Subject:
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Re: Mercy? (Was Re: My Prayer on this National Day of Prayer)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 19 Sep 2001 16:33:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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1247 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Ian Warfield writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Ian Warfield writes:
> >
> > > God has a reason for not intervening.
> >
> > When you make that non-falsifiable assertion, you are presumably implying
> > that We Cannot Know His Ineffable Plan, and therefore we must assume that
> > everything will work out for Good. However, if We Cannot Know His Plan, then
> > we certainly can't know that it's all for Good--it could as easily (and as
> > feasibly) work out for Evil. "Wait and See" just isn't a real answer.
>
> True. This assertion is based on faith more than fact.
Let's be honest about this--it's *entirely* based on faith, and not at all
on fact. And that's where the issue ends, for many people.
> > No one really denies the existence of Jesus the man, since the Gospels are in
> > themselves sufficient evidence for his mortal existence. However, the Gospels
> > are manifestly insufficient proof of his divinity for a number of reasons.
> > First among these is the obvious time gap between his life and the Gospels,
>
> The Gospels were all written during the first century, two (Matthew and
> John) by people who belonged to Jesus's closest group of disciples, the
> Twelve. Having followed Him for His entire three-year ministry, they were
> certainly capable of writing a faithful account.
Yes and no. They are capable of presenting a faithful account of their
own recollections and of their interpretations of other people's
recollections, but that's not the same as a record of fact. In addition,
many of the alleged miracles are second-hand accounts allegedly reported to
the Gospel authors by alleged first-hand witnesses. This two-step removal
from the event invites multiple opportunities for confabulation of memory,
errors in reporting, misinterpretation of perceptions, and simple
embellishment of story. Any event recorded by the Gospel writers but not
witnessed by them cannot in any way be regarded as first-hand accounts. In
any case I stress once again that the mundane record is not sufficient
evidence for miraculous events, especially considering the obvious problem
of circularity, since the Gospels are the only "evidence" of these miracles,
and only the Gospels report them.
> > not to mention the lack of solid first-hand witnesses to the events.
>
> Luke, in the introductions to his eponymous Gospel and the book of Acts,
> says that he conducted painstaking research to prove to himself the accuracy
> of what he wrote. This included conducting interviews with Jesus's close
> associates, such as Mary and Peter.
I don't necessarily doubt that Luke's research was painstaking, but as
Lindsay has ably pointed out, our notion of historical fact differs markedly
from the notions of history back then.
> > Second, we are not able to rely solely on eyewitness testimony in this case,
> > since the people of that time were not (through no fault of their own)
> > reliable witnesses able to report on supernatural dealings. The functioning
> > of a magnet would have mystified them, but that doesn't make it a Divine
> > Magnet. Even today, creditable observers are fooled by sleight-of-hand
> > magicians into believing that psychic phenomena are at work, but that doesn't
> > make them true.
>
> Scattered witnesses here and there could be dismissed as unreliable. But
> Jesus's life and miracles were witnessed by thousands of people, including
> five hundred who saw Him after the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-6).
> Anyway, where would Jesus have gotten enough bread and fish to feed five
> thousand men (not including their wives and children) by slight-of-hand?
Well, the first telling of that miracle story involved a smaller number, I
believe (I'm at work and don't have my references handy). Moreover, we
don't have any record of the 5000 men (plus wives & kids); what we have are
a very small number of men reporting events as they want them to be reported.
> > Third, the divine events of the Bible have left no direct physical evidence,
>
> At they time they did. "The blind received sight, the lame walked, those
> who had leprosy were cured, the deaf heard, the dead were raised", etc.
> This confounded the authorities, who could offer no explanation for what
> happened.
Again, this is hearsay. There is no record in the accounts of the
authorities, so the only evidence we have comes from men with a vested
interest in telling the story.
> > and they are entirely in contrast to everyday experience.
>
> That's why they were miracles!
And that's why they need greater evidence than is necessary for an episode
of everyday experience.
> Mark wrote his Gospel first, and
> successive writers drew from it in writing their own, adding extra material
> that they had culled from their own experience. The Gospels are
> superficially inconsistent because they are written from different points of
> view, with emphasis on different details.
Again though, this is entirely consistent with the process of editorial
revision when a succession of writers are working toward a common goal of
propaganda.
> When they are compared with this in mind, the inconsistencies quickly resolve >themselves.
I believe they do, but not in the way that I think you'd like them to.
> > > Not only that, but we have external evidence as well. We know that Rome
> > > conquered Europe because of the evidence it left behind. Likewise, we can
> > > find out about God from the universe He created.
> >
> > That's called Argument From Ignorance, and it's a falacy; we can't prove
> > Thing A, so therefore it must be Thing B.
>
> I don't follow how this is ignorance. Please clarify.
Sorry. It's not a statement of your ignorance, but rather about the
source of the argument's conclusion. Put simply, science cannot (yet) prove
the "cause" of the universe, so Creationists conclude that it therefore must
be God. In other words, "If we can't prove A, then it must be B."
Obviously, if "B" is true, it's true regardless of "A," but the lack of
proof for one is not proof of the other. We are "ignorant" of the true
cause of the universe, so we cannot therefore argue from this ignorance that
God caused the universe.
> > From the existence of the universe we can only deduce that the universe
> > exists--we cannot prove that God created it unless we assume that God created
> > it, which I'm sure you recognize to be a circular argument.
>
> Yes, but we can derive the essentiality of a Creator from what we can see
> about the universe. I have a whole library of proof on hand, but let me
> cite just two very broad points:
> -The finiteness of Time. Science has proven that Time has a beginning. How
> did it begin, then? Before there was Time or Space, there was Nothing.
> Nothing cannot create Something. (Any Something cannot create a Thing
> greater than itself.) Since we live in a highly complex, structured
> universe in which lives intelligent life, an Intelligence - even greater and
> more intelligent than what we can see - must have been behind it.
You are, in essence, saying that since fundamentally simple particles
cannot spontaneously arise (or cannot always have existed), then an
infinitely complex Creator must have spontaneously arisen (or always
existed). That's called the ontological argument, and it's a falacy.
In addition, if you're able to say that "God always existed, nuff said,"
then I can say that the universe always existed, nuff said.
> -The anthropic principle. Science has found that the laws of physics and
> chemistry are extroardinarily convenient for matter, let along life, to
> exist as it does. The degree of precision is astronomical. Even one
> parameter were to be different by as little as 10^-5, life could not exist.
> This leads to the conclusion that a Creator had His hands meddling in the works.
Actually, that leads to a conclusion that the postultor of such an
argument does not understand statistics, as Lindsay has also ably demonstrated.
Dave!
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