If God manifested himself, how would you know that it was God?

[Paul of Eugene OR]

Looks like someone failed logic class and thinks that proving negatives with unfalsifiable entities is easy!

Give me a single criterion that we could reasonably use to show that God did not exist.

Is there a porcelain tea pot among the objects forming the rings of Saturn? No there is not, and I assert that without any evidence against that idea from observation. Why am I able to do that? I am able to do that because I have means of determining odds for such an occurrence and the result of the odd calculation are such that I comfortably assert there is no such tea pot there.

A person can similarly construct a calculation for accepting that God exists. Atheists have their assumptions about what goes into such a calculation, and you can't say unilaterally that it must be awry. On the other hand, I have had experiences I attribute to God and these influence my opinion as to the probability that there is a God, indeed. Of course, it winds up being a leap of faith.

 

[variant]

Is there a porcelain tea pot among the objects forming the rings of Saturn? No there is not, and I assert that without any evidence against that idea from observation. Why am I able to do that? I am able to do that because I have means of determining odds for such an occurrence and the result of the odd calculation are such that I comfortably assert there is no such tea pot there.

Your assertion is simply unsupported.

You can properly claim that it is very unlikely that there is a tea pot (which is what you mean).

The tea pot claim is a falsifiable claim though (just not a very likely one) as the rings of Saturn are observable, and we can come up with reasonable criterion for what constitutes a tea pot.

With God we have an explanation which fits every possible observable set of data, impossible to contradict.

A person can similarly construct a calculation for accepting that God exists. Atheists have their assumptions about what goes into such a calculation, and you can't say unilaterally that it must be awry. On the other hand, I have had experiences I attribute to God and these influence my opinion as to the probability that there is a God, indeed. Of course, it winds up being a leap of faith.

The point here is that we can extrapolate what we think goes into that calculation all day, there is no way to evidence the proposition God doesn't exist because it is an idea so vague that can be fit into any data set.

 

[Davian]

DavianHmmm....wait till I tell your wife about the fact that you've just divulged.

What was that?

Sure. I have tentative beliefs, starting with the pure objectivity of 'evidence,' as I already cited to you a few weeks ago, and with which you basically ran half a yard with it and then drop the effort over some minuscule paragraph that lightly mentioned 'god' in passing......In game terms, we call that an academic fumble.

You mistake me for someone that is here to 'score points'. What you may want to interpret as 'dropping the ball' is just me side-stepping your attempts to shift the burden of evidence to me. Those posts are still back there waiting for your response.

It does not sound like you are going to let Occam's razor near your precious god beliefs.

 

[Belk]

Victoria Soliz Allegedly Tries To Drown Son In Puddle Because Jesus Told Her To

But obviously she was delusional and should not have listened. I mean how is it at all believable God would tell you to kill someone? Other then the Amalekelites. Or the Canaanite. Or the Midianites.

 

[WoundedDeep]

Victoria Soliz Allegedly Tries To Drown Son In Puddle Because Jesus Told Her To

But obviously she was delusional and should not have listened. I mean how is it at all believable God would tell you to kill someone? Other then the Amalekelites. Or the Canaanite. Or the Midianites.

Jesus never called us to kill anyone. In fact, Jesus said to love your enemies and pray for them.

 

[Davian]

How would you differentiate this experience from a wholly imagined one?

Well, if we understand Otto correctly, the experience would be unmistakable if it were the 'real thing'; otherwise, we might assess ourselves as having had "A Beautiful Mind" moment.

Victoria Soliz Allegedly Tries To Drown Son In Puddle Because Jesus Told Her To

But obviously she was delusional and should not have listened. I mean how is it at all believable God would tell you to kill someone? Other then the Amalekelites. Or the Canaanite. Or the Midianites.

Apparently, if the experience is realistic, it must be real. Personally, I keep my evidential bar a lot higher off of the ground than that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UelJZG_bF98

 

[Achilles6129]

Jesus never called us to kill anyone.

Unless you're one of the two witnesses. But you're correct: in the New Testament, God does all the killing.

 

[Achilles6129]

We are talking about what would convince ME not everybody else. My point is; there are specific things that would convince me; it may not convince everybody else, but we aren’t talking about what would convince everyone else now are we.

OK, here's what I'm trying to say: even if it would convince just you, you being convinced by evidence from the five senses may actually not be rational at all. You might be mistaken and it might actually be Satan, or someone who possessed super-advanced technology, unless you had some sort of internal witness. That's the point: no matter what external evidence is given, it will never be enough.

Some of the prophecies were fulfilled; some were not.

All prophecies were fulfilled except those yet to happen in the future, aka the end-times prophecies.

Also, sometimes believers can make sure a prophecy is fulfilled like the “Israel will one day become a nation” After WW-2 the USA and other nations with a large number of Christian citizens made sure Israel became a nation thus fulfilling that prophecy.

Actually I don't recall that being a specific prophecy, although obviously Israel would have to be a nation in order for the events in Scripture to occur. I don't think you are correct, however, in saying that Israel was made a nation specifically to fulfill Biblical prophecy: it was just something that they had always wanted.

 

[Ken-1122]

OK, here's what I'm trying to say: even if it would convince just you, you being convinced by evidence from the five senses may actually not be rational at all. You might be mistaken and it might actually be Satan, or someone who possessed super-advanced technology, unless you had some sort of internal witness. That's the point: no matter what external evidence is given, it will never be enough.

True! If somebody is not interested in the truth, no amount of proof will convince them. So what's your point?

All prophecies were fulfilled except those yet to happen in the future, aka the end-times prophecies.

All of them? Matthew 1:23 says:

"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."

So when did they ever call Jesus Emanuel?

K

 

[WoundedDeep]

All of them? Matthew 1:23 says:

"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."

So when did they ever call Jesus Emanuel?

K

Matthew 1:23 is almost direct quote of Isaiah 7:14.

Immanuel is a name that describes the nature of who Jesus is, His nature is God with us (in the flesh). Do you call your son flesh and blood? No, because flesh and blood is the name of your son's nature.

In John 1:14, Jesus is called the Word:

"And The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory". All of Jesus' disciples acknowledge Him as God with them, so that is a fulfillment of both Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23. They may not outrightly call Him God with them, but they all acknowledge that fact.

 

[Ken-1122]

I gotcha. One more question then: what is something you would call "god" ?

We would have to start from the position that the Universe was created; rather than what I currently suspect; that the Universe (or all that the Universe is made up of) has always existed.

In order for me to call a being "God" it would have to be

*Creator of the Universe
*A non evolved being
*Eternal; was never born/created and never dies.

He doesn't have to be all knowing or all powerful, but he would have to be more knowing and powerful than mankind currently is. In other words; it would have to be something akin to the God described in the Bible

Ken

 

[quatona]

OK, here's what I'm trying to say: even if it would convince just you, you being convinced by evidence from the five senses may actually not be rational at all. You might be mistaken and it might actually be Satan, or someone who possessed super-advanced technology, unless you had some sort of internal witness. That's the point: no matter what external evidence is given, it will never be enough.

I agree with you: Unverifiability/unfalsifiability is a necessary by-product of the exceptional definition of "God".
But out of interest:
How exactly is "internal witness" a reliable epistemological faculty?

 

[Ken-1122]

Matthew 1:23 is almost direct quote of Isaiah 7:14.

Immanuel is a name that describes the nature of who Jesus is, His nature is God with us (in the flesh). Do you call your son flesh and blood? No, because flesh and blood is the name of your son's nature.

Flesh and blood is not my son's name, and it is now who he is but what he is.

Ken

 

[Belk]

Jesus never called us to kill anyone. In fact, Jesus said to love your enemies and pray for them.

Is Jesus part of the Triune Godhead?

 

[Roonwit]

Variant

The difficulty is that you are defining God in a way that those who believe in God would not really recognise. You are defining him as a kind of thing that we could do scientific experiments or observations to track down and measure, like a black hole or extraterrestrial life. God isn't like that at all. That's what my point about the number of people who believe in God was about - not an appeal to popularity, which would, as you say, be false reasoning, but an observation that perhaps you should stop and think about whether you have correctly understood what it is they believe in and what it is you are rejecting.

To give a rather imperfect analogy, I have never been able to understand art at all. I just can't see what other people are getting from it. For a long time I just rejected art as having any value at all, but having been around enough people who clearly feel it does have value, I have come to accept that there must be some value to it, even though most of the time I really struggle to see it. But understanding the art is different from being able to recognise any particular things that may be depicted. I can see the shapes and the characters in the paintings, I can identify the colours and so on, but that is different from understanding the art.

It is a little bit the same with God. God is not one thing in the universe to be lined up against all the other things. Rather, God is the creator of the whole universe and everything in it; he is the one that enables all the things that exist to exist. To reject God's existence because I can't scientifically measure it is a little bit like rejecting the existence of my eyes because I can't see them.

Now, in what I have said thus far I haven't said anything that could lead us towards falsifiable evidence statements, and so our discussion about God's existence ends up as nothing more than one person saying, "Can't you see? It's so obvious," and the other saying, "No, I don't see it; I really don't think it's there."

However, I do think that we are given some hard evidence that God is real - some falsifiable evidence, if you like. We need to allow that this evidence will come in the form that God chooses and not the form that we demand, otherwise we are denying God's right to be God by trying to make ourselves God instead. There are good reasons to suppose that God would not make himself so obvious that people have no choice but to believe him, but he does make himself obvious enough that those who are willing to be persuaded can be persuaded. This is why I pointed you towards the Resurrection evidence. While it falls short of 100% proof, I defy anyone to look at the evidence and come away with the conclusion that there is a more plausible explanation for that evidence than that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

You are entitled to be hesitant to jump on board immediately with claims of miracles. But you should also be wary of starting from an a priori conviction that they cannot happen. If you do that, then you cannot consider the question with an open mind. In that case, your claim to be coming from a position of reason rather than of faith is undermined. There are many miracle stories from Christianity and other religions that are simply unfalsifiable and therefore not worth considering as evidence, which is why I haven't put those claims before you. However, with the Resurrection, there is a case to answer here, because we have a number of verifiable facts (such as the existence of Christianity itself) that I suggest cannot be explained aside from the Resurrection of Jesus. If you have a more plausible explanation, it is for you to put it forward. I always feel that the most natural explanation for anything should be accepted until there is strong evidence put forward to the contrary. (That's why, for example, I believe that humans did actually go to the moon in 1969. I can't know for certain that it wasn't faked, but the most natural explanation for the facts I have is that they did actually go, and I haven't seen compelling evidence to the contrary.)

Your claim that you don't trust evidence is just not the case; most of what we believe we have to take on trust. There are many things you believe about the present, the past, and even the distant past, that you do not have direct experience of but take on trust from other sources. I am just suggesting that we should apply the same standards to the Resurrection accounts as we do to anything else.

If you don't want to consider the possibility of God's existence, that's up to you. But don't confuse an unwillingness to see with an inability to see.

Roonwit

 

[variant]

Variant

The difficulty is that you are defining God in a way that those who believe in God would not really recognise. You are defining him as a kind of thing that we could do scientific experiments or observations to track down and measure, like a black hole or extraterrestrial life. God isn't like that at all.

No, I am recognizing that God as believers present is indeed indefinite.

Lacking defined characteristics that can possibly be judged to be either present or absent makes a concept unintelligible and incoherent.

God is a floating abstraction, tied down to no specific experiences, No expectations of specific experiences, a idea that explains all observations, and thus, explains none.

God as an idea is a complete metaphysical failure.

That's what my point about the number of people who believe in God was about - not an appeal to popularity, which would, as you say, be false reasoning, but an observation that perhaps you should stop and think about whether you have correctly understood what it is they believe in and what it is you are rejecting.

I've spoken with believers my entire life, I simply find their reasoning on God to be pretty vacuous in general, what key points do you suppose I am missing?

To give a rather imperfect analogy, I have never been able to understand art at all. I just can't see what other people are getting from it. For a long time I just rejected art as having any value at all, but having been around enough people who clearly feel it does have value, I have come to accept that there must be some value to it, even though most of the time I really struggle to see it. But understanding the art is different from being able to recognise any particular things that may be depicted. I can see the shapes and the characters in the paintings, I can identify the colours and so on, but that is different from understanding the art.

When artists start to tell you how the universe works, dictate their morality to you and harbor sincere prejudice against you because you don't see what they see in art, all without any coherent evidence for their positions, or even definitions that would allow for the evaluation of their ideas, come talk to me about the steps I should take in understanding others.

Mass appeal is what is shown by popularity not sound reasoning. Certainly not validity.

It is a little bit the same with God. God is not one thing in the universe to be lined up against all the other things. Rather, God is the creator of the whole universe and everything in it; he is the one that enables all the things that exist to exist. To reject God's existence because I can't scientifically measure it is a little bit like rejecting the existence of my eyes because I can't see them.

It's a bit more like not jumping to your preferred conclusions without evidence or the prospect for evidence.

Now, in what I have said thus far I haven't said anything that could lead us towards falsifiable evidence statements, and so our discussion about God's existence ends up as nothing more than one person saying, "Can't you see? It's so obvious," and the other saying, "No, I don't see it; I really don't think it's there."

You know what makes things obvious? Objective evidence.

However, I do think that we are given some hard evidence that God is real - some falsifiable evidence, if you like. We need to allow that this evidence will come in the form that God chooses and not the form that we demand, otherwise we are denying God's right to be God by trying to make ourselves God instead. There are good reasons to suppose that God would not make himself so obvious that people have no choice but to believe him, but he does make himself obvious enough that those who are willing to be persuaded can be persuaded.

Generally my experience with other entitys that want me to do stuff is that they make themselves known to me...

This is why I pointed you towards the Resurrection evidence. While it falls short of 100% proof, I defy anyone to look at the evidence and come away with the conclusion that there is a more plausible explanation for that evidence than that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

It was made up after the fact, or true stories got twisted into false ones by religious people wanting to believe. You have been defied.

You are entitled to be hesitant to jump on board immediately with claims of miracles. But you should also be wary of starting from an a priori conviction that they cannot happen. If you do that, then you cannot consider the question with an open mind.

I'm on board with the possibility of "miracles" just not likely to accept that they happen without ever seeing one.

What you are asking is that I not only accept things outside my experience but things directly contrary to it.

You are basically saying that I sit here in a universe where God exists and wants me to believe in the miraculous, yet my mind is naturally skeptical and my experiences lacking in anything to go on to support that.

Your claim that you don't trust evidence is just not the case; most of what we believe we have to take on trust. There are many things you believe about the present, the past, and even the distant past, that you do not have direct experience of but take on trust from other sources. I am just suggesting that we should apply the same standards to the Resurrection accounts as we do to anything else.

The things I believe about the past are extrapolations of my own experiences.

In my experience miracles don't seem to happen so, a demonstration is required for any of these stories to ring true.

If you don't want to consider the possibility of God's existence, that's up to you. But don't confuse an unwillingness to see with an inability to see.

Roonwit

It's more about what I haven't seen.

 

[TillICollapse]

We would have to start from the position that the Universe was created; rather than what I currently suspect; that the Universe (or all that the Universe is made up of) has always existed.

In order for me to call a being "God" it would have to be

*Creator of the Universe
*A non evolved being
*Eternal; was never born/created and never dies.

He doesn't have to be all knowing or all powerful, but he would have to be more knowing and powerful than mankind currently is. In other words; it would have to be something akin to the God described in the Bible

Ken

Hmm ... interesting response. Thank you for responding.

Okay so let me ask then ...

Where do you think you get these expectations from ? I'm not talking about your initial influences which you've already addressed, rather, your after-the-fact influences so to speak. IOW ... now that you've come to personal conclusions concerning the nature of Christianity claims, etc, where do your current standards for what a "God" would be come from do you think ? And why do you have them, in your opinion ?

I think what's interesting, is that the idea of "God" can mean so many things to people (obviously), even atheists, in so much that "God" can connote a type of entity (species, class of being, etc), or a function of office almost (like a President or leader type figure), but rarely do I see people simplify it to a name.

Take for example Jesus. Mentioning the name Jesus, most people would arguably immediately associate it with a person. Regardless of their beliefs about Jesus, or His existence, or His attributes and qualities, etc ... it's associated with a person. And Jesus is a common name, I've worked with people named Jesus (I can't think of any non Hispanic's I've met named Jesus though). There is, in fact, a bartender at one of my favorite restaurants named Jesus and they exploit this in their own advertising lol. But saying the name "Jesus" mostly would not make people think of this bartender, or others named Jesus ... rather they would think of the historical Jesus. Similar to names like Cher, Obama, Lincoln, etc. IOW ... names often identify and match up to individuals. They don't always have to be human either. Lassie ... dog. Curious George ... monkey.

But the name "God" doesn't make people think of an individual very often as an identifying "name" in a simplistic fashion, rather, they arguably associate it with qualities or a type of "office". Almost like a title. Like a Prince, or King, etc. And yet many people still use the term "God" in a personal way, as though it were the identifying "name" of the one they claim to believe in, despite those associations. For example, they may refer to "God" as an individual, while simultaneously holding a belief that, "I wouldn't even call God by the name God, if He didn't deserve it." What's to deserve, if it's just a name ?

I say this, because consider the idea that if such an entity exists, why does it have to BE a "god", why can't that simply be it's name ? Consider Cargo Cults, like the John Frum example. The idea being that a US service man named John was the "service man zero" for the origin story of the John Frum cargo cult on that particular island. If believers in John Frum were to ever meet the original John, they may realize he wasn't what the myths blossomed into their thinking he was ... however his name was in fact John.

I realize that the God of the Judaeo-Christian scriptures has many names and titles (Yahweh, Elohim, the Father, etc) ... yet the term "God" ... why can't it be yet another name ? Why does it typically associate with a sort of office, or title, even amongst atheists I wonder ? Like the expectation is still there, even after belief in said God ceases ? Why ? Suppose you actually meet an entity or being that somewhat resembles concepts of "God" and this entity simply tells you, "No, I'm not a god, I'm 'God' ... that's my name .... I'm the only one, so I'm not a species you can compare anything to ... " lol.

Why wouldn't it simply be, "If a being identifies itself as "God", I'll call it "God". That's my criteria ..." I don't want to quote the Ghostbusters here lol, but why would an atheist add all these other qualities and attributes onto it, even after belief in other definitions of "gods" cease ?

Lastly ... I'm curious why your definition of God would involve being the Creator of the universe, and could not be an evolved being, nor ever created nor dies. It sounds somewhat like an "alpha" type or apex type of being ... the first, unchanged, never ending. Why is that important ?

I want to point something out about the idea of meeting a being that was the Creator of the Universe, was itself not created, and never ceases to exist in a living capacity (never dies) ... unless you could somehow be at the beginning of known causality to see the proof for yourself that this being was not created, and was the creator of the universe, you would arguably have to take that being's word for it. Unless you could violate causality in some fashion to witness the beginning of causality, it would always be a matter of faith that "God" was in fact the Creator of the universe. There can't, by definition, be "proof" because since you were not there at the beginning, there were no witnesses. It could be inferred, but not objectively verified. Thus, even if such a being were capable of demonstrating miraculous power and creating ability, and prove all their claims about their power, ability, knowledge, etc ... anything involving the beginning of known causality would essentially still be a matter of "faith" to accept their claims. IOW ... you would still either trust God's claims, or you wouldn't. Since you weren't there, how do you know that turtle's stacked on top of each other didn't create this "God" which you now see evidence and proof for ? How do you know it wasn't humans who traveled back in time and created Him ? How do you know it wasn't a flying bowl of spaghetti ? Because "God said so" ? Unless my logic is off, even after an abundance of proof and evidence that God did in fact exist, His claims about the beginning would still be hearsay lol. You either trust Him, or you don't ... a matter of faith. So I think it's interesting your own criteria, according to my logic at least, still would involve faith and could not be proven. If they could be proven, it would require a violation of causality to where you, yourself, could be present at the beginning. Which would raise a lot of other logic issues (i.e. you are now technically there before God, etc).

 

[Conscious Z]

But the fact is, the unlikely set of events cannot happen unless someone started the chain of events. Can the marble land on a random plate of glass if you did not first kick it? No, therefore my point remains that an external agent is needed.

Now you're making a different argument. We were talking about whether long odds themselves indicate some sort of supernatural intervention. You're now shifting the argument to a Kalam argument.

 

[Conscious Z]

Wow, there were a lot of posts in three hours. I want to pick up on these two responses to mine, and in doing so also make reference to the points on falsifiability and burden of proof.

Although it is being claimed that claims made for belief in God are unfalsifiable, the atheist position is equally unfalsifiable. For most of their proponents on both sides, these beliefs are ultimately faith positions that are not falsifiable (ie. there is no evidence that could ever be put forward to make the person change their mind).

Falsifiability is about setting out reasonable criteria that give us the best chance of arriving at the right conclusion - ie. in this case, that if God exists then our line of argument will probably lead us to conclude that he does, and that if he does not then our line of argument will probably lead us to conclude that he does not. It is very important not to set a burden of proof so high that, in one direction or the other, it can never reasonably be met.

It is also important to consider all the evidence, and not only the strands of it that suit our viewpoint. For example, it is relevant evidence that a very large proportion of people through the ages and still today, including many who are phenomenally intelligent, have believed in God. This sets belief in God apart from belief in fairies or the Great Pumpkin. It is false reasoning to claim an equivalence between these different beliefs.

It is also unreasonable to make demands of God that he should not be expected to make, which I think is where Variant's first point was headed. I had a friend at university who said, "If God will come and sit on my bed and talk to me in person, then I'll believe in him." To which I responded, "Why should God do that? It's you who need him, not he who needs you." My friend was trying to make God into this kind of genie in a lamp who jumps at our beck and call; but such a being is not the God of the Bible, and therefore to require this of God in order to believe is not reasonable. It would be like me saying, "No, I'm just not going to obey the law unless the Prime Minister comes and explains it to me in person." Why should he do that? That isn't what the Prime Minister does or should be expected to do.

I think most of the philosophical and seemingly scientific arguments that try to prove or disprove God don't lead very far. The design arguments that have been discussed a little on this thread are ultimately unconvincing, because they depend too much on certain knowledge of things we just don't know, so they are only really convincing to people who are already theists. (That's not to say I think that the argument that it all came about by chance is convincing - just that there are too many unknowns to be able to say with any certainty that it didn't.) The arguments about why God allows suffering in the world that are the main argument put forward against belief in God are also unconvincing; there are many ways that these questions can be answered if you are so inclined that are perfectly logical; but equally, a person who is minded to disbelieve can easily persuade themselves that the questions have not been answered.

However, I do think the evidence around the resurrection of Jesus is very much worth dealing carefully with. It is the closest we can get to a falsifiability criterion. Paul writes that if the resurrection didn't happen then Christian faith is worthless (1 Cor 15:17). On the other hand, if it did happen, it is a very serious blow for atheism. I would recommend anyone who is genuinely interested in truth to examine this closely.

Again, we need to be careful not to set the bar for acceptance or rejection so high that we can never be convinced. We wouldn't do that with other beliefs, so why with this one. A lot of Christian arguments often come down to "The Bible says so so it must be true", which is not a falsifiable position. However, atheist arguments seek to turn every small area for doubt into a major challenge, which is also disingenuous.

I am not going to wade into all the arguments about who first arrived at the tomb on the Sunday morning and about whether the angels appeared to the women before or after Peter got there. That is the kind of detail we can't expect nor do we need historical certainty on. Neither is it reasonable to exclude the Bible or other Christian witnesses from consideration; it is hardly surprising that all the people who believe in the resurrection are Christians: if you become convinced of it then of course you will become a Christian. And the Bible, even if you regard it as no better than other historical sources, should also not be regarded as worse than other historical sources. In fact, secular historians generally rate its reliability pretty highly. Note also that, as a historical source, it is not a single book but is a collection of books from different authors as well. So it is not just one witness's account, but several.

The detailed questions of exactly what happened on that Sunday morning are largely unimportant for our study. However, the broader question of how early Christianity got started at all unless Jesus actually rose from the dead is not dependent on any one account or detail. There are strong traditions that all the disciples except possibly John were persecuted and killed for their claim that they had seen Jesus after he had risen from the dead. That makes their testimony pretty credible, because they were not dying just for their unsubstantiated belief in something, as modern Christians or Muslims or people of any faith persuasion might do, but for things that they had personally seen, and that if they were not true then they knew they were not true. Generally, people may die for things they believe in, but they don't die for things they know to be false.

Paul, writing probably less than 20 years after the events in question, writes of things that were passed on to him as tradition (and therefore have a very early origin), and he also writes of more than 500 witnesses who saw Jesus after he had risen, most of whom were still alive at the time of writing. Now, if he were writing this in a book that was being published to convince a sceptical audience then we might have reason to question his motive in writing it. But he is writing to people who already believe, mentioning the fact almost in passing as a clarification of a point that his hearers had misunderstood. There is no reason to suppose he expected this writing to be published any wider than to the church he was writing to. So his claim here is worthy taking seriously.

Of the various explanations for how the story of Jesus' resurrection got started, the one that is far and away the most plausible is that he actually rose from the dead. Claims of a stolen body raise the question of who. And in any case, if Jesus remained dead, whoever took the body, why would the disciples die for their claim that they had seen him risen? Claims that Jesus didn't really die are pretty implausible; even more implausible are the claims that he never even lived. Claims of hallucinations might be plausible if just one or two people had them, but if so many did, and were sufficiently convincing to be able to get people to risk social ostracism, persecution and even death on the basis of their claims, then this is stretching the boundaries of plausibility to past breaking point.

The resurrection accounts, then, I submit, provide our best candidates for falsifiable evidence, that really deserve close scrutiny. For anyone who genuinely wants to claim that they have carefully considered the question of God's existence and rejected it, they have to come up with a credible account of the rise of early Christianity aside from Jesus actually having risen from the dead. If they don't want to do this, their disbelief is every bit as much an unsubstantiated, unfalsifiable, irrational position as they claim of any religious viewpoint.

Roonwit

I spent literally like 45 minutes typing out a response to this, only to have the site log me out. That is very frustrating. It is even more frustrating that the D*mn login popup box that bounces down when I'm not logged in.

Here's the two minute version: If my friend tells me the supermarket has a sale on tomatoes, I'll take him at his word. If he tells me a dragon breathing fire as he rides a unicorn around the parking lot, his word is no longer sufficient.

Moral of the story: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It would not make sense to use the same standard when evaluating the existence of god that I do when I evaluate whether I believe it's going to rain tomorrow. Believing it will rain does not force me to abandon basic beliefs about the world (namely, that it is physical) that have been formed from my daily experiences over my entire life (and the lives of billions of other people).

The evidence you cited in favor of God probably wouldn't hold up in a court of law. Considering that it would need to be far stronger than the evidence needed to convict a person of murder -- because it is a far more unlikely claim than the claim that a random person murdered a random dead person -- it is far too insufficient.

I wrote a lot about the evidentiary problem of evil, which I feel like is the nail in the coffin for theism. Even William Lane Craig has had to resort to saying that every instance of evil in the history of the world had some purpose. That's an absurd claim, but it's a claim a theist must make if he wishes to show that god didn't allow any "extra" evil into the world -- something an omnibenevolent being couldn't do.

 

[Conscious Z]

Does anyone else have issues with the site and logging in? I feel like I login to my email once a week, but I login to this site multiple times per visit.