Miracles and Anti-supernaturalism

[Ryantology]

Salem witch trials are a prime example of not following the rules of evidence, false accusations and lapses in due process. Sad as this was, society has learned a lot from these failures. Perhaps some of it was motivated by misunderstanding those who we would call insane. It is a lesson on what happens when the dignity of humans is ignored and free will runs amok.

It's what happens when Christianity is used as the basis for secular law. It is disingenuous of you to attempt to suggest that the extremely religious aspect of the event was irrelevant. The Bible places no value on due process or the rules of evidence (the Bible considers itself evidence of its own truth), after all, but it does call for the killing of witches.

Thus, the oldest New Testament manuscript is 6 centuries older than the oldest Illiad manuscript. Yet you say you believe that the Trojan War happened?

There is evidence that the Trojan War happened, or at least, that what we think of as the Trojan War is based, however loosely, upon real events. What you never see is a person insist that it certainly happened exactly as Homer described it, because too many elements do not correlate with reality.

Have you read the Illiad? It has some very strange creatures in it that are a stretch of the imagination to believe are true. They are so strange, it makes me wonder what the author was smoking!

If you believe wholeheartedly in a book which has talking donkeys, snakes, and bushes, it is hypocritical of you to dismiss the Iliad as obvious fantasy for having equally outlandish elements.

When someone claims to be God and backs it up with miracles, raising up dead people, and rising from the dead himself, it is believable. Archaeology has provided evidence that events in the Bible happened approximately when it says they happened instead of hundreds of years later.

It may prove that some of the events the Bible depicts actually happened. It does not even begin to demonstrate that the Bible is absolutely correct about everything it says. Your book doesn't gain 100% credibility on account of being right 1% of the time.

It takes more faith to be an atheist than I can muster. You have to follow illogical philosophies and ignore the cause and effect relationship. You have to believe the illogical idea that science is the only way to know truth, etc.

It takes a vastly larger amount of faith to believe in a god who is silent and invisible and in no way distinguishable from pure fantasy.

The thing we have not discussed is cause and effect. That is, events have causes. Miracles are historic events. Ergo, Miracles have causes. If they were explained by natural laws, fraud, or lunacy, they would not be miracles. So what is the cause of miracles? The only variable when they happened was prayer for a miracle. So it is logical to assert that miracles are caused by prayer to God. Therefore, God causes miracles and, therefore, this proves God exists.

This relies on the assertion that a legitimate miracle has ever taken place. You have not established this as factual. Everything which follows from that assertion is bogus.