Those were just two rebuttals that I threw out off the top of my head.
Those rebuttals were quite terrible. In defense of your claim that you start from secular facts, you tasked me with disproving the resurrection.
You had just been talking about how you think my “preconceived conclusion” is that “Jesus is God and savior of mankind,” and so the topic of Jesus was just something I had fresh on my mind. So no, those aren't the only two rebuttals that would persuade me to change my mind.
The world is becoming increasingly rational and, accordingly, less faith-based, so whatever set of secular facts drives your conclusion about the existence of God or the resurrection of Christ should be in your sheath ready to be drawn, particularly here in an apologetics forum.
If you take yourself to be able to make a robust positive case for atheism (as you have indicated), then you shouldn't need for me to instruct you on how to go about attacking the rational foundations of Christianity.
Entirely false.
I can only show that God's existence is not necessary, and also that his existence is logically absurd. This is what I mean by a positive case for atheism, whereas a negative case for atheism is simply rejecting theological arguments for being insufficient. But showing that the universe can (and must) exist apart from God's actions does not show he does not exist, and showing that his properties are logically absurd does not negate his possible existence, as can be inferred from my positive case for nihilism.
A better metaphor than your lamp in the basement would be to imagine a land where it is perpetually heavily overcast, so that no resident of this land has ever seen the sun -- and yet despite this, every morning the sun rises and every evening it sets, just as in our world. Also, just as in our world, some of its light manages to filter down through the great cloud canopy, so that the residents of this land can see that all that lies below this sea of clouds (unless it be overshadowed by some intermediate object or structure) is somehow illuminated from above. Would a resident of such a land be justified in believing that somewhere beyond all those clouds there exists a great light that shines down through them and illuminates the world below, even though she can't directly see it? I think she would.
Firstly, it is not a metaphor. Secondly, the analogy you are presenting is not relevant to the discussion (which entirely defeats the purpose of presenting an analogy) because my analogy relates to the burden of proof, whereas yours relates to logical inference. Thirdly, my analogy is better because it is more straight to the point.
I see my own epistemic situation with respect to God as similar to this perpetually cloud-covered land. I see the world around me to be teeming with inherent and ontologically built-in intelligibility and telic goal-orientation, so even entirely apart from Christianity and the Bible, I have grounds for believing that there is a metaphysical foundation underlying those principles that is not altogether dissimilar from a rational personal agent who acts according to a plan, despite the fact that I've never directly observed it.
If our intelligence or goal-orientation is indicative of a higher intelligence acting according to a plan, then that higher intelligence acting according to a plan is indicative of a yet higher intelligence, and so on. Nothing is solved.
Furthermore, the dominant state of the universe is maximal entropy. The stellar era is a cosmic blink, and is infinitesimal in comparison to the era of the final energy state.
And if you or any other interested readers would like to get a better general understanding of the classical theistic approach to metaphysics and philosophical theology, a good place to start would be
here. Notice that its roots extend back into ancient Platonic and Peripatetic philosophy and draw considerably from their ideas.
Metaphysics is merely mental gymnastics. Until you can refute nihilism, metaphysics is dead.
It seems to me that if there are areas where even logic doesn't hold -- by which I mean that it actually doesn't hold in those areas, not simply that we haven't figured them out yet -- then we must give up all hope of ever making coherent sense of them, because we can't dispense with reason itself and still expect to be able to reason.
Firstly, I'm not saying that logic does not hold. I'm saying that its axioms are assertions, and on top of this have no concrete meaning. Secondly, it's not that we simply haven't figured this out yet, like you suggest - we know with certainty what the situation is because logic was invented, not discovered. Thirdly, not all is lost. I'm not suggesting we dispense with reason and then proceed to reason. I'm saying that we need to understand that we can use logic as a tool, and we can apply it conditionally, but that we must not come to believe that any axiom within it is absolutely true, nor can we even say that we are absolutely certain what truth actually means.
What I think is actually the case is that our understanding of quantum mechanics is not yet sufficiently advanced to really understand what goes on at that scale.
The double slit experiment has been repeated and verified more than any other experiment in the history of mankind, and this is specifically because its conclusion was so shocking to us, that is, that electrons interfere with themselves, and hence are distinct from themselves, and hence the "
X is not distinct from itself" logical law is shown to be an assertion that is not true in all possible realities.
So then let's define this word “definition.” It's an explanation of what something is, yes? Are you saying that all of language can be decomposed entirely into what-explanations?
I'm saying that it has to be able to do this, since asking for a definition is a valid question in any context.
And then what happens is you ask the
what-questions about words within the
what-explanation, and you create an effective procedure for a never-ending sentence, and a never-ending sentence can have no truth value.
Does this also extend to propositions that purport to assert fully concretely-existent states of affairs (what actually is the case, so to speak)?
No such proposition can exist. Did you not read my positive case for nihilism?
It seems like you are referring to something like the law of non contradiction, "Not (
X and not
X)." Expressed in logical terms, it is ~(
X·~
X). These are all primitive symbols with no concrete meaning.
If logic and mathematics are truly utterly devoid of meaning, then they can neither express nor prove anything at all whatsoever, regardless of what assumptions might be made, because they would be (at best) completely and utterly senseless gibberish... So you must excuse me if I can't any more take such a suggestion seriously than if you had claimed that 2+2=5, or that a circle can be square.
Again you are mistaken. The very fact that mathematics is devoid of meaning is why it is so useful. How useful is it to prove that two apples plus two apples is four apples? You then have to start over if you want to prove that two oranges plus two oranges is four oranges. Numbers have no units, so when I inspect the number 2, I am not referring to apples, oranges, firetrucks, or anything. It is indeed meaningless, which means we are free to attach any meaning to it that we like. Thus you only have to prove 2+2=4 once.
The fact that mathematics is expressed in meaningless terms does not mean that you can misapply definitions. The definition of "square" decomposes into meaningless terms, as does the definition of "circle," but this does not mean they are the same thing because their definitions decompose into different strings of primitive terms. Primitive terms are not interchangeable.
Generally, in mathematics, we have the notion of a set, this notion that we can collect things together into a singular unit, and we generally regard the primitive symbol Ø as being the degenerate singular unit, that is, the singular unit with no members. This is the underlying thought process behind mathematics, although it is true (and necessary) that all primitive symbols have no actual meaning.
I won't attempt to explain how they were justified because I don't believe that they were justified.
Could you elaborate on this? It is quite clear that God commanded them to do it.
And by the way, what makes you think that conscience is unrelated to reason?
I'm perfectly fine with dropping that assertion for now as it is not relevant to any idea or principle I hold.
Also, your talk of being “justified” seems to indicate that you believe in some system of morality; if so, then is morality unrelated to reason as well in your view?
Of course I have a system of morality, and of course it is unrelated to reason. However, like I said, I'm fine with dropping the assertion. If you want to show that morality is related to reason, I'm ready to see what you have to say.
I see that you asked me to elaborate on God's plan for contradictions in the Bible, and I think I gave you a reasonable answer to that question.
Reasonable, but insufficient.
To expect me to be able to thoroughly rationalize God would be utterly ludicrous.
To believe in something for which there is no physical evidence and incomplete rationalization is what I would call utterly ludicrous.
Besides that, I'm not sure what other question you're referring to.
To recap:
"God either wants there to be errors in the Bible, or he simply does not care. Which is it and why?"
If I'm not mistaken, you said God wants the errors to be in there, and you have no idea why.
"What good reason is there for allowing contradictions in the Bible? I am curious if anyone can even name one good reason."
Still waiting for you to produce a good reason, or admit that it is absurd to even think there can be one.
Neither do I. What a coincidence.
This is your response to when I said,
"Just trying to meet you in the middle. I don't actually think it's reasonable to believe in a divinely inspired book that contradicts itself for no good reason whatsoever."
So let's see what we have here...
1. You "start with facts on the ground (completely apart from religion) and try to work [your] way to discovering truth from there"
2. You concede that there are contradictions in the Bible
3. You have no idea what possible good reason there can be for contradictions in the Bible
4. You don't think it's reasonable to believe in a divinely inspired book that contradicts itself for no good reason whatsoever
5. ???
6. You believe in the Bible
Maybe they weren't, but then why they didn't just compile, alter, and edit the texts so as to omit the contradictions and omit (or at least mitigate) the atrocities to begin with? They then wouldn't have had to worry about those pesky transparency issues. If your religion is false and you're tasked with making up a sacred text for it, then why not make it as free from contradictions and other controversial matters as possible? And if anyone should ask why you omitted this or changed that, then just chalk it up to “divine inspiration” and discussion over.
The bulk, if not entirety, of atrocities and contradictions in the Bible occur in the Old Testament. By the time Rome was sainted, the Jews, and hence the Old Testament, were scattered throughout the world. How do you propose the church was going to change it all? Are you saying they considered a course of action where they correct the errors and then just hope none of the Jewish texts ever surface?
So actually, it seems that their putting those troublesome passages into the canon and then also feeling uncomfortable enough with them to be less than transparent about them with the illiterate public (as you allege) would be more of a problem for you than it would be for me.
Remarkable. You grant me that the Bible is contradictory and that the church is secretive about this, and then you say it is a problem for my worldview.
Even if God didn't have anything to do with those contradictions, errors, atrocities, and whatnot being in the Bible, then the people who put the Bible together certainly did, and they probably knew about a good many (if not most or all) of them. So then why did they decide to put them in there?
To put it simply, the Old Testament was put together by racist, sexist, genocidal, slave-driving rapists, so I don't think they viewed the events in the book of Joshua as atrocities but rather as conquests.
"Off-topic," I know, but it still bears to be said that the evidence seems to indicate that those contradictions aren't nearly as heavy a blow to Christianity as you seem to think they are.
I can concede this point if you can produce premise 5 in the pseudo-syllogism above.
It's probably simply because they don't know how to go about answering your questions. I have no problem admitting that.
It would be more intellectually honest of them to simply admit that instead of hijacking my question, wouldn't you think?