RE: The seeming impossibility of a successful argument for Christianity
December 14, 2012 at 1:31 pm
(This post was last modified: December 14, 2012 at 1:38 pm by Tea Earl Grey Hot.)
(December 14, 2012 at 11:25 am)John V Wrote: @ OP:
Your argument boils down to:
1. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
2. The ordinary is more probable than the extraordinary
3. Therefore the extraordinary doesn't occur
4. Therefore extraordinary claims can never be proven
However, 3 is fallacious.
I never said supernatural events don't occur. I just have no reason to believe that they can and do occur.
When an ancient account describes a forest fire, I won't have a hard time believing that happened. Why? Because it said it did? No. Because I know from experience that wild fires happen all the time today. There are million of pictures of wild fires. There are videos of wild fires. I can drive a little ways and see the devestation of a few. The evidence that wild fires can and do occur is over whelming.
But when an ancient source describes something miraculous I can dismiss it. There's no hard evidence today that such things occur. There's no images. There's no videos. I can't even go somewhere to see the things left behind from a modern day supernatural event.
Sure, today there are claims of the supernatural but they have no evidence and in the end are revealed as hoaxes or just natural phenomena confused for the supernatural.
My ignore list
"The lord doesn't work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his nonexistence."
-- George Yorgo Veenhuyzen quoted by John W. Loftus in The End of Christianity (p. 103).
"The lord doesn't work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his nonexistence."
-- George Yorgo Veenhuyzen quoted by John W. Loftus in The End of Christianity (p. 103).
