Seems relevant to me… it makes the ‘miracle’ sound more like fiction, doesn’t it --
Miracles are - miraculous. The miraculous happens against the normal course of Nature - of ‘things with a nature’ - and against human will. (Some make a case that free will is also something that works outside of ‘Nature’ - depends on what you include as a thing with a nature.) So by definition miracles aren’t explainable by ‘natural’ causes like sexual intercourse and basic biology. At best, natural things are sometimes ‘signs’ that a miracle has occurred: People start claiming they saw this and that, there’s suddenly a lot of good wine late into the party, Jesus was on the shore and now he’s in the boat but His coat’s not soaking, etc.
And of course, miracles are rare. No-one claims miraculous food happens as often as real food is grown and cooked.
Unless somebody can prove that Jesus indeed walked on water or turned water into wine, these claims will remain nothing more than fiction. Libertarian free will is also not a good example of something that “works outside of Nature”, as its existence has never been proven and seems unlikely it ever will. The “miracle” of Jesus not having a biological father is not any different form Pinocchio not having a biological father. There are no logical traps here. They are both fictional events.
One thing I have noticed that no one has mentioned is that there are two geneologies and both are Joseph’s, yet they are both different. One even has four women of ill-repute.
But both do claim that he’s of that house, and both are anchored in the same person, Joseph. Just as a hstorical document, we can say with a little more confidence that Jesus was considered the ‘son’ of a man really named Joseph (in whatever relevant way). We have doubt that either of the geneologies are true in all parts - maybe there’s direct contradictions, maybe they are each incomplete and emphasize different generations, etc.
The inclusion of ‘embarrassing’ or minor or irrelevant events might well confirm the general veracity of an account - especially if no particular motive for doing so other than veracity is known. Paley - the man with the watch on the beach argument for claiming the world is designed - was generally interested in evaluating historical documents like the Gospels. He originated the idea that accounts that have the same gist but differ only in details is good evidence the event occurred roughly as recorded in both accounts. (If they were too close in wording and detail you could reasonably argue that one copied from the other or both had a single source; if they are wildly different we might well doubt the two accounts are based in any eye-witness reporting.)
Kirk
I don’t think the two different accounts prove it is a historical document. Both stories have them decending from the house of David yes, but it was written in the OT that the messiah would be from the house of David. Quite often rabbis would take a line or alike and make a story out of it. That is what that is. A lot of the gospels were written that way as well as took stories from other cultures and changed them to fit the Hebrew/Christian culture. The gospel accounts are not eye-witness accounts either. They were written decades after Christ’s supposed death. Many a scholar has said they are not eyewitness accounts and not only that the gospels are dated late 1st early 2nd century, long after the supposed life of Jesus. In fact, they did copy from Mark and added the pagan virgin birth story, which is an argument many a scholar has made lately. They also widely differ in some places too. Basically the gospels are nothing but rewritten myth that is written for a different culture, thus they took from the OT to rewrite these old myths, which was standard back then. They weren’t concerned with history as we are today, but rather if it fit parts of the OT.
Unless somebody can prove that Jesus indeed walked on water or turned water into wine, these claims will remain nothing more than fiction. Libertarian free will is also not a good example of something that “works outside of Nature”, as its existence has never been proven and seems unlikely it ever will. The “miracle” of Jesus not having a biological father is not any different form Pinocchio not having a biological father. There are no logical traps here. They are both fictional events.
George, I forget which OT rewrite it is, but JC’s walking on water is a rewrite of another OT. Basically they are just more mythical stories. Jesus virgin birth story is not much different from Buddha or Krishna’s. Not to mention, it is not different from Horus’s virgin birth either. Most mythical virgin birth stories are written from the same template. Not much is different, except the cultural flavour of the story. Horus is Egyptian, Buddha is Eastern, Krishna is Hindu, Mithra is Roman, etc etc. By the time you are done, it is just more dying and rising Sun god stories. They humanized the movements of the sun in order to write the birth and death of each deity.
Easter/Ostre is a good example of humanizing sun gods.
Unless somebody can prove that Jesus indeed walked on water or turned water into wine, these claims will remain nothing more than fiction. Libertarian free will is also not a good example of something that “works outside of Nature”, as its existence has never been proven and seems unlikely it ever will. The “miracle” of Jesus not having a biological father is not any different form Pinocchio not having a biological father. There are no logical traps here. They are both fictional events.
No, no logical traps in what you’re saying now.
Rather, most ordinary people just claim that they have plenty of reason to believe in free will, and for that matter in miracles and gods also. And they usually claim these things are so on the basis of their own esperiences, or those of others who have reported such things. No scientific theory in itself makes the unnatural impossible, just unlikely. (Why scientific theories cannot make the unnatural impossible or absurd, only rare, is an interesting question in itself.) And free will is something that we use everyday, more than we use electron beams, and no-one doubts electrons exist anymore. So you think that common folk and I are basing arguments on dicey things like free will, while they and I would turn it around and say you’re denying free will, and gods too, on pretty shaky epistemic grounds - you want observations to be totally bound by a theory, when most people just don’t observe in that fashion.
This is just a partial answer, questioning some assumptions I see.
Unless somebody can prove that Jesus indeed walked on water or turned water into wine, these claims will remain nothing more than fiction. Libertarian free will is also not a good example of something that “works outside of Nature”, as its existence has never been proven and seems unlikely it ever will. The “miracle” of Jesus not having a biological father is not any different form Pinocchio not having a biological father. There are no logical traps here. They are both fictional events.
No, no logical traps in what you’re saying now.
No insult intended, but this is equivalent to telling George not to think. Yes, have logical traps because there is nothing logical or scientific about it. One would have to stop thinking or twist their thinking to make it work and that is living in the fiction. Now if you think of it as pure fiction well then, anything goes.
Rather, most ordinary people just claim that they have plenty of reason to believe in free will, and for that matter in miracles and gods also. And they usually claim these things are so on the basis of their own esperiences, or those of others who have reported such things. No scientific theory in itself makes the unnatural impossible, just unlikely. (Why scientific theories cannot make the unnatural impossible or absurd, only rare, is an interesting question in itself.) And free will is something that we use everyday, more than we use electron beams, and no-one doubts electrons exist anymore. So you think that common folk and I are basing arguments on dicey things like free will, while they and I would turn it around and say you’re denying free will, and gods too, on pretty shaky epistemic grounds - you want observations to be totally bound by a theory, when most people just don’t observe in that fashion.
This is just a partial answer, questioning some assumptions I see.
Oh brother. Try reading some Spong, Harpur, Price, etc I have no clue what freewill is. We make choices, but that has nothing to do with freewill. It is human nature to chose this or that and for the most part we use reason, but when it comes to religion, all reason goes out the door. If one uses reason, they are told not to think. That’s just wrong, because it is part of being human. To suppress it is to control one’s thinking.
This is very confusing, Kirk. I don’t think you’re basing your arguments on dicey things like free will, as much as I think you are basing your arguments including free will on dicey things like faith and people’s observation.
I’m not making a point of ignoring your questions. I am picking and choosing, however - for many reasons.
Regardless, in doing so, you are leaving holes. IF I were to claim something, I am going to work to shield the claim from all angles wether I like it or not. Especially if those angles have been pointed out by someone else, that gives them that much relevance. IF you think they are this or that and that is the reason why you didn’t address them I think you should say so to stand your ground.
There’s only one reason to answer a question - because it’s a good one and one has the answer;
does that mean if you don’t have the answer, that that is a good reason you should ponder on it? I m not being sarcastic here, I am just exploring the same as you.
there’s an indefinite number of reasons one fails to answer a question. Please don’t take my silence the wrong way. But go ahead and insist too.
ok.
Daisy, be fair. This isn’t a question. It’s a series of rhetorical questions - statements, couched as questions. The rhetorical questions amount to ‘Here’s my evidence God Himself is a crazy and impossible notion.’ The explanation for the craziness you attribute to the religious is ‘because he doesn’t exist.’ And then you draw another conclusion from that: ‘and that makes the whole issue of Jesus’ ancestry irrelevant’
they may be rthorical questions, nevertheless, they are still questions that need to be addressed. God is multidimentional, if he is, he should help you help me see the light. He wants me to be saved and go to heaven, right?! I am not picking on you here, but on him.
So what’s your question? It seems to me you already have answers that satisfy you so much, you beat me over the head with them by stating them like a TV pundit.
...ok, well, I am ignorant and I need you to enlighten me, how about that?you are in the light and I am in the darkness (I honestly suppose this), how would you go about pulling me to where you are? again, believe it or not, this is an honest inquiry, please try Kirk.
It’s cleverly uninterested in any real answers a religious man could give you. You don’t really want to talk this way, do you? The Internet’s many bloggers encourages this.
I always believe that an effective way of convincing somebody will be to find a reference point the person that needs to be convinced relate to and work to use that point to reason that person into what we want them to see. Me being on the opposite side to where you are, I think you should find something I relate to to convince me. The stuff that the bible says doesn’t convince me, some of it is sound but then again, so is Dawkins and Harris, so we’re even. Actually both of them are real, extremely wise and they are so freaking down to earth about it, that’s what kills me right up. Unlike the clergy they are not pretentious, arrogant or anything like that. And they make lots of sense.
Sometimes i fail to answer a question because there’s nothing to answer, or too much. And that may well be a good answer to why God has failed to show Himself to Dawkins.
You are a mortal just like the rest of us. God supposedly isn’t. As such, why does he have to burden you (and the others) with such task, why can’t he keep you out of this and take care of his own business on his own?
He already has a deep fund of his own opinions, buttressed fast with his own arguments. It may well take centuries - millenia - for Dawkins to realize he’s stumbled across God. Opinions among Christians are divided as to whether we get that time after all.
Kirk
Dawkins is the most down to earth scientist humanity will ever probably know. He makes lots of sense, he knows lot to be able to have reasonable angle of what actually is vs. what archaic stories claim has been, is or will be. Thanks for being willing to venture out of your arena Kirk, and for that alone I sincerely respect you
I’ve avoided this thread because it seems like the angels on pins argument. However, in reference to Jesus walking on water, I believe the story goes that as he walked across the water holding Mark’s hand, Mark said, “I’m sinking, Jesus, I’m sinking.” Jesus replied, “Step on the rocks you idiot.”
Unless somebody can prove that Jesus indeed walked on water or turned water into wine, these claims will remain nothing more than fiction. Libertarian free will is also not a good example of something that “works outside of Nature”, as its existence has never been proven and seems unlikely it ever will. The “miracle” of Jesus not having a biological father is not any different form Pinocchio not having a biological father. There are no logical traps here. They are both fictional events.
No, no logical traps in what you’re saying now.
No insult intended, but this is equivalent to telling George not to think. Yes, have logical traps because there is nothing logical or scientific about it. One would have to stop thinking or twist their thinking to make it work and that is living in the fiction. Now if you think of it as pure fiction well then, anything goes.
The sentence only meant that George was not at that moment using a mere logical trick. And I doubt he’d ever do so deliberately in any case.
Try reading some Spong, Harpur, Price, etc I have no clue what freewill is. We make choices, but that has nothing to do with freewill. It is human nature to chose this or that and for the most part we use reason
The Rev. Spong claims we have no free will? His wisdom never ceases to amaze me.
Do you know a compact car when you see one? And yet you may not have a clue how they work. In one sense, yes, you may not have any good idea ‘what’ free will is - how it connects with the world of natural causes for example. Yet, in another sense you know exactly ‘what’ it is insofar as you recognize when it’s present. For instance, you sometimes know pretty exactly when someone is deliberately insulting you - freely willing to insult you - and when he’s being caused to insult you by, say Tourette’s, or an accidental turn of phrase.
To observe an X is at least partially independent of our theories. And so one can indeed have a theory that makes X’s unlikely or even impossible and still be honestly and accurately observing an X. Take the electron as an example: we’ve believed in electrons for over a century and a half now, but ‘what’ electrons are in the sense of our theory of the electron has undergone a lot of change, and is still under review.
And finally on free will: Isn’t ‘choosing’ just a synonym for ‘willing that something be so, and I get to choose otherwise?’ And isn’t that just a will that’s free - free enough to choose coke over pepsi, for instance? Here’s an example from, uh, Butler? (Some 17th/18th century british moralist with a ‘B’ - Help, dougsmith.) Suppose you have six or seven golden balls before you, each one exactly as round and polished as the others, and all equally distant from you. The man who owns them says ‘take one, any one’. No-one doubts that it’s easy as pie to choose one, yet there is no rational criteria that could distinguish from among them. That’s a good example of a choice, a free decision.
Sure, this isn’t a proof that free will exists - and let’s take that to the ‘Philosophy’ forum instead of pursuing it here, where t’ll get lost. All I want to do here is claim it’s not crazy to gesture to free will. So far, your preliminary arguments don’t just brush it off the table, so to speak. It will take more than ‘I don’t know what a free will is’. Few do, and no-one who believes free will is real would claim there’s a complete and utterly error-free description of it anywhere. But like i said, let’s discuss free will in the ‘Philosophy’ forum.
This is very confusing, Kirk. I don’t think you’re basing your arguments on dicey things like free will, as much as I think you are basing your arguments including free will on dicey things like faith and people’s observation.
Well, I’ll avoid saying ‘I don’t think you’re accusing me of thinking that you think that my argument . . .’ and so on.
I have based no argument in this thread so far on mere faith. The original question did presume that we could trust some of what the Gospel accounts say - or else why care tuppence about Jesus’ relation to Joseph? But that’s just a minimal trust that ancient accounts have some minimal veracity to them when discussing ordinary things like who’s considered to be the relatives of whom.
On observation? You bet; i have a much wider scope for observation than you seem to be allowing. I can observe someone freely & willingly calling me a stoopid Christian for instance - present company excepted! True, I don’t observe some thingy called the free will organ pulsing in some prescribed manner, but so what? Likewise, I observe a stream of electrons flowing in an old Crookes cathode-ray tube, even though I’ve never seen the stream itself, but only the shadow cast by a little cross set up in the path of the beam. (Btw, *don’t* play around with such a thing too much - those old Crookes tubes give off X-rays too. Gad, the things I used to do for science education.)
Seems relevant to me… it makes the ‘miracle’ sound more like fiction, doesn’t it --
Miracles are - miraculous. The miraculous happens against the normal course of Nature
Hence the point—miracles do not happen .
(1) The miraculous happens against the normal course of Nature. (3) Hence, miracles do not happen.
This argument is incomplete. What is the link between (1) and (3)? It can only be (2) ‘Nothing at all happens against the normal course of Nature.’ This link is necessary to make your argument go through; unfortunately, it’s not a scientific fact, and it cannot be a scientific theory. It may be provable on philosophical or conceptual grounds.
But maybe we need to move this discussion to the ‘philosophy’ section or another forum that’s more appropriate than what’s covered in the literal title of this particular thread.
Seems relevant to me… it makes the ‘miracle’ sound more like fiction, doesn’t it --
Miracles are - miraculous. The miraculous happens against the normal course of Nature
Hence the point—miracles do not happen .
(1) The miraculous happens against the normal course of Nature. (3) Hence, miracles do not happen.
This argument is incomplete. What is the link between (1) and (3)? It can only be (2) ‘Nothing at all happens against the normal course of Nature.’
(4) Things only happen ‘against the normal course of nature’ in fiction. That is, they don’t actually happen in ‘real life’.
(5) It is meaningless to talk about something “happening” outside of nature and reality—except as something in someone’s imagination.
Statement (4) re-words statement (2), and so is roughly, logically equivalent.
Statement (5) however is an explanation of how (2) can be so. However, I reject its claim because it requires a certain metaphysics and epistemology to be true - philosophical naturalism - which I don’t buy into. We lack ‘common ground’ on this. You accept a metaphysics and epistemology that ex definitione makes certain concepts meaningless; I accept ones that allow me both all of the ‘special’ sciences and still has lots of room for putative non-natural things, even as it allows me to disbelieve in them. I happen to find non-naturalism - just the mere possibility of being able to talk about things outside the theories of the special sciences - a much more capacious and fruitful metaphysics and epistemology. We’ll have to agree to disagree, or take our discussion to the Philosophy section. Maybe it’s a science/philosophy issue.
More informally speaking: the concept ‘free will’ makes perfectly good sense to any normal person: there may be things or actions that do not arise from the ‘natural world’ as typically meant, and those putative things are real but ‘beyond’ or ‘outside’ or ‘against’ or ‘overarching’ nature - whatever word floats your boat. And so it’s a strong but odd claim that the notion of a free will, for example, is meaningless. In fact - I say this tongue in cheek - I encourage you to say that to lots of people, so that they’ll scratch their heads and say to each other ‘Well, I don’t believe in a God or things that are outside of Nature, but i sure understand the idea - why, he sounds like he’s just refusing to even think or talk about it.’
There is a similar problem in the BBC debate between Russell and Copleston. Russell accuses Copleston of using ‘contingent’ and ‘necessary’ in a meaningless fashion, and Copleston rightly replies ‘Well, that assumes a metaphysics I reject.’ And Russell doesn’t reply to this, since he agrees with Copleston about the lack of common ground, and he knows they’ve hit a deep snag that can’t be solved in a litlte radio broadcast. Perhaps it would be fruitful for us to go through that first third of the debate to see why ‘X is meaningless’ isn’t a good move to make here, in the Philosophy section.
Finally, you’re mixing ‘fictional’ with ‘meaningless’. The two terms are not synonyms. For example, we both agree that Santa ‘truths’ are fictional ones, but even fictional claims can have perfectly ordinary meanings within them. Reindeer fly - not. But we all know the meaning of ‘flying reindeer’.
Try reading some Spong, Harpur, Price, etc I have no clue what freewill is. We make choices, but that has nothing to do with freewill. It is human nature to chose this or that and for the most part we use reason, but when it comes to religion, all reason goes out the door. If one uses reason, they are told not to think. That’s just wrong, because it is part of being human. To suppress it is to control one’s thinking.
...ok, well, I am ignorant and I need you to enlighten me, how about that?you are in the light and I am in the darkness (I honestly suppose this), how would you go about pulling me to where you are? again, believe it or not, this is an honest inquiry, please try Kirk.
