No verifiable evidence is the Christian position

[downbeatplumb]

Direct source is about as good as you get on the web. You don't expect people to go conduct experiments and validate the experiment and it's results against every other similar experiment. You take it on trust that you have good information, hopefully checking the credentials of that source.

But in science that is exactly what happens and if the web source is a renowned scientific institution or refers to research by such then it can be trusted.

[fr0d0]

Of course it's the same with sources of religions information DBP. Some sources are highly valued, others not. It's good to acknowledge genius in any subject.

[Bad Writer]

Of course it's the same with sources of religions information DBP. Some sources are highly valued, others not. It's good to acknowledge genius in any subject.

Religious information should never be valued because it's never been verified to be true. That's like trusting what the Pope says just because his hat demands respect.

[FallentoReason]

I'm coming late to the party (as usual.. because everyone posts while I'm asleep :'( ) but I have a question for you fr0ds:

I saw that you responded to Fidel about miracles saying that all supernatural occurrences happen naturally, and thus are indistinguishable from events that *aren't* miracles (paraphrasing). If that's the case, then the entire Bible begs the question. Let me explain using one example:

Jesus turning water to wine was a miracle that happened in a completely natural way. If so, please explain how we can turn water to wine. What is the process in which this is done? There's another process that humanity has been aware of for millenia that involves grapes, but not water on its own. As far as we know, water stays as water.

Either, Jesus didn't turn water to wine *or* there's a process for turning water to wine which humanity isn't aware of.

What's more sensible to believe?

Hopefully, you'll notice that on the flipside of your controversial claim about miracles there's the self-refuting nature of the claim that'll come bite you on the ass; if miracles can be explained, then it's *not* a miracle -by definition-. Turning water to wine isn't a miracle because you claim there's an explanation for it (which humanity surprisingly hasn't stumbled upon this entire time) which means it could happen every day, all year 'round, and not just *once* by a supernatural entity.

On another point, how do we know when something natural is actually a miracle? Is warm air from my heater a miraculous event? There was cold air and within a split second it accelerates and circulates my room as warm air.


What you have here is a claim that requires even more faith than believing in "traditional" miracles. But this isn't surprising if you've been in the apologetics business for that long

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What I love about your OP is the irony. You've essentially attempted to turn the atheist's request of "explain yourself" into a redundant request by simply saying "can't". In other words you've claimed that the intersection of God and supernatural miracles is an empty set, but in doing so, you've created a set which annhialates your goal: the intersection between God and *explainable natural miracles*.

So how does one turn water to wine exactly?

[fr0d0]

Hi FTR

How would you explain water into wine as a non believer?

To me, I might suggest that the onlookers senses were fooled by some kind of mind games. By slight of hand, magicians/ religious pretenders of the day were sometimes masters. That was quite easy. People were skeptical when people got up from the dead, saw when they were blind etc... how would you react? I know I wouldn't believe it, and that's without the aid of any technology that we have and they wouldn't have.

All these things are reliant on faith. Nothing is concrete proof.

[Esquilax]

What I love about your OP is the irony. You've essentially attempted to turn the atheist's request of "explain yourself" into a redundant request by simply saying "can't". In other words you've claimed that the intersection of God and supernatural miracles is an empty set, but in doing so, you've created a set which annhialates your goal: the intersection between God and *explainable natural miracles*.

There was a repeat caller on the Atheist Experience this week that reminded me of what Frodo's been trying to achieve in this thread so much; whenever he was asked for evidence for his claims of a god, he would answer that god was a non-physical being, therefore there can be no evidence for him that we can perceive, and... that's it. It was almost as if he believed that his inability to provide anything substantial to back up his claim was enough for his claim to be taken seriously, and that's mirrored in Frodo's position here almost exactly.

It's the shell game all these theists play when they make recourse to non-physical gods, or "absolute minds," or gods that use natural processes exclusively in their actions: saying that is nothing more than admitting you have no reason to believe what you do... and then somehow expecting that the knowledge claim you've just made about the being you've admitted you can have no evidence of in order to formulate a knowledge claim is somehow true anyway.

[FallentoReason]

Hi FTR

How would you explain water into wine as a non believer?

To me, I might suggest that the onlookers senses were fooled by some kind of mind games. By slight of hand, magicians/ religious pretenders of the day were sometimes masters. That was quite easy. People were skeptical when people got up from the dead, saw when they were blind etc... how would you react? I know I wouldn't believe it, and that's without the aid of any technology that we have and they wouldn't have.

All these things are reliant on faith. Nothing is concrete proof.

I'm not quite following you... all I basically said was that you've stated that miracles are objectively a natural thing. Therefore, it doesn't matter what my "explanation as a non-believer" might be, because whatever the *true* explanation is will be reducible to natural processes, according to you. This means that asking how exactly water gets turned to wine and why humanity hasn't stumbled onto such a process a rather fitting couple of questions relative to your stance on miracles.

---

What I love about your OP is the irony. You've essentially attempted to turn the atheist's request of "explain yourself" into a redundant request by simply saying "can't". In other words you've claimed that the intersection of God and supernatural miracles is an empty set, but in doing so, you've created a set which annhialates your goal: the intersection between God and *explainable natural miracles*.

There was a repeat caller on the Atheist Experience this week that reminded me of what Frodo's been trying to achieve in this thread so much; whenever he was asked for evidence for his claims of a god, he would answer that god was a non-physical being, therefore there can be no evidence for him that we can perceive, and... that's it. It was almost as if he believed that his inability to provide anything substantial to back up his claim was enough for his claim to be taken seriously, and that's mirrored in Frodo's position here almost exactly.

It's the shell game all these theists play when they make recourse to non-physical gods, or "absolute minds," or gods that use natural processes exclusively in their actions: saying that is nothing more than admitting you have no reason to believe what you do... and then somehow expecting that the knowledge claim you've just made about the being you've admitted you can have no evidence of in order to formulate a knowledge claim is somehow true anyway.

It would actually make more sense to believe in supernatural occurrences as that gives you something definite between the divine and its creation. Moulding those two into one thing by claiming that the divine moves *like* its creation is a step backwards. It's conspiracy theory territory!

[Esquilax]

It would actually make more sense to believe in supernatural occurrences as that gives you something definite between the divine and its creation. Moulding those two into one thing by claiming that the divine moves *like* its creation is a step backwards. It's conspiracy theory territory!

Not to mention eventually false; there has to have been at least one supernatural act that god must have performed, because his creation of the universe and the things therein happened before there was a natural method by which these miracles could take place.

So hey, I guess we've got one way to test for Frodo's god after all.

[Mister Agenda]

We internationally and cross-culturally agree that hearing voices in one's head is crazy. However, when these voices are attributed to God, that's the only time when it's okay. Take God out of the equation, and all we're left with is over 90% over our population with floating voices telling them what to do. We're fucked.

It's worse than that. Most of them don't hear the voice themselves, they take people's word for it that they have.

[Bad Writer]

Mormons, JWs, and Scientologists come to mind when you say that.