(August 2, 2017 at 5:21 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Steve, I'm curious. What's your take on the miracle of the sun in Fatima? [1] And the Mandela effect? Both phenomena involve large numbers of people claiming to witness/experience a singular, supernatural event or occurrence. (We have many different examples of the Mandela Effect of course, but the supernatural cause people attribute to it is more or less the same)
Why are you so hung up on the Bible as evidence anyway? You seem to be saying you're okay with people categorizing it as lousy and unconvincing, just so long as we consider it evidence. [3] What's the practical difference between lousy evidence and no evidence at all? [4] A rational person will come to the same conclusion either way. Or, is it because you need the Bible to be evidence in order for the Bayesian scenario presented in your OP to work out in favor of your beliefs? Atheism isn't a claim in any case, but even if you were to use "there is no god" in your little equation, logical arguments still aren't evidence. So, what does that leave you with?
An extraordinary claim with lousy evidence to support it.
1. I'm skeptical because there was no context to the miracle. Nowhere in the records has God caused a miracle for effect. But, we cannot know if there was some local context and some local effect that God required for some unknown purpose.
2. The Mandela Effect does not describe a complete cause-effect that one can examine. At best, it is an effect without a known cause.
3. I wanted to point out that claims of "no evidence" is patently false.
4. If there is evidence, it follows that one is not irrational to believe it.
