fact we need evidence of Zeus, that anything can travel faster than light, and that valhalah exists.

Okay, so your position is extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence--just ordinary evidence of the components of the claim? Do you think that the NT fails to provide some level of ordinary evidence (even if you think that it does not meet your personal level of proof you require)? 

In case you are saying that the supernatural has to be proven before considering the evidence of the NT claims, then that's just question begging.

A large number (maybe close to a billion?) of people also believe the Mandela Effect is caused by a supernatural (or at the very least, natural but without a shred of evidence for it ) event.  Does that mean we can reasonably conclude that doppelgänger universes are colliding with our time-space, and changing the spelling of "The Berenstain Bears?"

(July 27, 2017 at 12:19 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:

(July 27, 2017 at 9:27 am)SteveII Wrote: Go ahead--explain away all the points I made above. Make sure you don't leave any of them out--not explaining even one will knock your house of cards down in an instant. 

Until you do, I have a unaddressed body of evidence that BILLIONS (in case you were not clear on the size of the jury) of people have considered and determined that it meets the standard of proof they chose for themselves--whether that be "beyond reasonable doubt", "clear and convincing evidence", "preponderance of the evidence", "substantial evidence", or "some evidence".

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Okay, so your position is extraordinary claims do not require extraordinary evidence--just ordinary evidence of the components of the claim? Do you think that the NT fails to provide some level of ordinary evidence (even if you think that it does not meet your personal level of proof you require)? 

In case you are saying that the supernatural has to be proven before considering the evidence of the NT claims, then that's just question begging.

A large number (maybe close to a billion?) of people also believe the Mandela Effect is caused by a supernatural (or at the very least, natural but without a shred of evidence for it ) event.  Does that mean we can reasonably conclude that doppelgänger universes are colliding with our time-space, and changing the spelling of "The Berenstain Bears?"

Well at least you've provided extraordinary evidence.  

(July 27, 2017 at 10:37 am)paulpablo Wrote: I think the NT provides some level of ordinary evidence.  I'll talk about the sections talking about the life of Jesus just because I don't know about all of the NT and just for the sake of conversation to keep it easier.

Someone wrote a book about it, there may have been some witnesses.  That's about it.

There are many MANY things that can be considered to cast doubt on the claims of the new testament.

The fact that it does contain a type of religious leader who is able to perform supernatural actions in the form of miracles.

This isn't begging the question or circular reasoning.  I'm not saying supernatural things can't happen because they're supernatural.

I'm saying we have no evidence (beyond what I previously mentioned) of them (supernatural events in the NT) happening, we do have evidence of people being deceived into believing supernatural actions/events do happen.

There's the situation of the evidence and witness testimony being so old, combined with the supernatural actions.

If the claim was for example "Mary walked across the stepping stones on this river 2000 years ago" then it can be taken with a shrug.  You could think, ok maybe she did, who cares?  Her footprints are long gone, anyone who saw her is long dead, the children of whoever saw her are long dead and so are the grandchildren of her children.

If the claim is that "Jesus came back from the dead, had a chat with people, turned water into wine and walked on water over 2000 years ago."

We're in the same situation, plus supernatural events.  The witnesses are long dead, the wine has been drank, no photos no film, nothing but what people said and wrote down.

So we have no evidence of people being able to use actual real magic and miracles to walk on water, come back from the dead, turn water into wine.

 Can people be tricked into believing this has happened?   Yes, we have evidence people can deceive other people into believing magic things happened, or just lying about it to begin with

 Do cult followers believe their leaders can do these type of things now? 

 Do cult leaders perform real magic supernatural miracles now, or is it true that there are people who are capable of deceiving other people into believing miracles and magic have been performed?

How reasonable is it that a cult leader 2000 years ago could have had witnesses claiming he did miracles when he actually didn't do them.

How reasonable is it to think that the cult leader 2000 years ago performed real magic miracles on the basis of whatever evidence we have.

I'm giving benefit of the doubt though, I'll be willing to go along with a hypothetical situation in which we know these witnesses were real people and this book was written by followers of Jesus, I know a lot of people doubt he even existed or that his followers did.

Bold mine. This is what your whole post boils down to. 

The events during and following the life of Jesus are some of the most attested to series of events in ALL of ancient history. We know exactly what the first century Christians believed and much of what they did. Even Bart Ehrman thinks the NT is 99% of what it was originally. I don't care if you don't find it compelling. But this constant nonsense (not just you) of "no evidence" is just silly and show a lack of understanding the evidence, or bad reasoning skills, or misunderstanding definitions, or a bias you bring to the subject. 

In case anyone is hazy on the difference, here is an excellent discussion on it at http://pediaa.com/difference-between-evi...and-proof/

I can find an asylum full of witnesses who have seen things that are not real.

(July 27, 2017 at 12:42 pm)SteveII Wrote: [quote pid='1592456' dateline='1501166257']
Bold mine. This is what your whole post boils down to. 

The events during and following the life of Jesus are some of the most attested to series of events in ALL of ancient history. We know exactly what the first century Christians believed and much of what they did. Even Bart Ehrman thinks the NT is 99% of what it was originally. I don't care if you don't find it compelling. But this constant nonsense (not just you) of "no evidence" is just silly and show a lack of understanding the evidence, or bad reasoning skills, or misunderstanding definitions, or a bias you bring to the subject. 

In case anyone is hazy on the difference, here is an excellent discussion on it at http://pediaa.com/difference-between-evi...and-proof/

This is just bullshit.  Outside of conservative evangelical fundamentalist Christianity (and, indeed, quietly within it), no scholar holds to the eyewitness testimony of the Gospels or even Paul, who did not even claim such apart from his epileptic seizures.  Why not accept the Gospel of Peter, which, explicitly, claimed to have been written by the Apostle Peter?  As for the four "canonical" Gospels, they did not even have the titles that now bear their names, and it is clear that all of their authors (and, apparently, Jesus himself) believed that the World is flat.  Question is, "Why are you wasting your time on this nonsense?"

(July 27, 2017 at 11:03 am)Khemikal Wrote: It provides ordinary evidence of an ordinary event.  That people tell stories.  It provides no evidence of an extraordinary event, the supernatural - by definition beyond the range of ordinary, as all evidence of the supernatural would inexorably be.

If someone wanted to demonstrate that psychic abilities existed, they would work to show a success rate beyond the ordinary range described by brute force of statistics.  Extraordinary predictive ability.
If someone wanted to demonstrate the healing power of a magical incantation, they would work to show a success rate beyond the ordinary rate of remission.  Extraordinary medical efficacy.
If someone wanted to show that a god walked the earth........................................."there's this book......see......"

There's no point in proponents of the supernatural complaining that the bar has been set too high...they're the ones who set it there by definitively proclaiming something to be extraordinary in the first place.  If they want to argue semantics, fine, but they're only arguing with themselves and their own silly ass claims.

Oh, I get it. Like if someone whats to demonstrate that the supernatural exists, maybe they would hang around for 3 years and perform series of miracles that only had supernatural explanations. How many miracles would that person have to do before a "success rate beyond the ordinary range described by brute force of statistics" was established?

The problem you just so kindly illustrated is that the evidence available to us is the same kind for your psychic and magician/healer illustration. However, through some process that remains unclear, we can set that aside and declare the need for extraordinary evidence. Please explain.

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(July 27, 2017 at 11:04 am)KevinM1 Wrote: It's amazing to me that Steve thinks every single Christian has come to it after rigorous investigation of it.  Most people were born into it, with their entire support system having something to do with it.  Others convert when they're emotionally vulnerable (recovering from addiction, after suffering a loss, etc.).  Still others do it as a form of protest (Muslims converting, people in China converting, etc.).  And there are still people forced into it by the promise of violence (see: the various shit holes in Africa).

So, not only is an appeal to popularity fallacious in and of itself (popularity has never been synonymous with truth), the notion that all, or even most, Christians arrived at their faith after serious investigation into it is equally fallacious, and laughable to boot.

I just don't get why you stubbornly stick with that.  It's not doing you or your arguments any favors.

I only brought up the vast numbers of Christians as it relates to standards of proof. People weigh the evidence differently and have different thresholds for proof. So, no appeal to popularity.

You outline various reasons why people become Christian. I don't disagree. However, you are not addressing the 20, 40, 60 years they may be a Christian and in various stages of their life investigated some of all of the evidence.

(July 26, 2017 at 3:27 pm)Lutrinae Wrote: There is no evidence that Santa Clause does not exist, yet to make the claim Santa Clause does not exist is not an extraordinary claim due to there being no evidence for the existence of Santa Clause.  If there is no evidence for the existence of something, then it is perfectly reasonable to make the claim in regard to that something not existing.

Someone making the claim that Santa Clause does exist is making the extraordinary claim since there is no evidence to support the claim.  If anyone is to properly believe or trust the extraordinary claim in reference to the existence of Santa Clause, then evidence must be provided that Santa Clause does indeed exist.

Simply having faith that Santa Clause exists is futile, for if there was any actual evidence for the existence of Santa Clause there would be no need for faith.

I can understand how this kind of logic confuses theists, but there it is.

I get presents at Christmas! who leaves it under the tree if not santa?