The Bible is the claim, not the evidence

[WesOlsen]

The trick you were using when you used your senses to justify the use of your senses? Or the time you appealed to your memory to justify appealing to your memory?

Implicit in your claims about anything and everything is the assumption that your senses are in tact. So, when you say that you didn't claim that your senses were working in tact, you in fact must work on the assumption that your senses are in tact for any of your observations to be presented here. We have both used at least one of our senses to confirm the accuracy of another. I'm happy to work on the basis that my senses are in tact, so when assessing evidence we can play on a level field. In addition, outside agents can confirm or reject what my senses reveal, so it makes little difference if my senses are not in tact. Using the bible as evidence for god and vice versa is circular reasoning as the external corroboration is so very poor. We can go round and round all day here, I very much doubt you'll budge from your position, but if you want anyone to take anything you say here remotely seriously then you must first work on the assumption that your senses are in tact, otherwise any argument you present is rendered as null as those whose arguments you consider already null because of a so called appeal to in-tact senses.

This ought to be good…

You were doing so well too! The truth of a syllogism’s premises is in no way dependent upon consensus or majority agreement by all parties.

Oh dear oh dear. I'm not sure about your experience within the realm of critical thinking, but I was fortunate enough to study it at University some years ago, as such I still have my text books to hand, that way we can see what logicians actually concern themselves with. We'll see who's being taken down an intellectual peg or two. The truth of a matter is indeed not so much dependent upon majority agreement, it is simply dependent upon what is and what isn't. Philosophy has struggled with this one for a long long time. I'm using 'Critical thinking, a consice guide' by Bowell and Kemp for these word for word quotes. You're not the only one that can quote literature you know. Belief is a truth-attitude, and assertion is a truth-claim. "To believe is to believe something to be true, but truth is not the same thing as belief. This means that truth is independent of all of us; it does not mean that one powerful person or being could hold the key to all that is true about the world. The aim of good reasoning and argument is to get at the truth. Rationality is a great leveller."

And this is really the key, we discover truth through enquiry and evidence, married with rational persuasiveness and inductive force. The truth of proposition is independent of our desiring it to be true.

"We have knowledge only if we have good reasons for holding a belief that turns out to be true. We have to be justified, have solid evidential support".

There's that painful phrase again - evidential support.

This is also false; we are dealing within the realm of logic, not outside of it. Pointing to inductive reasoning in no way provides a counter-argument against something that is deductively true. The deductive argument always wins.

Alas we are not dealing within the realm of logic. Logic is concerned with the realm of validity. You are discussing deductive soundness, not merely validity,

"Since the validity of an argument is independent of the truth-values of its premises, logic has a unique status amongst the sciences; for other sciences are concerned to find out the truth-values of particular propositions abouit its characteristic."

"The logician has no particular concern with the truth as regards anything in particular, they are concerned only with relations between propositions, not with their truth-values".

"To say that an argument is deductively sound is to say that the argument is valid, and all its premises are actually true".

And what happens when we suspect that the premises are not true?

"The only way that a deductively valid argument can fail to be rationally persuasive is if a person is without reason to accept the truth of one or more of the premises".

Indeed, we are without reason to suspect that your claims of divine origine for scripture are true, because we can demonstrate that they are highly dubious. A story without contradictions does not mean that a story is real. That is, a flawless narrative has no actual bearing on truth (take the case of fiction for example), especially when we suspect that an account of something is written with bias in mind (The NT stories ARE self-confessed religious propaganda, hence we call objectivity in to question).

On the contrary, induction itself depends upon the soundness of my argument.

Proportion, frequency and rational expectation. You cannot demonstrate the soundness of your argument. Yours is the belief that something is true, rather than knowledge that something is true. You wish your bliblical stories to be true, which is your choice and yours alone, but you have as yet failed to offer any rationally persuasive evidence to skeptics here. It's probably worth bearing in mind at this point that many of us here (myself included) are former christians/theists. I was already familiar with the creation arguments, but rational persuasiveness of the counter-arguments were far greater (in my opinion) as I investigated them further. I wanted for christian tales to be true despite what I was reading, yet I could still not retain my former beliefs as they were based on too little evidence.

I am appealing to empirical evidence, you are not. Since you brought it up, what exactly could disprove your paradigm? Be specific.

On the contrary, your empirical evidence appears to revolve around some stories from the desert, which have been demonstrated to contain contradictions (despite your wishing that they do not) and a completely unreasonable definition of what constitutes "original scripture" and what does not. You are not happy with the flying/talking cross story but believe that the existing time frame for the big-four stories is somehow rationally defined. Assuming that John wrote about 90-95 years after the death of jesus (the figure agreed on by most bible scholars, christian or otherwise) then where is the rational context for this being the cut-off point for 'original' scripture and scripture that isn't quite 'original' enough.

Religion conceeds no such weakness because it is arrogant and dogmatic.

Or because it is true.

Demonstration needed

Where do any of the Biblical authors say that only certain women went to the tomb or that they were alone? Nowhere.

Matthew 28:2 - After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
2There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
5The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.

Again, even as a christian, I could see that chronologically this implies that the earthquake takes place after the arrival of the two women. An angel swoops down, causes a stir, scares the shit out of the soldiers, and begins talking to the women. If this is supposed to suggest that the earthquake took place prior to their arrival then it does so incredibly poorly.

Now we are talking about spices? Joseph and Nicodemus added spices to the body when they wrapped it in accordance with Jewish law. Mark and Luke never say the body was not yet spiced, it’s perfectly reasonable to think the women were going to add spices to an already spiced body. The fact that I added salt to my soup last night does not imply that my wife never added salt to it when she was cooking it.

One would think that spicing intentions would be made clear if the NT was divinely willed in to existence. As it is, a great many elements of the bible are open to major interpretation, hence so many christian groups exist and so many of them disagree (often with lethal consequences) on what specific things mean. The narratives are not clear and do not reasonably complement one another.

This one is easy. Matthew does not say that the tomb was not yet opened when the women arrived; on the contrary he says the earthquake had already taken place.

No, he appears to say that it takes place immediately after their arrival, as vague as these stories are it is not hard to come to this objective conclusion.

and who was there when they arrived, maybe at the same time but maybe not together? :


[quote]Matthew does not say there was only one angel, he merely only mentions one.

If he knows what happened so well why doesn't he detail everything so that it matches up perfectly with the other stories? If this work is divinely inspired, why would god leave any gaps whatsoever open to exploitation from filthy atheists?

Mark also does not say there was only one angel inside the tomb, he merely only mentions the one who speaks.

Again, to avoid ongoing debate why not settle the score and ensure that all parties tell identical stories?

These are easily harmonized if there was an angel sitting on the stone and two inside the tomb. In fact, we do not even need the one sitting on the stone since Matthew never says he is still sitting upon it when he speaks to the women (he only says he sat upon it after rolling it away) and could easily be one of the two now inside the tomb.

The stories can only be harmonised if you desperately want to believe in them, rather than use honest objective enquiry.

Mary the mother of James and Salome run off initially intending to tell the disciples but then tell no one due to fear until they later run into the risen Christ who calms their fears at which point they go and tell the apostles what they saw.

Mark 16:8 - Neither said they any thing to any man

My copy of the NT is missing the bit where it explicitly states that they initially told nobody but later went and told someone. Again, massive vagueness for those who wish to see it.

There are then discrepancies regarding who Jesus visited and where, after he came back from the dead.

Such as?

Matthew says to 11 disciples, Mark says to 2 disciples in the country, later to 11. Luke says 2 in Emmaus, later to 11. John says 10 disciples. Paul says first to Cephas, then to 12. I'm sure you can see perfect harmony in these stories, but plainly there is not perfect harmony. If this is divine work then god is Homer Simpson, I just can't believe that something so muddled, vague and (to me) contradictory could possibly be the work of a perfect being. No amount of pussy-footing can convince me that these stories slot in together perfectly. I've read the attempts by christians on various websites and I find them ridiculous. I also notice different attempts to reconcile the stories by different christian groups, demonstrating the extent to which the NT is open to interpretation.

We’re discussing scripture, not later docetic gospels.

Sorry I must have missed the glaringly obvious cut-off point for scripture and gospels and fairy-tales. Also, I've witnessed other contradictions such as the lineage of Joseph (Jacob or Heli) and the really daft extended lineage of Jesus (i've seen different christian explanations for the lack of overlap or harmony between all the names mentioned, again demonstrating that the stories are open to interpretation, from christians AND non-christians. All of this fails to convince me of the divine origins of anything. Did Michael have any children? How many stalls did Solomon have? Did Paul's men hear a voice?

God did not ever appear because He is eternal and immaterial. Now that we got that mischaracterization out of the way we can address your faith position. Yes, RNA spontaneous generation has never been directly observed to take place in Nature, so believing it somehow took place 3.5 billion years ago under unknowable conditions is a matter of religious blind faith.

You're going to need a little more than some stories from the desert to present a rationally persuasive argument for definitive deity attributes. Abiogenesis continues to be a challenge, i'll be the first to admit that, but the existing accounts are more rationally persuasive. The young-earth and old-earth creation stories are defeated for me. We know that translocations and deletions can alter chromosomal information, so evolution of species is, as far as i'm concerned, extremely persuasive. Abiogenesis is only slightly less persuasive but still more persuasive than genesis. I'm also confident that continued research in the realm of genetics and indeed all other sciences will continue to yield fascinating results and that one day we will have a more complete picture of the origins of the universe than we do now. I'm also confident that religion will continue to simply re-assert the existing beliefs and will contribute diddly-squat to truth (I suppose if it changed its mind on something then it wouldn't be religion). We'll just have to agree to disagree.

You really think deductive arguments rely upon demonstration? Let’s use the most famous sound syllogism…

P1. All men are mortal
P2. Socrates was a man
C. Therefore Socrates was mortal


Please demonstrate that “all men are mortal” and that “Socrates was a man”….I’ll wait.

Deductive soundness requires something to be true, wanting something to be true is not the same as something being true. When we say something is true, we can at least demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that it is true..................you haven't done this yet. If you have deductively proven the existence of god, feel free to collect the nobel prize, we're all awaiting your ascension to the top of the food chain. And in answer to your challenge, it is rationally persuasive to accept that all men (and women) live a linear, finite existence. Of course, I doubt we could even agree on that, but like I say if you've got some evidence by all means present it and collect the nobel prize.

There is no such thing as a deduction that proves god,

You know this how?

Because it would be undeniable. Most theists can't agree on even the basics, so how are you going to convince an ex-theist to return to the fold when you've bought nothing new to the table? If you have the deduction that proves god, like I say I guess i'll be seeing you on all the international news channels tomorrow night. Sadly i've got to wash my hair though.

If you were not so uncivilized and arrogant I would not point out your simple and embarrassing grammatical errors; but until you learn to behave as civil adults do I will continue to knock you down an intellectual peg or two.

Says the man who asserts bedtime stories as truth via patronising rhetoric and condescending guff. Sorry pal but you are anything but a civilized adult. Contrary to your desires most people do not hold the same beliefs as you, hence there isn't even a unified christianity, let alone a unified world religion. If you contest the systems of critical thinking then feel free to write an improved guide and get it published, and perhaps future philosophy students can read your words of wisdom in their seminars and lecture theatres, alongside your groundbreaking journals on the proof of god, etc etc. Until that time comes, my existing literature does just fine in convincing me of the lack of rational persuasiveness of your literature Of course if you can find me a serious critical thinking guide that contains the deductive soundness of the god argument then please link me to it, it'd have a hard time countering EVERY OTHER critical thinking text book on the market, mind.