Debate with a Christian

[*Deidre*]

You are correct, discipulus - the legal terminology is "beyond a reasonable doubt." Not absolute certainty. So, should we "formally" debate, you will need to make your case (proving) beyond a reasonable doubt.

I will reply later to your other commentary, but I'm about to meet friends for a some dinner and drinks. And not be so serious for a little while.

Your points have merit, but unfortunately, you will still run into the issue of providing objective proof to back up your assertions that God exists, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Would an otherwise reasonable person who knows nothing at all about Christianity, "believe" you when you try to prove God exists?

[Angrboda]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CGLneL5LR4

[discipulus]

You are correct, discipulus - the legal terminology is "beyond a reasonable doubt." Not absolute certainty. So, should we "formally" debate, you will need to make your case (proving) beyond a reasonable doubt.

I will reply later to your other commentary, but I'm about to meet friends for a some dinner and drinks. And not be so serious for a little while.

Your points have merit, but unfortunately, you will still run into the issue of providing objective proof to back up your assertions that God exists, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Would an otherwise reasonable person who knows nothing at all about Christianity, "believe" you when you try to prove God exists?

Have fun and make sure you have a designated driver if you do drink!

LOL, I just sounded like a parent did I not?

With regards to the last, I think a reasonable person after listening to some of the arguments and looking at the evidence would at least say that there is some merit in them. Would they come away Bible believing Christians, probably not. There are other factors one must take into consideration when talking about how persuasive an argument is. But I do think they would come away encouraged to really look deep and hard into the matter.

[*Deidre*]

You are correct, discipulus - the legal terminology is "beyond a reasonable doubt." Not absolute certainty. So, should we "formally" debate, you will need to make your case (proving) beyond a reasonable doubt.

I will reply later to your other commentary, but I'm about to meet friends for a some dinner and drinks. And not be so serious for a little while.

Your points have merit, but unfortunately, you will still run into the issue of providing objective proof to back up your assertions that God exists, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Would an otherwise reasonable person who knows nothing at all about Christianity, "believe" you when you try to prove God exists?

Have fun and make sure you have a designated driver if you do drink!

LOL, I just sounded like a parent did I not?

haha thanks!
Yes, I don't drink and drive.

With regards to the last, I think a reasonable person after listening to some of the arguments and looking at the evidence would at least say that there is some merit in them. Would they come away Bible believing Christians, probably not. There are other factors one must take into consideration when talking about how persuasive an argument is. But I do think they would come away encouraged to really look deep and hard into the matter.

Agree to an extent. What I think is most ''reasonable'' to say when it comes to beliefs in general, whether they are belief in a god or belief in no god/gods, is that either school of thought usually is derived through self reflection, and one's own subjective world view.

Lack of logic or evidence (as to the existence of a Deity) sometimes doesn't come into play as to why someone is an atheist/agnostic. A lot may go into it. We are all unique, after all.

[fr0d0]

An incredible post discipulus. Best defence of science I've ever read.

[Mudhammam]

Some additional thoughts.

In fact, it is recognized that certainty is an impossible standard to meet which actually serves to support my argument.

Hardly. It serves to demonstrate that your reasoning, without corroborating evidence from reality (and sorry, anecdotal testimonials do not constitute as reliable sources for determining the deeper principle underlying the specific claims), is insufficient in reaching the conclusions you do.

Deidre, truth claims in order to be true, must have support or corroborating evidence. Christianity, which is what we are discussing, makes certain truth claims and relates these claims to us in a historical context. You say there is no evidence or proof that Christianity is true. If by proof you mean a proof that is so strong as to exclude any and all doubt i.e. certainty then yes you are correct. We cannot be certain without a doubt that Christianity is true. But as I have demonstrated, certainty is an unreasonable expectation.

Shifting from absolute certainty, which no one can offer, to reasonable certainty (which hopefully Deidre meant), does not help you at all. It is a demand that Christianity cannot even meet on the mere basis of the New Testament writings and subsequent "Christian" experiences (otherwise all other faiths would pass your "critique").

What you should say is that you do not believe Christianity has any reliable or credible evidence to support its truth claims.

Correct...

To which I would respond, yes it does.

In fact, a proof in a philosophical sense is a series of statements which serve as premises from which a conclusion can be drawn based on the rules of logic. Those premises don't need to be known with 100% certainty. Maybe they'll just appear slightly more plausible than not or perhaps they'll have a great deal of plausibility. But nevertheless, if we have more reason to believe the premises than their negations and together these premises imply by the rules of logic a conclusion then we can say that that conclusion is proved by this argument. But it doesn't require anything like 100% certainty.

A conclusion can be reached that is logically sound but unless it explains something that is corroborated by objective experimental evidence, it is nothing more than conjecture or semantics.

I think you need to understand that asking for certainty regarding God's existence is unreasonable.

Yes...

If certainty is not a prerequisite for you when determining whether secular truth claims are true, then you should not make it a prerequisite for religious truth claims.

Yes...

You have yet to give a good argument as to why you would make such a distinction.

What he/she should have said is that there is not any experiential or experimental evidence that demands attribution to God, and coupled with many aspects of faith itself and the specific claims regarding the Christian conception of God, there's plenty of evidence and reason against it, including the sheer inconsistency contained within biblical theology.

This does not mean we therefore are justified with being total skeptics.

Not to the point of Solipsism at least, but certainly we should be total skeptics with regards to the paranormal, supernatural, "non-physical." Why? Because they cannot all be true--probability alone tells us that any particular miracle/God claim, as incredible as it is and not grounded in sufficient evidence (again, testimony that is not objectively substantiated or scrutinized is not evidence), is wrong.

[*Deidre*]

Some additional thoughts.

In fact, it is recognized that certainty is an impossible standard to meet which actually serves to support my argument.

Hardly. It serves to demonstrate that your reasoning, without corroborating evidence from reality (and sorry, anecdotal testimonials do not constitute as reliable sources for determining the deeper principle underlying the specific claims), is insufficient in reaching the conclusions you do.

Deidre, truth claims in order to be true, must have support or corroborating evidence. Christianity, which is what we are discussing, makes certain truth claims and relates these claims to us in a historical context. You say there is no evidence or proof that Christianity is true. If by proof you mean a proof that is so strong as to exclude any and all doubt i.e. certainty then yes you are correct. We cannot be certain without a doubt that Christianity is true. But as I have demonstrated, certainty is an unreasonable expectation.

Shifting from absolute certainty, which no one can offer, to reasonable certainty (which hopefully Deidre meant), does not help you at all. It is a demand that Christianity cannot even meet on the mere basis of the New Testament writings and subsequent "Christian" experiences (otherwise all other faiths would pass your "critique").

What you should say is that you do not believe Christianity has any reliable or credible evidence to support its truth claims.

Correct...

To which I would respond, yes it does.

In fact, a proof in a philosophical sense is a series of statements which serve as premises from which a conclusion can be drawn based on the rules of logic. Those premises don't need to be known with 100% certainty. Maybe they'll just appear slightly more plausible than not or perhaps they'll have a great deal of plausibility. But nevertheless, if we have more reason to believe the premises than their negations and together these premises imply by the rules of logic a conclusion then we can say that that conclusion is proved by this argument. But it doesn't require anything like 100% certainty.

A conclusion can be reached that is logically sound but unless it explains something that is corroborated by objective experimental evidence, it is nothing more than conjecture or semantics.

I think you need to understand that asking for certainty regarding God's existence is unreasonable.

Yes...

If certainty is not a prerequisite for you when determining whether secular truth claims are true, then you should not make it a prerequisite for religious truth claims.

Yes...

You have yet to give a good argument as to why you would make such a distinction.

What he/she should have said is that there is not any experiential or experimental evidence that demands attribution to God, and coupled with plenty aspects of faith itself and the specific claims regarding the Christian conception of God, there's plenty of evidence and reason against it, including the sheer inconsistency contained within biblical theology.

This does not mean we therefore are justified with being total skeptics.

Not to the point of Solipsism at least, but certainly we should be total skeptics with regards to the paranormal, supernatural, "non-physical." Why? Because they cannot all be true--probability alone tells us that any particular miracle/God claim, as incredible as it is and not grounded in sufficient evidence (again, subjective testimony is not evidence), is wrong.

(I'm a 'she' lol) And can you take over for me now?

You articulated this a bit better than me. Very well said!

Perhaps we (Pickup and I) both could debate you together, discipulus? :p

[discipulus]

Hardly. It serves to demonstrate that your reasoning, without corroborating evidence from reality (and sorry, anecdotal testimonials do not constitute as reliable sources for determining the deeper principle underlying the specific claims), is insufficient in reaching the conclusions you do.

Your response in no way either undercuts or rebuts my assertion that certainty is an impossible standard to meet and therefore an unreasonable expectation to have regarding the demonstration of the existence of God.

But since you have stated something that Deidre seems to agree with I will interact with it.

You seem to think that our debate is going to be revolving around a topic that is subject to the scientific method. Clearly this is incorrect. We are dealing with the accounts of historical events, i.e non-repeatable events that happened at some point in the past and not subject to direct observation and experimentation and therefore attempting to argue that we must extrapolate scientific methodology onto historiography is simply unjustified. Historiographers do not use the scientific method to determine whether or not historical accounts are reliable my friend which is what it seems to me that you are implying we should do.

When you dismiss anecdotal testimony as an "unreliable source for determining the deeper principle underlying the specific claims", it is clear that you are treating this matter with the scientific method in mind, not the historical method. This is indicative of a misconstrual of the historical method and such an understanding is simply incorrect.

Historians rely on anecdotal testimony quite frequently in determining the reliability of historical accounts. In fact, an anecdote is “the narration of a singular event,” a historeme or “the smallest minimal unit of the historiographic fact.” - From Joel Fineman's work published in The New Historicism, Ed. H. Aram Veeser(New York and London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 49-76, p. 56.

So it is clear from the above that you misconstrue not only the nature of an anecdote but how it correlates with respect to the historical methods of investigation utilized by contemporary historians. You dismiss the gospel accounts based on the fact that they are anecdotal testimony, a point which you have not even proven, but not only that, you incorrectly reason that therefore, these accounts are not reliable. This conclusion as I have demonstrated is simply incorrect.

Shifting from absolute certainty, which no one can offer, to reasonable certainty (which hopefully Deidre meant), does not help you at all.

What in the world is "reasonable certainty" intended to signify? In the case of syllogisms, nothing like "reasonable certainty" (how that is different from "certainty" has yet to be demonstrated by you) is even attempted. Rather, in a philosophical argument for the existence of God, the premises are sought to be shown to be more plausible than their negation. If this is achieved and the conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic then the argument is proven, but nothing like reasonable certainty is required here.

In fact, moving from absolute certainty to "more plausible" or "more probable" helps me a great deal. It justifiably relieves me of the burden of having to do the impossible i.e. prove God exists with certainty!

It is a demand that Christianity cannot even meet on the mere basis of the New Testament writings and subsequent "Christian" experiences (otherwise all other faiths would pass your "critique").

You are right. Christianity cannot be proven to be true with certainty. Does it follow that therefore all other faiths pass my "critique"? Not at all! At most what follows is that no religious truth claims can be proven with certainty, but this in no way discourages me! For what secular truth claims can be proven with certainty???????

What can you prove to be true with certainty Pickup_shonuff?

Just because I cannot demonstrate to you that Christianity is true with certainty, it does not follow that I must accept all religious truth claims as true!!! Nor does it follow that Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead on the Sunday morning following His crucifixion. Nor does it follow that God does not exist.

You make the same mistake as others here have when you equate certainty with knowledge.

A conclusion can be reached that is logically sound but unless it explains something that is corroborated by objective experimental evidence, it is nothing more than conjecture or semantics.

The phrase "objective experimental evidence" is an indication that you still think we are dealing with some sort of science experiment. The reliability of the gospels is not determined via the scientific method but rather via contemporary historiographical methodology.

What he/she should have said is that there is not any experiential or experimental evidence that demands attribution to God,

There does not need to be. Science has no place in this discussion. We are talking about historical method, not scientific method.

and coupled with many aspects of faith itself and the specific claims regarding the Christian conception of God, there's plenty of evidence and reason against it, including the sheer inconsistency contained within biblical theology.

Then Deidre will be responsible for supplying this "evidence and reason against Christianity" specifically regarding the gospels in the debate.

With regards to inconsistencies within Christian theology, this is immaterial to whether or not the gospels are reliable ancient biographies of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and as such is a red herring.

Not to the point of Solipsism at least, but certainly we should be total skeptics with regards to the paranormal, supernatural, "non-physical." Why? Because they cannot all be true--probability alone tells us that any particular miracle/God claim, as incredible as it is and not grounded in sufficient evidence (again, testimony that is not objectively substantiated or scrutinized is not evidence), is wrong.

It seems to me you do not understand how the historical method and the scientific method differ. Nor does it seem to me that you are aware that each discipline operates in its own specific domain.

[*Deidre*]

The Bible isn't an historical text book, nor in the same category as one, discipulus. Just sayin.'

Using it to argue historical accounts of Jesus will be an effort in futility because I don't value the Bible as a reliable source of history.

It is a book teaching the evolution of Christianity. Nothing more or less, really. I'd recommend using other sources for debate that we both find objectively reliable.

[Mudhammam]

Your response in no way either undercuts or rebuts my assertion that certainty is an impossible standard to meet and therefore an unreasonable expectation to have regarding the demonstration of the existence of God.

Nor was it intended to since I would never argue that claim. But unless I misunderstood your assertion that "certainty is an impossible standard to meet which actually serves to support my argument," in no way does our fallibility lead credence to any claims of the supernatural. Isn't the debate here whether or not Christianity is reasonable on the grounds that the Bible is trustworthy history or something like that? I read the discussion over absolutely certainty as largely irrelevant though I agree that you are correct here and Deidre was clumsy in her wording (I figured what she meant to say).

You seem to think that our debate is going to be revolving around a topic that is subject to the scientific method. Clearly this is incorrect. We are dealing with the accounts of historical events, i.e non-repeatable events that happened at some point in the past and not subject to direct observation and experimentation and therefore attempting to argue that we must extrapolate scientific methodology onto historiography is simply unjustified. Historiographers do not use the scientific method to determine whether or not historical accounts are reliable my friend which is what it seems to me that you are implying we should do.

True but it doesn't mean we need to suspend the broader use of scientific thinking which demands a critical review of the evidence, even if all we're able to deal with are the narratives themselves. We need more than simply the author's testimony or some hearsay by others. If not, then the Gospels are really no more special than a number of other works from the ancient world in which miraculous claims are treated as fact alongside lesser significant details since corroborated by archaeology and other writings.

When you dismiss anecdotal testimony as an "unreliable source for determining the deeper principle underlying the specific claims", it is clear that you are treating this matter with the scientific method in mind, not the historical method. This is indicative of a misconstrual of the historical method and such an understanding is simply incorrect.

Absolutely not and that's what doesn't set Christianity apart. There are literally tons of claims that parallel those in the Bible found in other texts. You don't even need to go to the ancient world to find them. In fact, I'm reading a book about NDEs right now and some people have apparently died within the past 40 years, only to be revived on their own two-three days later. Should we treat this by your definition of "the historical method" and say, "oh well, if there are people who witnessed this then the event must have occurred exactly as they interpreted it and portrayed it to us." What a fun-filled crazy world that would be. Yet if you were to read this book on NDEs 2,000 years from now and apply this uncritical method which by we trust every claim made by every person(s) in the book (which presumably you do in the case of the Bible), you would have a deeply distorted view of the facts.

Historians rely on anecdotal testimony quite frequently in determining the reliability of historical accounts. In fact, an anecdote is “the narration of a singular event,” a historeme or “the smallest minimal unit of the historiographic fact.” - From Joel Fineman's work published in The New Historicism, Ed. H. Aram Veeser(New York and London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 49-76, p. 56.

And so how many historians believe Jesus resurrected from the dead who are also not evangelists or theologians?

So it is clear from the above that you misconstrue not only the nature of an anecdote but how it correlates with respect to the historical methods of investigation utilized by contemporary historians. You dismiss the gospel accounts based on the fact that they are anecdotal testimony, a point which you have not even proven, but not only that, you incorrectly reason that therefore, these accounts are not reliable. This conclusion as I have demonstrated is simply incorrect.

So where exactly do UFO abductions fit into your methodology which fails to account for all the work done in the past 100 years? You know, I mean the work regarding physics, biology, psychology, physiology, neuroscience, etc., all of which clearly demonstrates that the brain is prone to irrational thinking, "patternity," cognitive dissonance, and other strange phenomena that explain ALL the abnormal experiences people have far better than your leap of unreasonable faith into the arms of Jesus or Yahweh or whatever it is you think the Trinity means.

What in the world is "reasonable certainty" intended to signify? In the case of syllogisms, nothing like "reasonable certainty" (how that is different from "certainty" has yet to be demonstrated by you) is even attempted.

Our belief in other minds, physical objects, things we touch, feel, taste--we say with "reasonable certainty" that these things are real--that is, I'm reasonably certain that these things exist and can be examined to the point that they are fully understood and at least understood better than they are now. Some things less accessible to our common experiences may also fit this term, such as various historical narratives and the most thoroughly vindicated theories of science--the Big Bang, evolution, the law of gravity, etc. But again, historical narratives must not be all entirely accurate or entirely false. We weigh the specific nature of the claims against the background of the culture, the credibility of the author, the reasoning methods utilized at the time, etc. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

Rather, in a philosophical argument for the existence of God, the premises are sought to be shown to be more plausible than their negation. If this is achieved and the conclusion follows from the premises by the rules of logic then the argument is proven, but nothing like reasonable certainty is required here.

You mean conclusions are couched into the premises through semantics and other games theological philosophers like to play. Don't worry about reasonable certainty being required here, nothing is ever actually accomplished through these.

In fact, moving from absolute certainty to "more plausible" or "more probable" helps me a great deal. It justifiably relieves me of the burden of having to do the impossible i.e. prove God exists with certainty!

Okay, granted.

You are right. Christianity cannot be proven to be true with certainty.

Or reasonable certainty. Or plausibility. Or probability.

Does it follow that therefore all other faiths pass my "critique"? Not at all! At most what follows is that no religious truth claims can be proven with certainty, but this in no way discourages me! For what secular truth claims can be proven with certainty???????

Well unfortunately, you've the set bar higher than Christianity can reach.

What can you prove to be true with certainty Pickup_shonuff?

Are you purposely trying to lead us down this rabbit hole again?

Just because I cannot demonstrate to you that Christianity is true with certainty, it does not follow that I must accept all religious truth claims as true!!! Nor does it follow that Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead on the Sunday morning following His crucifixion. Nor does it follow that God does not exist.

Again, never asked for absolute certainty. I asked for reasonable certainty, by which I meant probable cause. You can't offer even this because all you have are the wildly unsubstantiated claims of Jesus' pals. But no one cares about their ancient interpretation of different brain states and other phenomena that the disciples were neither skeptical nor inquisitive in understanding more deeply. Even today, when so much about the world is understood, people still don't give a shit to understand what's really going on. The disciples lived in a period of time that was much less rational and far more prone to deception, not to mention 90% of the population, including most of them, were illiterate.

You make the same mistake as others here have when you equate certainty with knowledge.

*face palm*

What he/she should have said is that there is not any experiential or experimental evidence that demands attribution to God,

There does not need to be. Science has no place in this discussion. We are talking about historical method, not scientific method.

Actually we're talking about gullibility, in which you think the historical method leaves room open for dragons, orcs, and fairies.

It seems to me you do not understand how the historical method and the scientific method differ. Nor does it seem to me that you are aware that each discipline operates in its own specific domain.

Question: How large do historians believe Christianity grew to be by the end of the first-century? Certainly (reasonably so), if a supernatural phenomenon truly occurred that was fundamentally different from the woo-woo we can discredit through science today, the figures must be incredible. If not, this works against their authenticity. In contrast, the scientific method revolutionized the globe within 100-150 years. God can certainly match man's achievements though, right?