Starting with God, the Bible or Jesus?

[GioD]

a single exception does not disprove a general rule. Has anyone else engaged in this? What percentage of Christian apologists are willing to put a numerical probability on Jesus's resurrection, and provide reasons for it? I'd say the percentage is very small; so far we have no evidence that anyone other than Richard Swinburne has done it.

Just as I suspected, now that I've provided a counterexample you're just asking for more and more and dismissing the rest.

The point is that Christian arguments that sceptical hypothesis are unlikely often ignore the point that the fact that Jesus is claimed to have risen from the dead itself makes those sceptical hypothesises more likely than they would have been had no such claim been made.

I agree.

Until then, we have good reason to doubt it.

No. You need to provide a clear reason to doubt it. All you've done is demand more and never given any reason for it.

So you say. I don't believe there is any settled consensus in the relevant scientific fields on the Shroud of Turin; until there is, I will be withholding judgement regarding it.

No, idiot. Both the painting hypothesis and carbon dating dates have been destroyed by numerous studies, readily available facts, and alternative explanations, the only people who deny that are an immense minority who either have an ideological agenda or simply don't know what they're talking about.

See http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com...1260-1390.html and http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com...asons-why.html (CTRL + F enter "pigment analyses" for the second).

If that is even possible, and it may well not be

Instead of spewing conspiracy-theory quality alternatives actually explain why over 400 years of argumentation are based around a flawed assumption.

not every false idea is contradictory.

All necessarily false ideas are.

And the fact that philosophers have been trying so hard for so long, with very little success to show for it, suggests that verifying metaphysical claims is very hard. I'm not going to say they are absolutely unverifiable, but they are far less verifiable than many other types of claims are.

And even if "verifying metaphysical claims is very hard" (it's not) that doesn't prove Metaphysical naturalism/supernaturalism are subjective positions.

The rest is coming later.

[GioD]

Continued...

It does matter, because rigour helps protects us against subjective biases. Without rigour, we are at far greater risk of failing due to these than when rigour is present. That is why the conclusions of ancient history are far more uncertain than those of particle physics.

OK, if the conclusions of ancient history are so "uncertain" how about you explain why we can't claim Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon without a probability calculus? Because that's where your arguments lead to.

The difficulty with induction and abduction, is how to evaluate the strength of inductive or abductive arguments?

Based on various criteria including explanatory power, Okham's Razor, which is less ad hoc, etc.. By the way, all of science is inductive or abductive too.

But when we can't use quantitative tools, we are left with qualitative judgements of strength, which tend to be much more subjective, and much harder to objectively justify as correct.

Begging the question. This is what specific criteria and dialog between historians on issues are meant to overcome. Qualitative =/= subjective.

[ZackMartin]

OK, if the conclusions of ancient history are so "uncertain" how about you explain why we can't claim Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon without a probability calculus? Because that's where your arguments lead to.

The conclusion that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon is more uncertain than the claims of particle physics, precisely because we can evaluate the later rigorously but the former we can't.

I'm not saying we can't know anything about ancient history. I am claiming we can know far less about ancient history than we can about modern history or many non-historical fields, and the conclusions we reach in ancient history are far less certain than those in those other fields.

Based on various criteria including explanatory power, Okham's Razor, which is less ad hoc, etc.. By the way, all of science is inductive or abductive too.

But when you rigorously deal with those evaluations, you can have much more certainty your evaluation is correct than when you don't or can't.

Begging the question. This is what specific criteria and dialog between historians on issues are meant to overcome. Qualitative =/= subjective.

I never said that qualitativeness and subjectivity where the same thing. But who can doubt that a purely qualitative science is more likely to be have subjective elements than a more quantitative one?

[ZackMartin]

Just as I suspected, now that I've provided a counterexample you're just asking for more and more and dismissing the rest.

Which you couldn't even do correctly - you ascribed it to William Lane Craig, when it was actually made by Richard Swinburne, and Craig even expressed disagreement with Swinburne's claim. (Craig's disagreement, is not with the particular number Swinburne calculated, but with the very idea that we can calculate any numbers at all.)

A generalisation is not disproved by a single counterexample. But if the generalisation is false, you should easily be able to supply several.

No. You need to provide a clear reason to doubt it. All you've done is demand more and never given any reason for it.

And I have provided a clear reason to doubt it: a clear reason to doubt a single study is that it has not yet been replicated and neither has the relevant research community had the time to properly review, debate and evaluate it.

No, idiot. Both the painting hypothesis and carbon dating dates have been destroyed by numerous studies, readily available facts, and alternative explanations, the only people who deny that are an immense minority who either have an ideological agenda or simply don't know what they're talking about.

May I suggest that you not call me an "idiot"? It is bad manners; and your resort to insult is a sign of the weakness of your case.

Instead of spewing conspiracy-theory quality alternatives actually explain why over 400 years of argumentation are based around a flawed assumption.

Conspiracy theories? I'm not sure how this has any relevance to what you are responding to.

All necessarily false ideas are.

But not all false ideas are necessarily false. Very many aren't. It's not even clear that all necessarily false ideas are contradictory. For example, if someone believes that the law of the excluded middle is true, then they almost certainly believe it is necessarily true, and hence its negation is necessarily false. But, while they'd say it was necessarily false, it is not clear that it is contradictory. Many would say that the proposition "At least one proposition is neither true nor false" is necessarily false, but there is nothing contradictory about it.

And even if "verifying metaphysical claims is very hard" (it's not) that doesn't prove Metaphysical naturalism/supernaturalism are subjective positions.

You claimed they were objectively verifiable. It wasn't the objective part I was disagreeing with, it was the verifiable part. Metaphysical claims, while possibly verifiable in theory, are not verifiable in practice. And you have not provided any convincing evidence to the contrary.

[ZackMartin]

You are missing the salient point I'm making here with the “All men are mortal” argument analogy. I’m not asking if you agree or not with the premise whether universally stated or not. Frankly, and I mean this with respect, I don’t care if you agree or not or you say you are convinced or not by an argument. I’m asking if it is reasonable to allow a conceptual possibility to be enough to falsify a premise repeatedly supported by our collective experience? It’s a yes or no answer.

I don't think the conceptual possibility falsifies the premise - it doesn't disprove the premise - but it is a rational reason to disbelieve the premise.

Couldn’t we say the human scale is an intermediate scale between for example the very small and the very large (probably more on the side of very small more so than the very large)? Thus the human scale represents and is reflective of both the very small scale and to some degree the very large.

So, on very large scales, the force of gravity makes time run noticeably slower. And on very small scales, particles pop into existence in the midst of empty space and then disappear back into empty space again. And these phenomena are represented on the human scale how? Humans have no practical experience in their everyday lives with time running slower due to the force of gravity; we can detect it happening with very precise instruments, but it is a concept completely alien to our everyday lives. Likewise, things popping into existence out of empty space, and then disappearing back into them, is likewise completely alien to our everyday lives. At extremely small scales and extremely high energy levels, many physicists believe that space has more than three dimensions (although those theories have not yet been conclusively proven) - but the idea of space having more than three dimensions is completely alien to our everyday life. The rules that apply on different scales are very different from the rules that apply on this one, and while the rules at different scales are not unrelated, their relation is far more complex than the words "represent" or "reflect" will permit.

In fact in one respect the universe is the totality of the extremely small is it not? If the laws of nature behave in all kinds of strange ways in the scale of the very small then they must also be behaving in all kinds of very strange ways on the human scale (as the human scale is comprised of the very small and would inherently be affected by the behavior of that which makes up the very small scale). But the laws of nature do not behave in all kinds of strange ways on the human scale. Therefore, it cannot be the case that on a very small scale the laws of nature behave in all kinds of strange ways. If on the very small scale the laws of nature do not behave in all kinds of strange ways and the universe is the totality of the very small then the very large (i.e. the universe) does not behave in all kinds of strange ways either.

As I said - many physicists believe that space has more than 3 dimensions (10 and 26 are popular numbers), but these extra dimensions are so extremely small (far smaller than an atom) that we can ignore them for most purposes. So on that very small scale, the laws of nature behave very oddly - how odd is space having 10 dimensions? But on the human scale, these extra dimensions effectively don't exist. (As I said, these theories have not yet been proven - but there is nothing impossible about them either.)

Another example - gravity and magnetism are rather different things. But many theoretical physicists believe that at extremely high temperatures (at Placnk temperature - around 140 thousand billion billion billion degrees Celsius - that's around 250 thousand billion billion billion degrees Fahrenheit - which they believe was the temperature of the universe shortly after the Big Bang), they merge together and become one and the same force. But the concept of gravity being the same thing as magnetism is completely alien to our everyday experience. So another potential example of where the laws of nature behave very oddly on scales very different from those humans are.

Option (2) is that to some degree the laws of nature behave in all kinds of strange ways on every scale including the human scale (to argue otherwise would be special pleading). The human scale merely appears to us as the most stable and predictable because the strange behavior is not as extreme and therefore not as easily detectable on our scale because we just happen to exist in the right “zone” of scale, as it were, where there is very little strange behavior in the laws of nature.

With some cases of different laws applying at different scales, what you say is technically true. But saying "not as extreme" and "not as easily detectable" can be rather an understatement. If you walk a metre downhill, then time runs slower, by about a millionth of a nanosecond per a second. That is so tiny, it is disregardable for almost all practical purposes; even for the vast vast various majority of scientific, technical or engineering purposes. It can only be detected with very precise experiments. "Not as extreme" is a very vast understatement, and so is "not as easily detectable". Some quantitative differences are so large they are essentially qualitative.

Also, consider symmetry-breaking. When one reaches certain temperatures, the laws of physics start to behave completely differently; this is not a matter of degree, but a qualitative difference. At the temperatures we are used to, we have four fundamental forces (gravitational, electromagentism, strong and weak nuclear forces.) It is believed that as temperatures increase, these forces start to merge, and then at Planck temperature they act as one force. (Most of this is largely theoretical and unproven; but the first level of unification, electroweak, is generally accepted.) This unification isn't something which exists to a lesser degree at lower temperatures; it is something genuinely new once that temperature is reached.

Zack, the bottom line is do you have any evidence that would conclusively falsify the first premise of the KCA under any reasonable definition for “cause” or “begins to exist”? You can even use your definitions, I don't mind. Without that, ultimately you are firing blanks and everything else we've been knocking around is, frankly, a rabbit trail.

I will post my reasons shortly.

[GioD]

Which you couldn't even do correctly - you ascribed it to William Lane Craig, when it was actually made by Richard Swinburne, and Craig even expressed disagreement with Swinburne's claim. (Craig's disagreement, is not with the particular number Swinburne calculated, but with the very idea that we can calculate any numbers at all.)

Getting the name wrong doesn't discredit me, nor does Criag's vague rejection of it discredit Swinburne. You asked me to provide one example of a Christian apologist who made a probability calculus and I did. Nor does it matter that a "single exception doesn't disprove a general rule", because A) it can and B) the only way this works is if you change the claim to "most scholars don't use probability calculuses", which is an appeal to authority.

And I have provided a clear reason to doubt it: a clear reason to doubt a single study is that it has not yet been replicated and neither has the relevant research community had the time to properly review, debate and evaluate it.

No, you haven't. You simply reasserted what I asked you to prove: why should we distrust this based on it being a single study, even though A) there is no evidence against it, B) it was conducted and confirmed by professionals (including some agnostics), and C) it complements other well-known facts about the Shroud. By the way, single studies are often taken seriously in the social sciences and medicine.

May I suggest that you not call me an "idiot"? It is bad manners; and your resort to insult is a sign of the weakness of your case.

Calling you an idiot in that case was completely warranted, and contrary to your psychoanalysis it shows no weakness of my case, but the fact you decided to focus on that and not the studies I posted shows weakness in your case.

But, while they'd say it was necessarily false, it is not clear that it is contradictory. Many would say that the proposition "At least one proposition is neither true nor false" is necessarily false, but there is nothing contradictory about it.

Most defenders of classical logic DO believe rejection of the law of excluded middle leads to a contradiction. Deduce from ~(P V ~P) and you'll see their point.

Metaphysical claims, while possibly verifiable in theory, are not verifiable in practice. And you have not provided any convincing evidence to the contrary.

It is your burden to demonstrate such, not mine to refute it. All of the arguments for both positions clearly indicate that at least one of them must be verifiable. The fact we haven't agreed which ones are sound and which positions true doesn't alter that claim.

[GioD]

Missed this one.

The conclusion that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon is more uncertain than the claims of particle physics, precisely because we can evaluate the later rigorously but the former we can't.

I wasn't saying it was more certain than the claims of particle physics. I was saying by your criteria we have no reason to say that it is reasonable to believe in this, when the blatant fact is it is reasonable.

But when you rigorously deal with those evaluations, you can have much more certainty your evaluation is correct than when you don't or can't.

And you can still have a reasonable degree of certitude when you don't have the level of rigor you want.

But who can doubt that a purely qualitative science is more likely to be have subjective elements than a more quantitative one?

Again, this is what things like collaboration between historians and criteria of induction can and do solve.

[shunyadragon]

Again, this is what things like collaboration between historians and criteria of induction can and do solve.

I agree with this, but the result is not the degree of certainty that most theists believe there is for the life of Jesus as portrayed in the New Testament.

[magellan004]

Perhaps I should clarify, getting said atheist to admit it is easier said than done. "The heavens declare the glory of God", but getting someone to admit that that is true, isn't all that easy.

I think that's a good way to pharse it. Didn't St Paul say that their are no atheists? Some people just don't like the idea of God.

Magellan

[headheart]

I think that's a good way to pharse it. Didn't St Paul say that their are no atheists? Some people just don't like the idea of God.

Magellan

The letters contain many details about G-d but would you care to illumine us further instead of 'Didn't Paul ....' and 'Some people ....' What is it that Paul wrote? and who are the some people you are referring to?

Peace,
Eric

[Tassman]

I think that's a good way to pharse it. Didn't St Paul say that their are no atheists? Some people just don't like the idea of God.

Magellan

Oh well, if St Paul said it, it must be so………….…….

What some people just don't like the idea of is myth masquerading as fact. Conversely, some people just don't like the idea that there isn’t a god – specifically, their god.

[ZackMartin]

I wasn't saying it was more certain than the claims of particle physics. I was saying by your criteria we have no reason to say that it is reasonable to believe in this, when the blatant fact is it is reasonable.

And I never said it was unreasonable to believe in any claim about Jesus either. I've said elsewhere, there are a number of claims about Jesus which I think are reasonable to believe: that in the first few decades of 1st century Palestine there existed a Jewish religious teacher called "Jesus", who started out as a follower of John the Baptist, but branched off to found his own movement with his own following, who taught various things (although I'm doubtful if we can know exactly what), who came to the negative attention of the authorities (Jewish and Roman), and who was crucified as a result; after his death, his disciples had some subjective experience described as him rising from the dead (although what that experience amounted to objectively, I doubt we can know), and his following evolved over the coming decades and centuries into the religion we know as Christianity today. The disagreement is how much we can go beyond this - I say not very far, you say a long way.

We should also note that events performed by a general in a war are different in character from what happened to a religious teacher who was likely rather obscure in his own day. The former would have received much more public notice at the time, and be remembered by many more, so the odds that the event is mythical or legendary are much lower. What Roman did not know that Caesar had touched the Rubicon? Whereas, why would the average Jerusalemite taken note of the crucifixion of Jesus? He would not have been the first leader of a minor religious sect to receive that treatment, nor would he have been the last; it was probably a much more common occurrence than many would think. So while I agree that both Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and that Jesus was crucified, I have more confidence in the historical reality of Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon than I do in the historical reality of the crucifixion of Jesus, even as I assent to the historical reality of both of them.

And you can still have a reasonable degree of certitude when you don't have the level of rigor you want.

You can know some things without rigour, but I think if you take that lack of rigour seriously, the end result is a moderate historical scepticism - not the claim that we can know nothing in history, but the claim that we probably know a fair bit less than most historians would like to think.

Again, this is what things like collaboration between historians and criteria of induction can and do solve.

Surely sometimes, but I would say less often than they would be inclined to think.

[ZackMartin]

You asked me to provide one example of a Christian apologist who made a probability calculus and I did. Nor does it matter that a "single exception doesn't disprove a general rule", because A) it can and B) the only way this works is if you change the claim to "most scholars don't use probability calculuses", which is an appeal to authority.

That most scholars don't calculate probabilities is evidence that their scholarship is a much less rigorous field than those fields of scholarship where probabilities are calculated with regularity. So it is not an appeal to authority at all; it is an observation about the nature of the field in question.

No, you haven't. You simply reasserted what I asked you to prove: why should we distrust this based on it being a single study, even though A) there is no evidence against it, B) it was conducted and confirmed by professionals (including some agnostics), and C) it complements other well-known facts about the Shroud.

Requiring more than a single study to consider a theory demonstrated is standard practice in science; if you think we should deviate from the standard practices of science then that is something for you to prove, not I.

By the way, single studies are often taken seriously in the social sciences and medicine.

They are taken seriously, in the sense that people will seriously review the study looking for possible errors (e.g. errors in experimental design, possible alternative explanations the authors did not consider or unreasonably discounted, etc.), and people will seriously try to replicate their results. But if what you mean by "taken seriously", is considering a novel and unprecedented claim conclusively demonstrated on the basis of a single study, then no, they aren't taken seriously in that way.

May I suggest that you not call me an "idiot"? It is bad manners; and your resort to insult is a sign of the weakness of your case.

Calling you an idiot in that case was completely warranted, and contrary to your psychoanalysis it shows no weakness of my case, but the fact you decided to focus on that and not the studies I posted shows weakness in your case.

No, it's not warranted. Resorting to insults in a debate is a sign of emotional and/or intellectual immaturity.

Most defenders of classical logic DO believe rejection of the law of excluded middle leads to a contradiction.

Do they? I don't think they do. Evidence for your claim?

Deduce from ~(P V ~P) and you'll see their point.

Deduce what? If you are claiming we can derive a contradiction from the rejection of the law of the excluded middle, I'll believe you when you present (or cite) such a derivation.

Metaphysical claims, while possibly verifiable in theory, are not verifiable in practice. And you have not provided any convincing evidence to the contrary.

It is your burden to demonstrate such, not mine to refute it.

Why should the burden of proof fall on me and not you?

All of the arguments for both positions clearly indicate that at least one of them must be verifiable.

How? No they don't.

The fact we haven't agreed which ones are sound and which positions true doesn't alter that claim.

Sure, not agreeing about which arguments are sound or which positions are true doesn't in itself imply they are unverifiable. But it doesn't imply verifiability either.

[headheart]

Oh well, if St Paul said it, it must be so………….…….

What some people just don't like the idea of is myth masquerading as fact. Conversely, some people just don't like the idea that there isn’t a god – specifically, their god.

Your statement is as hollow as Magellan's and my question stands. (refer: post 100)

Jamie,
If you don't have anything qualitative to contribute to this thread other than the usual inflammatory comments could you please find another place to play.
Thank you,
Eric

[GioD]

That most scholars don't calculate probabilities is evidence that their scholarship is a much less rigorous field than those fields of scholarship where probabilities are calculated with regularity. So it is not an appeal to authority at all; it is an observation about the nature of the field in question.

Again: You have not shown probability calculi are necessary for the statement "it is reasonable that Jesus was resurrected from the dead" to be taken seriously.

But if what you mean by "taken seriously", is considering a novel and unprecedented claim conclusively demonstrated on the basis of a single study, then no, they aren't taken seriously in that way.

How about this study I did a report on last night? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0508103943.htm

Single study that challenges views of taking multiple antipsychotics.

Do they? I don't think they do. Evidence for your claim?

Harry Gensler, S.J.'s Introduction to Logic, Second Edition. If you don't trust me look it up yourself, I told you I write these on short timeframes.

Deduce what? If you are claiming we can derive a contradiction from the rejection of the law of the excluded middle, I'll believe you when you present (or cite) such a derivation.

Do you know how not-either statements work? Both claims inside of them are false. So ~(P V ~P) means both ~P and P, which is absurd. (This is paraphrasing the logic book, by the way).

Why should the burden of proof fall on me and not you?

Because I follow the mainstream view of philosophy of mind that some position on the issue is verifiable, also held by Descartes, John Searle and Edward Feser, off the top of my head.

How?

It's generally accepted at least one of these arguments are sound and almost every philosopher of mind holds to at least one, implying they find it sound.

Sure, not agreeing about which arguments are sound or which positions are true doesn't in itself imply they are unverifiable. But it doesn't imply verifiability either.

When did I say it did?