A simple challenge for atheists

[IATIA]

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

How about:

Ridiculous claims require ridiculous evidence.

[Brian37]

Steve, I have a question - If the Christian god is the one true all mighty god, then how do you explain that the Quran preaches the exact same claim to Muslims?

The muslims believe in the same God from the OT. They however only believe Jesus was a great prophet and not God incarnate who died and rose again. The Quran is a book on how to live. Christianity deals with atonement, a personal relationship with God etc.

Their bologna has a first name, it's Christi-an- ity, their bologna has a second name its Islam of peace, when they eat it every day, they make excuses everyday, Cause books of myth have no evidence when all they are is b-o-l-o-g- and a.

No, neither book was viewed as casual things or personal things. They were tribal gang manuals and AT BEST, outsiders were left alone as long as they knew their place. But never have either three left each other alone. NEVER.

Those books were all written by very tribal people, who were ruled, not by elected officials, but tribal kings. You did what that king said and you towed the line. The ruling class back then, even in polytheism falsely attributed their rule to a divine hand, modern monotheism simply stems from that mistake.

The Hebrews were a splinter sect of the Canaanites. Christianity is 2.0 and Islam 3.0, all stemming from the Hebrew god, and former lesser god of polytheism.

They are all books of myth.

[Esquilax]

Okay, from the abstract to the specific. Just say there was better eyewitness evidence, and Jesus, who claimed to be God, was crucified and rose from the dead (predicting both beforehand). We could observe that:

1. Being dead after a crucifixion was a well know and predictable state
2. The extraordinary evidence required is not only Jesus healthy after a crucifixion, but for 40 days he appeared to many.
3. It is reasonable to assume the cause was the that which he claimed it to be: God.
4. There was a key theological component to the teachings of Jesus that only make sense in light of his death. For one example out of hundred, John the Baptist introduced him as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world".

I'm fine with this up until point three, because claims of causation are not evidence of causation, even if the effect is supernatural. But then, you still also have little but a hypothetical here; as it stands, the evidence for all this isn't at a level where one could reasonably conclude anything positive about the claims.

So again, if there was better evidence for this event and it was otherwise as the gospel writers described, it would not be illogical to assume:

A. There is no hidden scientific reason to explain this event.
B. There exists extraordinary evidence of the event
C. God was the likely cause of the supernatural event
D. The event was not to make a general point, but rather had a complex purpose.

Are these reasonable conclusions drawn from this set of facts? Would it be correct to say that the rationality of Christianity increases the more reliable the gospels are proven to be.

Again, this is a thought experiment, not a gospel trashing exercise.

Here's the thing: we have to take each claim on its own merit, within the context that it inhabits. The gospels are not one claim, in actuality they're a collection of many claims, some more inherently believable than others, with their own attendant levels of evidence. Demonstrating the truth of any number of claims within should not give us greater confidence in the truth of the others; after all, one hundred true claims do not make a false claim in the same collection any more true.

The most important thing here, with regards to the gospels, is that we differentiate between the mundane claims and the supernatural ones, as they require different levels of evidence to demonstrate reliability, in accordance with how they fit into what we already know about the world. Often, theists will try to prove the reality of the supernatural claims, by appealing to the truth of some mundane ones ("This city depicted in the bible is real! X biblical figure was referenced elsewhere!") but all they're really done is provide a bad argument on two fronts; the one mentioned above, and also the idea that the mere existence of a city demonstrates that magic was performed within it.

[Cheerful Charlie]

I understand your explanation on special pleading.

Now I don't write these things out to rehash whether they were true or not. We have everyone's opinion on the quality of the evidence. I am trying to improve my argumentation. Thank you for your patience.

Okay, from the abstract to the specific. Just say there was better eyewitness evidence, and Jesus, who claimed to be God, was crucified and rose from the dead (predicting both beforehand). We could observe that:

1. Being dead after a crucifixion was a well know and predictable state
2. The extraordinary evidence required is not only Jesus healthy after a crucifixion, but for 40 days he appeared to many.
3. It is reasonable to assume the cause was the that which he claimed it to be: God.
4. There was a key theological component to the teachings of Jesus that only make sense in light of his death. For one example out of hundred, John the Baptist introduced him as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world".

So again, if there was better evidence for this event and it was otherwise as the gospel writers described, it would not be illogical to assume:

A. There is no hidden scientific reason to explain this event.
B. There exists extraordinary evidence of the event
C. God was the likely cause of the supernatural event
D. The event was not to make a general point, but rather had a complex purpose.

Are these reasonable conclusions drawn from this set of facts? Would it be correct to say that the rationality of Christianity increases the more reliable the gospels are proven to be.

Again, this is a thought experiment, not a gospel trashing exercise.

For 40 days he appeared to many? Luke tells he ascended to heaven on the same day he left the tomb. Mark also does not in any way support the claim. The problem is all the resurrection stories contradict each other rather badly.

This is not extraordinary evidence except for demonstrating this myth is in no way true and these writers knew nothing but were making these supposed facts up.

This myth is about as true as tales of Hercules or myth of Osiris's resurrection.

Christianity is not rational.

[Mister Agenda]

I understand your explanation on special pleading.

Props for that. It's hard not to respect someone who can change their view on something even slightly these days.

Now I don't write these things out to rehash whether they were true or not. We have everyone's opinion on the quality of the evidence. I am trying to improve my argumentation. Thank you for your patience.

We are actually pretty helpful for that kind of thing. If you want to test run your arguments, this is a good place for it.

Okay, from the abstract to the specific. Just say there was better eyewitness evidence, and Jesus, who claimed to be God, was crucified and rose from the dead (predicting both beforehand).

I put 'historical Jesus' at slightly over 50%, and in any case am willing to accept his existence for the sake of argument. I have a little more trouble with affirming that he claimed to be God...we have no idea which words were put in his mouth by his biographers and which (if any) were his own. Same for his predictions, it's easy to write how something was predicted after the fact. And finally, it's asking a lot to acknowledge that he actually rose from the dead, but for the sake of argument I will agree that he at least appeared to have died.

We could observe that:

1. Being dead after a crucifixion was a well known and predictable state.

However, surviving crucifixion was not unknown. I can think of at least one account off the top of my head of a man being rescued from crucifixion after some days of it. Crucifixion killed slowly, it took days to die of it.

2. The extraordinary evidence required is not only Jesus healthy after a crucifixion, but for 40 days he appeared to many.

Granting those events, surviving crucifixion explains it just as well.

3. It is reasonable to assume the cause was the that which he claimed it to be: God.

It's only reasonable to conclude that's the cause if you already assume that he was God or informed by God and that he was much more special than the other supposed wonder workers of his day, all of whom seem to have raising the dead in their work history and at least one of whom preceded Jesus and was supposed to have come back from the dead after three days...but his cult didn't catch on.

4. There was a key theological component to the teachings of Jesus that only make sense in light of his death. For one example out of hundred, John the Baptist introduced him as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world".

The bit with John the Baptist is one of the reasons I'm inclined to believe there really was a Yeshua bar Josef who was once one of John's disciples, because this part smacks of trying to retroactively explain why Jesus was once a humble follower of John baptized like anyone else. Too many people knew it happened, so they spruced the event up a bit so Jesus wouldn't appear to be subordinate to John. That certainly seems a more likely explanation than what you're proposing. At least you left out the magic dove as a selling point.

So again, if there was better evidence for this event and it was otherwise as the gospel writers described, it would not be illogical to assume:

A. There is no hidden scientific reason to explain this event.
B. There exists extraordinary evidence of the event
C. God was the likely cause of the supernatural event
D. The event was not to make a general point, but rather had a complex purpose.

It's almost always illogical to assume. Assuming should be avoided whenever possible. In logic, making the fewest assumptions possible is a virtue.

Are these reasonable conclusions drawn from this set of facts? Would it be correct to say that the rationality of Christianity increases the more reliable the gospels are proven to be.

Again, this is a thought experiment, not a gospel trashing exercise.

Your conclusion seems to be that if Christianity were better supported by evidence, it would be more reasonable to believe it. That's a reasonable conclusion, but it doesn't get you home. If there were more evidence of Santa's activities, it would be more reasonable to believe in Santa...but it would have to be extraordinary evidence to make it actually reasonable to believe in a real Santa with real magical powers who performs the miracles ascribed to him. A weird radar hit on Christamas eve and presents of unknown providence would more accurately be put as making it slightly less unreasonable to believe in Santa, but still not reasonable.

Are you familiar with Bayesian probability? Most of us use it intuitively. If you say you tied your shoes this morning, it's reasonable to believe you. You might be lying for some reason, but I have a lot of prior knowledge that supports the possibility of you telling the truth: shoes exist, shoe laces exist, feet to put them on exist, hand to tie them with exist, the skill to do so is very common, and morning is a usual time to be doing so. Acknowledging the possibility that I might be wrong about you not lying over trivial things, and bearing in mind that giving you the benefit of the doubt on the matter is inconsequential as far as I know, I should take your word that you tied your shoes this morning.

But, say you told me you flew around your room this morning using only the immaterial psychokinetic power of your mind. My prior knowledge does not work in your favor on this matter. To my knowledge that never happens, and when it appears to happen, there is trickery involved. It also seems to conflict with the laws of physics, and that never seems to actually happen either. If you're telling the truth, it is VERY consequential, and so is believing you if it isn't true, for me. I am not going to take your word on this. I want a battery of tests and some skeptical and disinterested scientists and magicians saying 'yes you can really do it' and 'no, it's not an illusion'. If you give me that, I will apologize for ever doubting you, though not believing you was the most reasonable thing to do at the time.

This by way of illustrating what we're talking about when it comes to extraordinary claims and evidence. The psychokinetic flying is an extraordinary claim because it violates our prior knowledge, and it requires extraordinary evidence that justifies revising our prior knowledge before it becomes reasonable to accept it as true.

[goodwithoutgod]

Imagine an alternate universe which contains a single hydrogen atom. (Lets not include dark matter or other forces in the discussion for the purpose of simplicity.) You could replace the atom with a proton, a neutron, a sub-atomic particle, or a string. The point is, it's real. It can be measured.

Now where did this hydrogen atom come from?
Was it just always there?
Did it spontaneously appear, ie. magically?
Did someone create it?

How did it come into being?

No one knows outside of hypothesis to my knowledge. But I am not in the science field. But let me guess, you are implying the argument as nauseam we don't know=GOD.

There are lots of things we don't have the answers too, no need to embrace fabricated fairy tales simply because we haven't discovered the answer yet. Just my 2 cents