The Case for Atheism

[Mister Agenda]

You're right we don't have any 2,000 year old men or women eyewitnesses of Jesus resurrection!

Nor do we have their names, nor did they write anything down at the time, nor did the event make it into the history books of the day.

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.

What makes a claim strong is evidence. Anyone can claim to have 500 witnesses to anything. And you have no way of knowing that it was their testimony of the resurrection of Jesus that they died for, you just know they died for whatever their testimony about Christianity was at the time, which we're not in a position to know.
If being willing to die for your beliefs made them true, we'd have to take the Heaven's Gate cult seriously.

I don't think its quite analogous to your 500 unknown witness to monkeys flying up your butt .

It's no more believable than claims of the resurrection of Apollonius, Caesar, or Elvis, except for your commitment to believe the dictates of your religion.

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.[/quote[

Barring the religious and the mentally impaired, the rest of us don't have much trouble coming to a common understanding of reality.

[quote='frasierc' pid='723843' dateline='1407187875']
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.

Methodological naturalism is not making that case, and if you probe a bit, you'll find that's the kind of naturalist most of us are.

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.

Hey, we were just minding our own business when you walked in, told us what we're claiming, and started griping we hadn't met our burden of proof with it.

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This guy is hopeless.

We've had much worse.