You have convinced yourself that the Bible is not evidence for God based upon what you would expect to see if God had something to do with the writing of the Bible.
I told you why I don't consider the Bible or any words ever written evidence for a deity. Evidence for something is something detectible or discernible that make one of two or more possibilities more likely to be the case. If that is not how you are interpreting evidence, then you're misinterpreting it. Is the existence of the novel Moby Dick evidence for (or against) a God as well? Does its existence make the likelihood of a god greater, less, or the same?
You have convinced yourself that God does not exist based upon what you would expect to see if God existed.
No, I have not concluded that gods don't exist.
I suppose that if I relax my standards enough, I could call Moby Dick evidence that there is no God. You might object, saying that that book in no way rules out gods, and my answer could be like yours: You have convinced yourself that Moby Dick is not evidence against God based upon what
you would expect to see.
The words were written by men, but that does not mean they were not inspired by God. That cannot be proven one way or another.
It doesn't need to be proven either way to serve as evidence for a God. It just has to be words that make the existence of a God more likely. I gave you an example with irreducible biological complexity. Such a finding is strong evidence for an intelligent designer, although that intelligence need not be supernatural. That's why the ID people were looking for this feature in nature, and not other kinds of things that could happen without an intelligent designer, such as complexity that it cannot be said could not have arisen naturalistically, such as a DNA molecule.
What you offer as evidence of a God is words that either of us could have written. I'm sure I could. Actually, I think it would be more likely that I could write convincing pseudo-scripture than a classic novel. That is why others are rejecting your assertion that the Bible or any other holy book indicates that a God wrote any part of it.
These are the rules of interpreting evidence. They're not negotiable to one with well developed critical thinking skills. As I've said before, if you want to persuade such a person, you have to play on their field by their rules. If you offer as evidence that which does not make your conclusion more (or less) likely, it will be rejected as evidence for that claim, which is what is happening here.
And your response is basically that you intend to consider those words evidence for a deity anyway. OK. That's obviously adequate for you, but not for the critical thinker. Remember, you began this thread by asking what would be evidence of God's existence. You have been told. That which makes the likelihood of a deity more likely. You claim that words from prophets and messengers do that, but have yet to show a single passage that accomplishes that.
This comment from Sam Harris summarizes where we are at now:
- "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic? Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, "Well, that's not how I choose to think about water"? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn't share those values, the conversation is over."
What if someone says, that's not how I chose to think about evidence? What if their position is that anything they want to call evidence for their belief is evidence to them even if it doesn't make their belief more likely? Same answer: Then the conversation is over. That's what I meant by playing by rules of critical analysis, which includes knowledge about interpreting evidence.
I fully agree. Some people are skilled at interpreting evidence, includiing scripture, and that is why they see it as evidence for God. It's just the way the world is. It is possible to know things and know that they are correct even if most others cannot see that.
I've told you that the rules for interpreting evidence aren't negotiable. If you choose to do it your own way, then you're off the reservation. I understand the limits of knowledge, and know with certainty that
That is why Jesus said:
Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. And why Baha'u'llah wrote:
“The Book of God is wide open, and His Word is summoning mankind unto Him. No more than a mere handful, however, hath been found willing to cleave to His Cause, or to become the instruments for its promotion. These few have been endued with the Divine Elixir that can, alone, transmute into purest gold the dross of the world, and have been empowered to administer the infallible remedy for all the ills that afflict the children of men. No man can obtain everlasting life, unless he embraceth the truth of this inestimable, this wondrous, and sublime Revelation.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 183
So you think this kind of writing is evidence for a God? I don't. I could write the same thing about critical thinking:
- Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to sound conclusions, and only a fraction develop these skills. These few have the gift of sound critical thought, that alone can tell us what is true about the world, and have been empowered to declare the conclusions of those with faulty reasoning unsound. No man can obtain reliable knowledge about the world unless he embraces the truth of this wondrous and sublime revelation.
I actually have support for my version. The stellar success of science is evidence that this approach to knowledge (epistemology) is valid, and no other method is, since no other method can do that. Baha'u'llah is just making unevidenced claims.
Yes, it is circular but that does not mean that it is not true that the deity inspired the Bible.
Circular arguments are perfectly valid
18th August 201718th August 2017 by
Tim van der Zee
You have likely heard the claim that circular arguments are wrong or incoherent. In this short post I will outline why this is
not the case. Circular arguments are perfectly fine; in fact, they can be quite convincing!
Lets start with perhaps the most famous bad example of a circular argument:
God exists because the bible says so, and the bible is true because God exists.
It is clear that this is circular, as each statement depends on the other to be true. It’s also a bad argument from a logical standpoint, as logical arguments tend to be formulated in “if A than B”, and this formulation is missing here. This emphasizes the other weak aspect of this argumentation: both claims have a rather low prior probability.
Lets see what happens when we rephrase the above argument to the following:
If the bible is true God exists, and, if God exists the bible is true.
A fallacious argument doesn't mean anything. It supports no proposition. So, you are correct that a circular argument does not rule out that certain ideas in books are not of divine origin. But you also do nothing to support your contention that any words you might offer as evidence supporting your belief are actually that. I suppose a tautology is logically valid, but it does nothing to support any conclusion about reality.
Aren't you arguing that such an argument is supporting your contention that scripture is evidence of a God? Look at your example. I can agree with that, just like I agree that if Bob is an unmarried man, he is a bachelor, and if he is a bachelor, he is an unmarried man. But if you want to say that that tautology is evidence for or against Bob being married or a bachelor, as you seem to be doing with your circular argument, your claim will be rejected. My circular argument says nothing about whether Bob is is single, just as yours says nothing about whether a God actually exists.
If Game of Thrones is correct, then dragons exist, and if dragons exist, Game of Thrones is correct. Do dragons exist? Does this circular argument give you any guidance whatsoever in answering that question? If I offered it as an argument for dragons, would you agree that it was, or reject that? If you rejected it, and I said that's just your opinion implying that mine was just as good, would you agree? Of course not. And neither do those that you make similar arguments to. All either of us can do is shake our heads, you saying, "I don't know why he thinks that evidence for dragons," and me saying the same about gods, and agree with Harris above that if one doesn't share the well developed and tested rules of evidence and reason, then there can be no dialectic, no cooperative discussion or sharing of ideas.
