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General Religious Discussion / Re: Does God exist? And was Jesus Resurrected? - For Charlie

« Last post by junebug72 on Today at 07:25:18 AM »

Definition of extraordinary:

1
a :  going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary <extraordinary powers>
b :  exceptional to a very marked extent <extraordinary beauty>

I can say Einstein's intelligence was extraordinary and there is extraordinary evidence to prove it, E=MC²

If humans can be extraordinary then I think we need another word to describe biblical events like talking snakes, virgin births, walking on water, telling a storm to go away and it worked, turning water into wine and resurrections.  That's supernatural stuff and goes beyond extraordinary.

I think supernatural  is not provable with mathematics or logic.  What kind of evidence do you have BS that there is this curious thing called supernatural?  Have you ever witnessed something supernatural?  Ever seen a ghost?  Is there a mathematical equation that proves there is such a thing?  I really don't know the answer to that.

There are 100's of billions of dead bodies and I have never ever seen a ghost.  I would expect to see at least 3 ghosts a day if there were such things. 

Do you have a guardian angel?  Is that why I did not get hit by lightening while walking in a storm one day long ago?  Why don't they protect children from x abuse, poverty and or cancer; death? 

A supernatural world is not the world I live in.

I think a better question to begin with is: is it necessary for the supernatural to exist? Answering this question is not for the lazy inquirer. There are no shortcuts and (unless you are fortunate) time, effort, and careful thought is required. Embracing Philosophical Materialism as the sole determinant of reality is irrational. Therefore, the statement- “non-physical things might be real even though they are not physical” -is a logically correct statement.

You're the one asking that question........... SUGAR!  Don't be lazy and let us know what you find. 


I think for a dead body to reanimate it most definitely is necessary unless you can provide a natural way in which this could happen. 

You are being slippery here.  If you accept "miracles" as supernatural, then you know you can not prove anything, rather you try to dismiss a very common understanding of what a miracle is; an event defies the laws of physics.

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General Religious Discussion / Re: Does God exist? And was Jesus Resurrected? - For Charlie

« Last post by Foxy Freedom on Today at 05:30:49 AM »

Here are some of the mistakes I found (as far as my attention span allowed) in that incompetent attempt at using Bayes Theorem .

First I did not see any prior probabilities about resurrection and no comparison with resurrections of various god figures or why we should think the resurrection of Jesus is more reliable than the resurrection of Apollonius to his disciples by Zeus.

Setting up an argument without prior probabilities invalidates the claim. 

These are some of the factual errors and unquantified assumptions I also found.

For unlike any of the other traditional proofs, the argument from
miracles purports to establish not merely theism, but Christianity.

Not so, all religions claim miracles, and the most likely god is one manufactured by artificial intelligence.

 

the probability that the resurrection took place
is virtually nil if there is no God and higher if there is. On any plausible background assumptions,
if Jesus of Nazareth died and then rose again bodily three days later, the probability of god is
approximately equal to 1.

Not so, the most likely god is one manufactured by artificial intelligence.

The resurrection is also positively relevant to Christianity. On any construal of
Christianity worth the name, the assertion that Jesus rose bodily and miraculously from the dead
is one of its core assertions. It is fairly easy to see that the probability that Christianity is true is
greater given that the resurrection of Jesus occurred than it is otherwise on our present
background evidence.

Not so, an event does not prove an interpretation and there were and are many interpretations of Christianity some of which were put in the bible and some not.

 

Paul's conversion provides
additional evidence for Christianity (for such propositions as that Jesus is in heaven and is God,
for example), since Paul's conversion and the heavenly vision that occasioned it were not simply
an attestation to the fact that Christ had risen bodily from the dead.

Not so, Saul knew nothing of a bodily resurrection and empty tomb and specifically denied a physical resurrection.

Our argument will proceed on the assumption that we have a substantially accurate text of
the four gospels, Acts, and several of the undisputed Pauline epistles (most significantly
Galatians and I Corinthians); that the gospels were written, if not by the authors whose names
they now bear, at least by disciples of Jesus or people who knew those disciples.

A false assumption. Where is this assumption quantified?

 

Where the texts do assert something miraculous – for example,
Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances – we take it, given the basic assumption of authenticity, that
the narrative represents what someone relatively close to the situation claimed.

A false assumption. Where is this assumption quantified?

It makes no sense to
attribute such visions to the power of any being other than the Judeo-Christian God.

A false assumption. Where is this assumption quantified?

The first set of facts that constitutes evidence for the resurrection is the testimony of
putative eyewitnesses to the empty tomb and of these same witnesses (the women who claimed
to have found the tomb empty) to post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.
That some women testified that they found Jesus’ tomb empty on the Sunday following
his crucifixion is difficult to deny as a historical matter.

Mark says the women did not testify to anything nor were there any resurrection appearances to the disciples. This is just reading into Mark what is not there.

Though some scholars have challenged these accounts as later additions, there are serious
reasons to take them to be authentic reports of what the women said

Mark says the women said nothing. This is just reading into Mark what is not there.

Later gospels have their own ideologies and agendas for changing Mark.

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General Religious Discussion / Re: Does God exist? And was Jesus Resurrected? - For Charlie

« Last post by eh! on Today at 02:09:15 AM »

What probability does BS assign to God's existence??

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General Religious Discussion / Re: Does God exist? And was Jesus Resurrected? - For Charlie

« Last post by Foxy Freedom on Today at 02:00:41 AM »

I will assume that you consider the claim that “God exists” to be extraordinary yet I do not. Actually, I think it would me more accurate to say that God probably exists although my own personal doubts are minimal enough to be inconsequential. Still it is not possible to prove that God exists so claiming that He does leads to a logic error.

Do you understand what extraordinary means? Do you understand that Bayes Theorem is quantitative and that "extraordinary" is a quantitative term in "extraordinary claims"?

Can you explain why you think your "god exists" is not an extraordinary claim or is this just an irrational assumption which you are unable to explain?

I am posting this to further illustrate that some of the data used in Lydia McGrew's Bayesian argument has been disputed. If person A supports Carrier's criticism and person B supports McGrew's criticism, who is correct?.....and how do you determine that?....hence, once again, my contention that Bayesian methods have no way of weeding out subjectivity when used to establish probability for some highly contentious issues such as the Resurrection of Jesus. I hope I have settled this matter once and for all.

Do you understand that a single mistake in method invalidates the probabilities in the claim?

Do you know that McGrew's argument ignored all prior probabilities about Christianity? Do you know that his evidence is full of dubious claims and unquantified assumptions?

I think a better question to begin with is: is it necessary for the supernatural to exist? Answering this question is not for the lazy inquirer. There are no shortcuts and (unless you are fortunate) time, effort, and careful thought is required. Embracing Philosophical Materialism as the sole determinant of reality is irrational. Therefore, the statement- “non-physical things might be real even though they are not physical” -is a logically correct statement.

The supernatural would be a pure quantum state. NO consciousness can exist in that state.

Only natural gods can exist. The most powerful gods which could exist are technological, artificial intelligences which build each other. They could do anything Yahweh does in the bible including miracles and resurrections and apparently manufacturing wine and things from nothing using nanotechnology.

Does the bible support the idea that it is talking about something real? No, it is just rhetoric and ideology.

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General Religious Discussion / Re: Killing in the name of Charlotte's Web?

« Last post by jaimehlers on Today at 12:57:09 AM »

I'm pretty sure Zeno was being facetious, skeptic...

So how about you respond to some of the more serious comments directed at you now?  You can start by replying to the rest of Zeno's post, rather than cherry-picking the latter third so you can call him names and make a demeaning comment about atheists on the forum in general.

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Religion & Society / Re: The irony of Islam...

« Last post by jaimehlers on Today at 12:46:35 AM »

None of which has anything to do with what I was talking about.  Did you just want to use my words as a convenient springboard, skeptic?

And how exactly is anyone supposed to see this hypocrisy when you failed to show examples of it?  All I can see is your unsupported assertions.  You should know the drill by now - if you're going to make an assertion, you need to provide examples to support it.  That goes for the post you made while I was writing this and any you might make subsequently.

These are things which exist in the real world (assuming you're correct), so you have no excuses for not presenting supporting evidence at the same time as you make your assertions.

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Religion & Society / Re: The irony of Islam...

« Last post by skeptic54768 on Today at 12:39:13 AM »

An issue with that, is the SJW types getting into places of power.

Nowadays its 'islamophobia' to call out bloody terrorists for what they are, its 'islamophobia' to bloody state facts from the koran!

Absurdity!

You are sounding like Skep. Maybe you and him should get a room, and make sweet sweet love together, like an elephant and a pig.

While that was uncalled for, it does seem true that the left is in bed with Islam. No negative talk about Muslims is allowed. Plus, ISIS is gaining ground and becoming scarier by the day. They are taking over Europe and it's only a matter of time before they make it to the U.S.

But, nothing will be done unless Trump is elected. Hilary would say "those sweet muslims would never harm us. it's the religion of peace."

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General Religious Discussion / Re: Did reading the Bible shake your faith in God/Christianity?

« Last post by jaimehlers on Today at 12:38:13 AM »

Honestly, I spent a lot of time reading the Bible instead of listening to sermons while I was growing up, and it failed at convincing me that there was anything solid backing up the stories.  That doesn't mean I actively doubted them or anything like that.  It helped that my parents were the junior high Sunday school teachers and so tended to give rational explanations for (some of) the miracles[1] rather than magical ones.  But probably what most knocked me off the track of considering religion to be something to have faith in was the senior high Sunday school teacher.

My mom is a teacher, so she was able to make her lessons fun and interesting, and encouraged participation.  This other guy mostly sat and lectured us about religious stuff while badmouthing things like evolution[2] that contradicted the beliefs he wanted to indoctrinate us in.  It was like going from a bright sunny room to a dank, dark dungeon chamber, and I generally just gritted my teeth and bore it.

It wasn't the only thing by far, but it was a significant part of the puzzle.  And in an ironic way, I'm almost grateful to that man, because having to deal with that crap for a year or however long it was gave me my first true inkling as to how subjective religious belief actually was.  And once I started paying attention to the sermons, it became much more obvious.  I went from not really caring to being almost militantly indifferent to religion as a result.

1.	the only one I remember offhand was the feeding of the thousands, which amounted to "everyone shared their lunches"
2.	and never in a way that suggested it had any actual validity or use, which put my back up to have to listen to since I already had a lot of respect for science by then

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Religion & Society / Re: The irony of Islam...

« Last post by skeptic54768 on Today at 12:33:12 AM »

You know, I can't help but be curious as to when it became acceptable to vilify the concept of social justice.  It's one thing to be opposed to a group's aims, and quite another to mockingly call them "social justice warriors", as if social justice were a bad thing. 

The way they go about doing it is just for attention. It is one thing to accept someone's homosexuality, but it's another thing to push children toward homosexuality. That is an agenda. A lot of boys are being born and being groomed to be gay. That is not simply "equal rights." That is a problem, an agenda.

Then they try to make everyone who opposes homosexuality into a villain instead of just peacefully accepting their different opinion. They yell and scream until the "homophobes" are fired or apologize. This is America. People have the right to not want to conform to the homosexual lifestyle and make it seem normal. They shouldn't be made to feel like outcasts by "tolerant loving liberals." Can't you see the hypocrisy?

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General Religious Discussion / Re: Killing in the name of Charlotte's Web?

« Last post by skeptic54768 on Today at 12:21:36 AM »

First off, that's a strawman, how about you understand that people are individuals?

Now, I personally would hate him, unless he did some SERIOUS bloody errands for me, with his infinite power and all.

Personal universe would be a nice start, then work from there.

But most of the time, yes, people do 'hate' genocidal maniacs with the mentality of a pouting child.

You want a personal universe? That is the definition of narcissism! And you guys are constantly saying that religious people are narcissists.