RE: Atheists:Can you disprove the resurrection or Jesus' existence?
September 4, 2011 at 2:56 am
(This post was last modified: September 4, 2011 at 3:27 am by coffeeveritas.)
(September 4, 2011 at 1:13 am)Diamond-Deist Wrote: Did Jesus exist? very good question, don't start with the rising of christ though pleaaaase.
(September 3, 2011 at 7:57 pm)coffeeveritas Wrote:(September 1, 2011 at 1:23 pm)Diamond-Deist Wrote: Why would a Christian come to an Atheist forum and ask for confirmation of his religion?
That's like going to an S&M party and saying you don't want to be spanked.
But, come on, who hasn't made that mistake at least once?
What?? the christian bit or the S&M party??
The beauty of that comment is in the mystery.
(September 4, 2011 at 12:52 am)padraic Wrote:Quote:Are you atheists not up to handling theists or something; or are you afraid of actually putting your logic and reason against foolish theists?
I can only speak for myself. An agnostic atheist, I assert only that I do not believe in god(s) due to lack of credible evidence. I make no
claims, so attract no burden of proof. I need prove nothing.It's up to believers to prove their claims, not to me to try to prove a negative.
Yep, Padriac is on it, pretty much any atheist you ask to disprove the resurrection will start by pointing out that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim, and then point out that there is no conclusive proof on your end. I asked everyone their thoughts on their subject on the topic of disproving Christianity and the opinion was pretty much unanimous with the "burden of proof" idea. As arguments go it has a nice way of completely turning the discussion around, then pointing out the deficiencies of the opposing viewpoint. You would definitely get points for something like this in a debate, provided your opponent doesn't have an argument undermining your idea of where the burden of proof lies. I definitely like the basic structure of the logic, and it's very easy to follow. This seems to be a preeminent modernist counter-apologetic, and it's very hard to get around in a modernist setting. However, it might break down fairly quickly in a post-modern setting.
Hmm... I got off track there, I was just admiring some logic and starting musing over it's virtues. It seems that so much of what we talk about on this board takes place in a modernist sphere, I always wonder how all this stacks up in postmodernism. It's very interesting. If you track the great apologetic debates (such as theodicy) they all switch gears around the 70's because the influence of post-modernism was undermining their arguments (on both sides). (For example, the "God cannot be both all good and all powerful if there is evil" argument was almost completely abandoned because of some work by Alvin Plantinga.) To be sure both sides still have their lines drawn, but it's changing so fast it makes for an interesting show.
In my opinion it looked like the atheist side was winning the debate up through the 70's then starting with Plantiga it more or less evened out until the very late 90's, now it looks like the Christian side has a fairly healthy lead. The new atheists such as Dawkins have not done themselves very many favors by ignoring post-modernism, but I believe that Sam Harris is leading a bit of a counter-charge lately. Not that who's in the lead really changes anything, I just really love debates.
aaand I'm musing again.
