Street Epistemology - Practice

[curiosne]

To be honest, this kind of feels like a detective case that we're trying to solve and it's a bit information dense for me but I'll have a go at it.
I've had a bit of a look at what you've written above and from what I understand, the way that you present your evidence is the following.

God exists because:

1. The Gospels were created through (or assisted by) God's Magic.
   
2. The Gospels says that Jesus (God) exists and details accounts of Jesus's (God's) magic.
   
3. The Gospels must be true as it is historically accurate.
   
4. The Gospels accuracy is further corroborated by ancient Jews (from J. Warner Wallace) and from other historic figures who say that Jesus existed and that they saw his magic.
   
5. The book "Undesigned coincidences" shows that there is a consistent flow between the Gospels (through connecting a subtle question in one writing to an answer in another writing) which can't be a coincidence as it connects well. This shows that the Gospels were designed holistically thus proving their authenticity.
   

Other evidence don't prove God exists but as you have proven god exists with the above evidence it follows that:

1. The generic philosophical arguments (such as cosmological, ontological, and moral arguments); And 
   
2. Scientific arguments (such as strong anthromorphic principle, and intelligent design);
   

must be because of God.


Is that a good summary? If not please amend it and we will assess the evidence and talk through it.

Unfortunately, this is not a summary, that I would agree with much at all.   It is curious, that you used the word "magic", a number of times, when I didn't appeal to anything of the sort. Why is that? To be honest, it feels more like your view of Christians, than a summary of what I had said. If you are confused by something, perhaps we can narrow it down some.     Now my understanding of Street Epistemology, is that it is not to debate the facts, but to look at the epistemology or how we know.  It is more general, and about the methods, rather than the specifics.  Is there some epistemological concern, that you suspect in regards to my belief in God?  I would think that in discussing the epistemology, that it is more like what we where talking about before (moving the goal posts for that which you do not want to believe).  Or perhaps it would be better to make it more specific, there is a lot of interconnected evidence to consider on such a broad topic, as believing in God. (Would you prefer to just discuss the resurrection perhaps)?.  

Some notes on your other comments:   You description on the undersigned coincidences, doesn't seem to be too bad.  As to the more general philosophical and scientific arguments, I don't think, that they are dependent on the historical evidence at all.  They stand on their own, and If I where convinced that Christianity wasn't true, I would likely be a deist, because of these.  I'm not saying that they are not as strong in their own, but only that they do not speak to some things.

I don't understand which part you don't agree with. Can you do me a favour and re-write the summary in the same format that I used to summarise your position, as it would make the discussion much easier.

You're right that you never said the word "magic", I'll retract that as I was trying to invoke a word that describes God's power. From what I understand of epistemology, it starts off being more general but then to understand how one would truly know something, it gets down to the detail after a while which I'd like to do. Note that we are talking about your belief so if we cannot get into the details on how you actually know if your belief is true by understanding the details surround the belief, we cannot further the conversation.

Also I don't think that I've begun debating so give me a heads up if I do and I'll stop. The whole point of epistemology isn't to debate but to analyse a belief and understand how one knows it's true.

But you've just agreed to my summary below on the general philisophical/scientific arguments below. What I was trying to say is that the philisophical/scientific arguments don't prove that the Judeo/Christian God exists, all it does is to justify that there's a certain (unknown) power out there influencing our universe.