MERGED: The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part 1) & (Part 2)

[Thumpalumpacus]

To be fair, I think his point about bias is apt, just as apt as when I signed up on a Christian forum and received similar treatment.

I don't think it's a mark against the forum or its members, for the simple reason that bias can be grounded solidly or it can be irrational. I am biased against companies which disseminate cancer-causing agents, not out of emotional spite, but out of rational views. In a similar vein, I am biased against Christianity, because I have examined its premises, and found the god hypothesis entirely unsatisfactory in explanatory power; it raises more questions than it answers.

I agree that bias as you've described it exists in the forum, but that's not the definition of bias Brucer is using when he says that we're just biased against christianity and that is the reason our conclusions don't match his and should be discarded. When he says that- which he did- he's using bias to mean that we don't have open minds and are simply adhering to a presupposition that impedes a fair evaluation of the claims of his religion, and that's what I object to.

The fact that he later backtracked and pretended he was using your definition of the word, Parkers, doesn't alter the fact that the argument he used wouldn't make sense unless he was using the term negatively.

I get that. I disagree that motive matters in bias. I might be biased against something based on fair or unfair ground -- but that bias still exists and has the potential to color my perceptions as well as my commentary. That was my point.

I only felt the need to make it because of the last sentence I quoted from you ("[...] but since you have- as I pointed out- no way of determining what the given motivation is, you have no justification for accusing any of us of bias."}

You're right that making an assertion of bias in advance of a disagreement is not just poor form, it's fatuous, and I wasn't disagreeing with that point of yours. I was simply pointing out that bias is bias no matter what brought it about. It behooves us to be alert to it at all times in our thinking, I'm sure you'll agree, and part of that, to my way of thinking, is to avoid minimizing it.