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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Thu, 20 Sep 2001 02:46:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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1280 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> 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.
The "fact" side of this argument is based on Biblical "fact", but it
requires "faith" to trust that what is in the Bible is indeed "fact". I
suppose I can condede your point.
> > > 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.
I can think of only two miracles that were not personally witnessed by the
entire Twelve. The Resurrection was one, but this is accounted for by the
fact that they witnessed Jesus alive after the crucifixion squad confirmed
He was dead. The Transfiguration was the other, witnessed only by Peter,
James, and John.
> 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.
True, but most events *were* witnessed by them. For the ones that weren't,
the Holy Spirit advised them what to write. (This, unfortunately, is an
argument that can only be sustained by faith.)
> 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.
Well, the Old Testament predicts them, and the rest of the Bible expounds on
them, but this requires accepting the Bible as an authoritative source.
> > > 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.
I don't see that "notions of historical fact" were any different, unless I
missed a corollary of one of the arguments. Interviews and painstaking
research would seem to lend themselves naturally to the creation of a
reliable historical document.
> > > 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).
There were two separate feeding miracles. The first one was a major event,
feeding a crowd of 5,000 Jewish men (Matthew 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, John 6).
The second was a slightly smaller event for a group of about 4,000 Gentile
men (Matthew 15, Mark 8).
> 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.
Fine. But we have the testimony of the five hundred witnesses to the
resurrection. They didn't write anything down, but they no doubt spread the
word to many, many people. If Jesus had not been resurrected, the Romans or
the Pharisees certainly could have paraded the body around as proof. This
would have caused major disillusionment in the early church, because it is
the one miracle that the Gospel depends on for its validity. But there is
no sign of any such disillusionment or any fracturing; instead, the early
Christian church was bold and tenacious enough to endure the best
persecution the Roman Empire could throw at it.
> > > 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.
We could also say that the men who had a vested interest in covering it up
tried to do so.
> > > 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.
Is five hundred eyewitnesses to a ressurection not proof enough? Any lawyer
would be overjoyed to have five hundred eyewitnesses for a case.
> > 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.
Granted.
> > 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.
There are no inconsistencies in the Bible that cannot resolve themselves
from a different perspective.
Let me cite one: The death of Judas Iscariot is reported two different ways.
One, he threw the thirty silver coins into the temple and hung himself
(Matthew 27:5). Two, he bought a field with the money, where he fell
headlong and his body burst open (Acts 1:18-19). These two accounts can be
reconciled in the following series of events:
-Judas threw the money into the temple and hung himself
-The priests couldn't decide what to do with the money, so they bought a
field to bury strangers (Matthew 27:6-8). Judas therefore bought the field
indirectly. The money never entered the temple treasury.
-No one went to bury Judas, so after his body hung for a while, it became
detached from wherever it had been hanging, and fell. Since it had begun to
decay, it burst open.
> > > > 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.
Okay, I see. I agree with you. I didn't mean to imply that the evidence
proved that God exists, only that it supported His existence.
> > > 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.
(I thought the ontological argument was that "God has placed within us a
knowledge that He exists and cares for us";
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/godexist.html; but I don't have a
dictionary handy.)
I'm saying that, if you accept that fundamentally simple particles cannot
have always existed and cannot spontaneously generate, then something had to
have created them; and if that creator could not have always existed or
spontaneously generated, it had to have been created too. Confined to the
universe, this reduces to the chicken-and-the-egg problem. But the Bible
describes a God who has always existed and is outside the universal bounds
of space and time. A Creator of this nature is supported by the finite
universe model.
> 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.
But modern science argues for a finite universe that had a beginning.
> > -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.
(I apparently was going too fast when I wrote this. 10^-5 isn't nearly as
small as some of the other tolerances such as the 1:10^120 tolerance, and
some are even smaller.)
> > 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.
"Leads to" does not mean "proves". Naturally, the existence of a Creator
cannot be proven with 100% certainty from the confines of the universe. But
if you establish the probability of all the necessary conditions being
randomly satisfied for the universe to exist as it does, it is extremely
small. If one accepts the existence of only this universe, the probability
in favor of chance rather than design is so small as to approach zero. If
one accepts the multiverse hypothesis, probability would indicate that an
astronomical number of botched unviverses have been spawned with no success.
But from the confines of this universe, the existence of a multiverse cannot
be proven and must be accepted on faith, just as the existence of God.
On the other hand, if you are referring to the "lottery" scenario, or the
"drawing 8 cards in a row" scenario, see my previous response at
http://news.lugnet.com/off-topic/debate/?n=12941.
>
> Dave!
--Ian
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