Can't prove the supernatural God

[SteveII]

Let's cut to the chase. You think the description of miracles in the NT is untrue and therefore provide no support for the existence of miracles. Can you prove them to be untrue? No, you can give reasons why you think so. I think there are reasons to believe that it is true, so I think miracles happen. 

Gonna get nit-picky here.

Yes, I don't think the descriptions of miracles in the NT are true. The reason I don't think they support the existence of miracles is that that would be circular; the NT is the claim. The NT claims that miracles happened. You cannot use a claim as evidence of itself. You would have to confirm those claims with other evidence.

It is not up to me to prove that your assertion is wrong. If you are claiming that a thing does happen, it is up to you to point me to evidence that it happens. If you are claiming that a thing does exist, it is up to you to point me to evidence that demonstrates that this is true. If you have a good reason to believe that supernatural things (like miracles and gods) are actually real, then what is that reason? Until you give me a good reason to believe that your claims are true, it is completely reasonable for me to withhold belief in those claims.

I don't think you can consider the NT as the claim. "The claim" is Jesus was God, came to Palestine in the first century, performed miracles, preached a new message, died, and rose again for the purpose of redemption.

I have reasons to believe the NT contains 27 books written by different people within a lifetime of Jesus. Paul's letters actually are older than the Gospels. Paul discusses "the claim" in great length and it was clear that a large number of people from Palestine to Rome were receiving letters discussing "the claim" that they already believed. A few years later (possible decades for the latter 2), 3 editors compiled Matthew, Mark, and John, much the same way Luke did from existing writings and testimony.

[SteveII]

The fact is that even the first century people of Palestine knew the difference between feeding 5000, healing cripples/lepers/blind, dead people not dead anymore, walking on water, etc. We are not talking about misunderstanding eclipses, weather patterns, or some other difficult to perceive physics or chemistry. It is not reasonable to assume that these people even heard (let alone believed) that there were miraculous healing or dead people rising with regularity in the area. If you don't have evidence that people misunderstood natural cause and effect in the subject matters of cripples/lepers/blind, dead people, walking on water etc., then you are left with an unsupported theory that seems to have only one purpose for one time period.

We all have read the tales told of Jesus in the Gospels, but few people really have a good idea of their context. Yet it is quite enlightening to examine them against the background of the time and place in which they were written, and my goal here is to help you do just that. There is abundant evidence that these were times replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, even innocent men mistaken for divine, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them. Placed in this context, the gospels no longer seem to be so remarkable, and this leads us to an important fact: when the Gospels were written, skeptics and informed or critical minds were a small minority. Although the gullible, the credulous, and those ready to believe or exaggerate stories of the supernatural are still abundant today, they were much more common in antiquity, and taken far more seriously.

http://infidels.org/library/modern/richa...kooks.html

I would like to respond to this but it will take time. Maybe later this week.

[SofaKingHigh]

Gonna get nit-picky here.

Yes, I don't think the descriptions of miracles in the NT are true. The reason I don't think they support the existence of miracles is that that would be circular; the NT is the claim. The NT claims that miracles happened. You cannot use a claim as evidence of itself. You would have to confirm those claims with other evidence.

It is not up to me to prove that your assertion is wrong. If you are claiming that a thing does happen, it is up to you to point me to evidence that it happens. If you are claiming that a thing does exist, it is up to you to point me to evidence that demonstrates that this is true. If you have a good reason to believe that supernatural things (like miracles and gods) are actually real, then what is that reason? Until you give me a good reason to believe that your claims are true, it is completely reasonable for me to withhold belief in those claims.

I don't think you can consider the NT as the claim. "The claim" is Jesus was God, came to Palestine in the first century, performed miracles, preached a new message, died, and rose again for the purpose of redemption.

I have reasons to believe the NT contains 27 books written by different people within a lifetime of Jesus. Paul's letters actually are older than the Gospels. Paul discusses "the claim" in great length and it was clear that a large number of people from Palestine to Rome were receiving letters discussing "the claim" that they already believed. A few years later (possible decades for the latter 2), 3 editors compiled Matthew, Mark, and John, much the same way Luke did from existing writings and testimony.

Where was this claim made Stevie?

[robvalue]

If Mark was supposed to be an editor, he must be the worst one imaginable since he omitted the most important part of the whole story. It had to be added in later because even people at that time could see what he had written was not convincing enough.

[SteveII]

I don't think you can consider the NT as the claim. "The claim" is Jesus was God, came to Palestine in the first century, performed miracles, preached a new message, died, and rose again for the purpose of redemption.

I have reasons to believe the NT contains 27 books written by different people within a lifetime of Jesus. Paul's letters actually are older than the Gospels. Paul discusses "the claim" in great length and it was clear that a large number of people from Palestine to Rome were receiving letters discussing "the claim" that they already believed. A few years later (possible decades for the latter 2), 3 editors compiled Matthew, Mark, and John, much the same way Luke did from existing writings and testimony.

Where was this claim made Stevie?

In Palestine around 27-30AD. We find out about the claim, as I said, first in Paul's letters, then in other epistles, and then someone figured they should write all this down--so then we have the gospels. It is reasonable to conclude from this and the very existence of the church in 50AD (evidenced by Paul's letters) that people believed the claim in an unbroken chain from the time the events occurred. 

I understand the point you are trying to make. However a more careful understanding of the timing and contents of what we call the NT undercuts the charge of circular reasoning.

[SofaKingHigh]

Where was this claim made Stevie?

In Palestine around 27-30AD. We find out about the claim, as I said, first in Paul's letters, then in other epistles, and then someone figured they should write all this down--so then we have the gospels. It is reasonable to conclude from this and the very existence of the church in 50AD (evidenced by Paul's letters) that people believed the claim in an unbroken chain from the time the events occurred. 

I understand the point you are trying to make. However a more careful understanding of the timing and contents of what we call the NT undercuts the charge of circular reasoning.

No, it really doesn't.  Whether you call them Paul's letters, the Gospels or group them and call it the bible, it's irrelevant.

The claim is not evidence for the claim.  It's the claim.

[Mister Agenda]

Jesus is part of Yahweh. God incarnate. One of three parts of the trinity. The culmination of all the OT.

Steve, if you acknowledge the above,  I think that proving " miracles" is the least of your problems....
Just believe man, don't try to reconcile with reality. No one was meant to.

It just makes you sound gullible...but I see you are relatively intelligent.

Sadly, intelligence isn't necessarily a defense at all against being fooled. The only tool against being fooled that works reliably that I've discovered is consistent reasonable skepticism. Intelligence is a great tool for rationalizing the convictions you already hold.

I'm trusting by nature, rational skepticism has kept me from falling for a lot of things I would otherwise have taken at face value. It seems like a good part of my intellectual development has been discarding things I thought were true that turned out to be misinformation or plain woo.

[Mister Agenda]

Steve, if you acknowledge the above,  I think that proving " miracles" is the least of your problems....
Just believe man, don't try to reconcile with reality. No one was meant to.

It just makes you sound gullible...but I see you are relatively intelligent.

If you take that path, you would not be able to compare religions against each other and see which one makes more sense. I think it is very important to test for internal consistency and relation to the real world. 

BTW, the trinity is not an attempt to reconcile with reality. It is a straight up, spelled out doctrine in the NT.

Which you don't actually bother to do yourself, you just went with the dominant religion of your region and expect atheists to defend Hinduism to you, otherwise you simply dismiss it out of hand 'cause you've already found the one you 'know is right'.

The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the Bible. It does not say 'God is three persons' or 'God is three anything'. I don't think the term 'spelled-out' means what you think it does. There is a whole branch of Christianity that doesn't believe in the Trinity.

[SteveII]

In Palestine around 27-30AD. We find out about the claim, as I said, first in Paul's letters, then in other epistles, and then someone figured they should write all this down--so then we have the gospels. It is reasonable to conclude from this and the very existence of the church in 50AD (evidenced by Paul's letters) that people believed the claim in an unbroken chain from the time the events occurred. 

I understand the point you are trying to make. However a more careful understanding of the timing and contents of what we call the NT undercuts the charge of circular reasoning.

No, it really doesn't.  Whether you call them Paul's letters, the Gospels or group them and call it the bible, it's irrelevant.

The claim is not evidence for the claim.  It's the claim.

You seem to think I am arguing that the NT is true because the NT says so. I am not. I am arguing the events the Gospels describe actually happened because I believe the different components of the NT (which are not all Gospels) and other historical context are reliable. 

If you still think you are right, then by that standard we could never believe anything that happened in the past on any subject.

[Mister Agenda]

All events. Our experience supports that in ALL events. Of the known explanations and causes for things, we have natural things, and we have unknowns. There are absolutely zero known, demonstrable supernatural causes, effects, or objects.

Aside from that caveat, I appreciate the concession. I am still a little unclear, however, on how you're distinguishing a regular unlikely event from a miracle. If the person happens to have prayed for it first, how do you rule out coincidence (and how do you explain the fact that prayers, regardless of the religion, have zero demonstrable effect on any outcome when compared with pure chance?)? If the person came to god or experienced personal growth from it, how do you explain when that same thing happens, but with somebody else's god? If an unexplained tumor-remission brings someone closer to Thor, is that evidence that Thor exists? If not, why should it be evidence that Jesus exists?

Your first paragraph relies on dismissing the entire NT (and any other claims of miracles). But in addition, even though you are carefully wording your sentence, you are really saying that events can only have naturalistic explanations. You are simply moving "unknowns" over to the naturalistic column for no reason other than they must not have had a supernatural cause. Why is this not the equivalent of saying " miracles do not exist because miracle can't happen"--which is circular?
I do keep hearing the claim that healing happens at the same rate between religious and non-religious. Do you have something that explains that study? Please note, I was not using modern healing miracles as evidence in this discussion because of some of the reasons you pointed out.

There's a point where this repeated accusation that people are really saying events can only have natural explanations when they've explicitly said no such thing needs to be called out for the mealy-mouthed evasion of dealing with what's actually being said that it is.

The reason you haven't heard of the study is that the Christian majority in this country doesn't want anyone to know how effective Christian prayer is. No, wait, that's preposterous. If any study showed Christian prayer was more effective than chance at curing cancer, it would be headlines around the world. It's studies that show otherwise that you have to Google. But you don't care enough to bother looking yourself, you want it spoon fed to you. Is it one of your goals to waste our time doing your research for you?