Does a God exist?

[Angrboda]

... Apollonius of Tyana, is often called the "pagan Christ," since he also lived during the first century, and performed a similar ministry of miracle-working, preaching his own brand of ascetic Pythagoreanism--he was also viewed as the son of a god, resurrected the dead, ascended to heaven, performed various miracles, and criticized the authorities with pithy wisdom much like Jesus did. . . . Even Eusebius, in his Treatise against Apollonius, does not question his existence, or the reality of many of his miracles--rather, he usually tries to attribute them to trickery or demons. This shows the credulity of the times, even among educated defenders of the Christian faith, but it also shows how easy it was to deceive. Since they readily believed in demons and magical powers, it should not surprise us that they believed in resurrections and transmutations of water to wine.

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

[Veritas_Vincit]

I don't have any reason to think they are lying, so I believe they happened, therefore I believe there is evidence for the existence of God. 

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.

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

You have plenty of reason to doubt that the miracles in the NT happened, you just choose not to exercise those reasons with regard to the NT. You doubt that Joseph Smith talked to an angel. You doubt that Mohammed did likewise. You choose not to exercise those doubts with respect to the NT. That makes you guilty of special pleading and your conclusions are therefore not reliable. You treat the truth claims of the NT differently than you do other truth claims. That's simply being biased.

Precisely!

---

Finally we've got right down to it! Steve, you are absolutely free to believe that, but I take this to be you conceding the argument.

"I choose to believe..." Demonstrates that you don't hold your beliefs because they are true, you assert they are true because you want them to be true, you like that story of events. It shows that you are not following the evidence where it leads, you are leading the evidence to the conclusion you want.

You may choose to believe that the authors were truthful, but that doesn't prove a thing.

The growth of the Christian church is no different from the growth of Mormonism, Scientology, or dozens of other religions, and it proves nothing about the truth of their claims, only the popularity of the movement.

Now - you say denial of this only comes from disbelief in Miracles and that this is a circular argument. You have the burden of proof backward. Miracles have to be demonstrated to have occurred before it is rational to believe that they can happen. This has never been done, so it doesn't matter if I think miracles are impossible - until they are demonstrated, it is irrational to believe that they have ever happened.

You can point to the Bible and say "look, these people say miracles happened." So what? This is here say. It's the worst kind of evidence, copies of copies of translations of copies of testamony that would be utterly incredible if given by someone living today. We have better evidence of UFOs. The Biblical evidence for miracles is laughable. You believe in miracles because it says so in some old book? From 1950 years ago? Just because lots of other people do as well? Because you choose to believe they are truthful?

I'm not saying you can't have miracles because God doesn't exist, I'm saying its unreasonable and irrational to believe in miracles, or God, because NO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE exists. You can choose to believe what you like. You can choose to believe in Zeus or Apollo or the Flying Spaghetti Monster - but that doesn't mean any of those things are real.

So if you're happy to just affirm whatever version of reality makes you feel good, rather than trying to investigate and discover the truth about reality as it is, then go for it, but know that you are basing your world map on comfort over reality - in a nutshell, you are living in a fantasy.

First, every belief you hold, you 'chose' to believe it. Second, the phrase "choose to believe" in no way impacts the truth of the NT. It could be true, it could be false, and it could even be that the facts are true but my belief is false because I believed for the wrong reason. So, no, it does not demonstrate anything. If you want to attack my belief, you'll have to give reasons why my belief is false. 

The NT contains multiple attestations of miracles and it is clear that the early church (before any books of the NT were even written) believed them to have happened as well (that would be 2 separate bodies of evidence even before you break the NT into 27 separate documents). I don't have any reason to think they are lying, so I believe they happened, therefore I believe there is evidence for the existence of God. 

Why do you 'chose to believe' that the 1) the early church held false beliefs and later 2) the 8 authors of the NT claimed to have knowledge that they did not have? You just admitted it has nothing to do with whether miracles happened or not (because then your argument would be circular).

Jörmungandr already nailed it with Special Pleading.

I would just reiterate about the burden of proof. If you make claim X you have the burden of proof to demonstrate that X is true. I don't have to prove that X is false, because until you demonstrate that it is true, I don't have enough evidence to accept that it is true to begin with.

The claim X is false Is not equal to the claim X is not true. I don't have to say X is false, I say I do not have enough evidence to support the claim that X is true, therefore I do not believe it.

I do not choose to believe that the early Church held false beliefs. I am simply not convinced that they ever held true beliefs. I find the evidence insufficient to support belief.

I am not saying that the 8 authors of the NT did not have the knowledge they claimed, I am simply that there is insufficient evidence to think that everything they said was true - least of all the accounts of miracles.

A miracle is the suspension of the laws of nature - no case of a miracle has ever been proven. It is an extraordinary claim to say that a miracle occurred, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. NT evidence is extraordinarily bad evidence. Therefore I do not believe that there is a God, or that Jesus performed miracles, or that the Bible is any kind of moral authority. I don't say I can prove its all false - I don't need to, because it doesn't meet the burden of proof to establish its truth in the first place. It's that simple.

[SteveII]

I don't have any reason to think they are lying, so I believe they happened, therefore I believe there is evidence for the existence of God. 

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.

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

You have plenty of reason to doubt that the miracles in the NT happened, you just choose not to exercise those reasons with regard to the NT.  You doubt that Joseph Smith talked to an angel.  You doubt that Mohammed did likewise.  You choose not to exercise those doubts with respect to the NT.  That makes you guilty of special pleading and your conclusions are therefore not reliable.  You treat the truth claims of the NT differently than you do other truth claims.  That's simply being biased.

Sure, I was raised in a Christian home. My father was/is a pastor in fact. There was never really a time I did not believe what I was told. 

However, decades later, I see no reason to stop believing what I believed back then for other reasons. It is not special pleading because there are compelling reasons to reject Smith's and Mohammad's claims and they do not have to do with whether miracles happened or not. I treat the NT claims differently because they are different.

BTW, I have read the Richard Carrier article previously. I looked up the 3 "major evidence" individuals and did not see more than a few similarities to Jesus or the foundations of Christianity. Looking those people up independently shows how Carrier was stretching to make a point.

[Spirian]

"Does a God exist?"

You tell me

[SteveII]

You have plenty of reason to doubt that the miracles in the NT happened, you just choose not to exercise those reasons with regard to the NT.  You doubt that Joseph Smith talked to an angel.  You doubt that Mohammed did likewise.  You choose not to exercise those doubts with respect to the NT.  That makes you guilty of special pleading and your conclusions are therefore not reliable.  You treat the truth claims of the NT differently than you do other truth claims.  That's simply being biased.

Precisely!

---

First, every belief you hold, you 'chose' to believe it. Second, the phrase "choose to believe" in no way impacts the truth of the NT. It could be true, it could be false, and it could even be that the facts are true but my belief is false because I believed for the wrong reason. So, no, it does not demonstrate anything. If you want to attack my belief, you'll have to give reasons why my belief is false. 

The NT contains multiple attestations of miracles and it is clear that the early church (before any books of the NT were even written) believed them to have happened as well (that would be 2 separate bodies of evidence even before you break the NT into 27 separate documents). I don't have any reason to think they are lying, so I believe they happened, therefore I believe there is evidence for the existence of God. 

Why do you 'chose to believe' that the 1) the early church held false beliefs and later 2) the 8 authors of the NT claimed to have knowledge that they did not have? You just admitted it has nothing to do with whether miracles happened or not (because then your argument would be circular).

Jörmungandr already nailed it with Special Pleading.

I would just reiterate about the burden of proof. If you make claim X you have the burden of proof to demonstrate that X is true. I don't have to prove that X is false, because until you demonstrate that it is true, I don't have enough evidence to accept that it is true to begin with.

The claim X is false Is not equal to the claim X is not true. I don't have to say X is false, I say I do not have enough evidence to support the claim that X is true, therefore I do not believe it.

I do not choose to believe that the early Church held false beliefs. I am simply not convinced that they ever held true beliefs. I find the evidence insufficient to support belief.

I am not saying that the 8 authors of the NT did not have the knowledge they claimed, I am simply that there is insufficient evidence to think that everything they said was true - least of all the accounts of miracles.

A miracle is the suspension of the laws of nature - no case of a miracle has ever been proven. It is an extraordinary claim to say that a miracle occurred, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. NT evidence is extraordinarily bad evidence. Therefore I do not believe that there is a God, or that Jesus performed miracles, or that the Bible is any kind of moral authority. I don't say I can prove its all false - I don't need to, because it doesn't meet the burden of proof to establish its truth in the first place. It's that simple.

Well, no. It is not special pleading. Since I clearly have no problem with the possibility of their being a God, it comes down to the facts, evidence, and content of various religions. I believe that Christianity has more compelling evidence for its truth claims than do other religions. 

I am confused. Do you believe the NT authors are lying or telling the truth?

[Veritas_Vincit]

I'm saying they could have been mistaken, they could have made it all up, they could have had other reasons for telling the story, there could have been a gradual shift of embellishing the facts. I've seen Derren Brown do shit I can't explain - humans can be fooled. It's also possible for them to lie, and to deliberately deceive each other. Memory is unreliable, and humans are fallible. Not the mention how comparatively ignorant and backward people were 2000 years ago, how superstitious belief in supposed magic was rife.

Were they lying? Who knows. Is what they wrote an accurate account of the facts? I don't believe it for a second.

[Ignorant]

Ok... with you so far... but I don't see how this relates to anything...

Hi pocaracas, I appreciate your feedback. Like i said initially, I don't pretend that my own presentation of an argument will be very convincing to you because I am very sure you're just as familiar with the arguments as I am. So in regard to what follows, I hope you will understand it to be my attempt to clarify misunderstanding or my own poor expression of ideas (as opposed to my 'digging in' and trying to 'win' any point). Again thanks for your thoughts.

You cannot say that something unobserved cannot exist. That's the whole point of there being agnostics.

I'd say that, in general, you are quite right, but I think anyone can and should say that a square circle cannot exist. It is not because we don't observe a square circle that we say it cannot exist. We say it cannot exist because, in principle, its existence is [not] possible. No one needs to be agnostic on the existence of square circles. An actual infinity of things is not as existentially contradictory as a square circle, but it is close (at least by my account).

To be clear, I did not put forth LA as deriving from EE(b). I proposed it because I hold it axiomatically. What is a finite aggregate of infinite elements? <= For me that is like asking what is a square circle.

It seems to me that you're trying to mix up two different concepts of "existing".
The empirical existing, that which is bound by the physics of our Universe.
And the meta-existing, that which is not bound by the physics of our Universe.

Well, if I made it seem that way, then I apologize. I meant to begin from the evident: some things exist "bound" (I chose the concept of conditional existence, but 'bound' works fine) by the existence of some other simultaneously existing thing (e.g. you proposed the physics of our universe). Logic only allows for two possibly true realities if that evidence is reliable: either ALL things are 'bound' in this way, or some things are not bound in this way. I don't pretend to fully know what it means to exist in a way that is not 'bound' by anything at all, but (I find) that the evidence points to the reality of this strange sort of existence, this meta-existing as you put it. This is why I thought defining god before the discussion seems backwards. Instead, the evidence of 'our' way of existing points to some 'thing' (if you can even call it a thing) which exists in a way radically different than everything else we observe. In addition, it seems that this 'meta-existing' 'thing' is actually more truly existing than empirically existing - it is just existence.

Your premise EE(a) was implying the empirical kind of existing... You can thus not apply it to the meta-existing.

Well I didn't apply it to meta-existing. The demonstration on goes so far as to show that the 'empirical kind' of existing (i.e. the kind of existing which simultaneously relies on some other distinct existence) cannot account for itself. As far as the 'demonstration' goes, empirical existence is not self-contained - it is conditional on the existence of some other sort of existence. This simultaneously conditional dependence cannot be an infinity of simultaneously conditionally dependencies. In order for any aggregate thing to exist at all, everything which forms the aggregate must begin upon something which is itself non-conditional (whatever that existence is actually like, meta or otherwise, is irrelevant... the question is whether or not it exists). Whatever that existence is like, all the demonstration allows us to say about such existence is simply and plainly: it is being. Or in other words: What is it? It is being. Not a being. Not the being. Just being.

Most apologetics fail at this kind of level - confusing two concepts under the umbrella of the same word.

It was a nice attempt... but you fail.

Well you may be right, but I am not sure I see the equivocation yet. The empirical kind of being cannot, of itself, account for its own kind of being. It points us to something radically more fundamental than the empirical kind of being: just being. Being, itself. Subsistent being. A thing cannot "be" in the empirical way if it cannot "be" in the first place.

Why an infinity?

The set of all things need not be and infinite set.

If ALL things exist on the condition the some other thing(s) simultaneously exists, then the existential chain is infinite. Can you explain how it could be otherwise?

Yes it's consistent with EE(b)... but I fail to see why (i) cannot be true.
All things are not necessarily an infinite set... didn't I just say this?
Actually, "all things" are very likely not an infinite set.
Ask any astrophysicist and he'll tell you that the Universe seems to be bounded.

Precisely. But if EE(a) is true, then every single thing exists as an aggregate 'whole' of an infinity of increasingly more fundamental simultaneously existeing elements and configurations of elements. The fact that it seems very likely to you that some things ARE NOT aggregates of infinite elements points more in the direction of some fundamental way of existing that does not have any conditional elements at all.

I think you need to discover how not to mix up concepts that share the same word and how to use infinities properly.

You are quite right, I can always do better with this. I don't think, however, that you have adequately shown where I have erred in these regards.

[SteveII]

First, every belief you hold, you 'chose' to believe it.

Steve, my boy... you are wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_sherme...anguage=en

First, you intuitively believe, then you consciously acknowledge that belief.... your "choosing to believe" purports to this second stage... or some other that comes later.

The NT contains multiple attestations of miracles and it is clear that the early church (before any books of the NT were even written) believed them to have happened as well (that would be 2 separate bodies of evidence even before you break the NT into 27 separate documents). I don't have any reason to think they are lying, so I believe they happened, therefore I believe there is evidence for the existence of God. 

The NT delves in circular logic there, wouldn't you think?
Here's a marvelous tale that happened.... And here's the tale of the people who believed in the marvelous tale.
Certainly, no reason to think they'd be lying... -.-'

Specially, when you know that "the early church" was no such thing... I think Minimalist will eventually lecture you on that, but [spoiler alert] it was mostly made up in the second century [/spoiler alert].

Sure... there were Essenes in the first century who may have seen their long awaited Teacher arisen in the person of Jesus... (note the "may" - there's nothing of consequence written about this).

Why do you 'chose to believe' that the 1) the early church held false beliefs and later 2) the 8 authors of the NT claimed to have knowledge that they did not have? You just admitted it has nothing to do with whether miracles happened or not (because then your argument would be circular).

Tell me, did the authors of the Vedas claim to have knowledge that they didn't really have?
Did the authors of the Egyptian book of the dead claim to have knowledge that they didn't have?
(should I go on for other authors of other religious texts from other religions?.... I'm sure I can come up with a few... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_text)

Did/do they all hold false beliefs? How shocking!!  

I'm not seeing how either one of those links support your conclusion. Do you "intuitively believe" or have an intuition based on your existing knowledge? If you have to intuitively believe everything prior to a proper belief, how would you ever learn something new?

Believing the NT authors is certainly not circular. By that definition, everything that was ever written about would be circular. I won't see what Minimalist has to say on the subject but are you taking the position that the early church did not exist? Then you must believe in the vast conspiracy theory. On what basis do scholars think that to be the case?

By what logic do you discount the truth of 27 different text because you can find stray texts that were not true in other times and other places? Each text has to stand up to scrutiny on its own merit.

[SteveII]

I'm saying they could have been mistaken, they could have made it all up, they could have had other reasons for telling the story, there could have been a gradual shift of embellishing the facts. I've seen Derren Brown do shit I can't explain - humans can be fooled. It's also possible for them to lie, and to deliberately deceive each other. Memory is unreliable, and humans are fallible. Not the mention how comparatively ignorant and backward people were 2000 years ago, how superstitious belief in supposed magic was rife.

Were they lying? Who knows. Is what they wrote an accurate account of the facts? I don't believe it for a second.

There was no gradual shift since we have early manuscripts from different sources that point to the sources agreeing with each other which gets us quite close to the originals. Why don't you believe they were telling the truth? Do you have a list of facts that lead us to believe they were lying?

[Angrboda]

You have plenty of reason to doubt that the miracles in the NT happened, you just choose not to exercise those reasons with regard to the NT.  You doubt that Joseph Smith talked to an angel.  You doubt that Mohammed did likewise.  You choose not to exercise those doubts with respect to the NT.  That makes you guilty of special pleading and your conclusions are therefore not reliable.  You treat the truth claims of the NT differently than you do other truth claims.  That's simply being biased.

Sure, I was raised in a Christian home. My father was/is a pastor in fact. There was never really a time I did not believe what I was told. 

However, decades later, I see no reason to stop believing what I believed back then for other reasons. It is not special pleading because there are compelling reasons to reject Smith's and Mohammad's claims and they do not have to do with whether miracles happened or not. I treat the NT claims differently because they are different.

How are the NT claims significantly different than those of the Quran or the hadith?

BTW, I have read the Richard Carrier article previously. I looked up the 3 "major evidence" individuals and did not see more than a few similarities to Jesus or the foundations of Christianity. Looking those people up independently shows how Carrier was stretching to make a point.

If you think his point was that these individuals resembled Christian narratives beyond the point that both involve incredible claims of miracles and other incredible acts, then I think you must have approached his article with a great deal of bias. It appears you missed his point completely.