RE: The Case for Atheism
August 4, 2014 at 5:31 pm
(This post was last modified: August 4, 2014 at 5:46 pm by frasierc.)
(August 4, 2014 at 1:35 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Here's the problem with this whole line of thinking. You don't have 500 witnesses - you don't have a *single* witness. What you do have is an an unevidenced, uncorroborated claim that there were 500 witnesses. Furthermore, that claim was made by anonymous writers who recorded events that supposedly occurred decades prior, that they themselves did not claim to witness - and even if they did, so what? We have no idea who they were.
In other news, monkeys flew out of my butt this morning, and there were 500 witnesses to that fact. Who were they? Beats the hell out of me.
You're right we don't have any 2,000 year old men or women eyewitnesses of Jesus resurrection!
The writer who made this claim wasn't annonymous it was the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 15). He's writing between 10-20 years after Jesus death and saying to the Corinthian church if you have doubts about the resurrection ask them as most are still alive.
I think someone making a claim of 500 eyewitnesses to an event happening in say 2003 or 1993 - would be a pretty strong claim particularly if they offered for me to talk to these eyewitnesses (so they're hardly unknown to Paul or the Corinthians). If you also factored in that many of the eyewitnesses (such as Peter, James etc) who saw Jesus after the resurrection died on the basis of their testimony about the resurrection.
I don't think its quite analogous to your 500 unknown witness to monkeys flying up your butt .
(August 4, 2014 at 2:50 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Generally? Or only regarding god claims?
Generally - there's been a lot of literature on the problems with the null hypothesis testing approach for many decades. A fun article is Cohen's Earth is round (p<.05) which should be freely available.
Stimbo Wrote:Regarding the question of what constitutes evidence, well that would depend on the claim, wouldn't it? Can you imagine a courtroom scene in which the counsel for prosecution asks the defence counsel what evidence she'd accept?
The analogy's a good one because the whole point of a courtroom is that you share the same understanding of reality (the codified law of that particular land). But where two people have different understandings of reality we at least need to understand one another and our assumptions in order to be able to communicate. This happens in cross-cultural communication all the time - and can lead to many amusing misunderstandings if not which I can testify to with experience.
(August 4, 2014 at 11:59 am)FatAndFaithless Wrote: A slight mischaracterization of the position. The simplest, easiest way to phrase the atheist position is just "theists have not met their burden of proof". There is no positive argument for atheism (SOME atheists might make the positive argument "god does not exist", but atheism as a concept is just lack of belief in theist claims).
You do have the burden of proof, as you are claiming something. We just don't think you've made your case. That's it.
I can accept the argument that atheism isn't making a case (just lack of belief in theist claims). But naturalism is making a case that the world is explained exclusively by natural phenomenon. If you're going to make a claim - I would think you would want to provide evidence for that claim rather than just presume it and expect others to disprove you.