can you proove there isn't a deity?

[lewisnotmiller]

Hello Lewis. I have to run a lab and debate Cortez, European expansionism, and moral foundations all at the same time so I do not know if I can get to that thread or not. I am willing to grant that you are telling the truth about what you have access to.

Meh...I mistyped anyway! There was no PNG 'thread', just my earlier PNG posts, which you'd already read. What I MEANT to say was that it might be worth rereading my earlier post once you'd got through my clarification. But I understand busy.

I will grant that in PNG there are 2 million approx. Christians and you may personally know a few hundred (to be generous), that claim both Biblical supernatural experience and non-biblical supernatural experiences. MY point was that a few hundred people in an area where ignorance and primitive superstitions abound this is exactly what I would expect. It does not have any effect on the credibility of billions of Christians who make Biblical supernatural claims exclusively. There will be a small fringe group that will adopt any belief and make any claim. Nothing new or meaningful there. When 1/3 of the Earths population claim the same thing then things get very serious.

Well...much more than 2 million Christians, but I agree the number is minor when compared to the total number of Christians. Again, my point was in relation to belief. Fullstop. Not Christian belief.
Let me reword slightly, to try and get my meaning across better.

If I was creating a scientific experiment to test the veracity of belief, and the impact of this belief on claimed supernatural experiences, I might design a large scale experiment where one belief system was replaced with another, and track the difference over time of the supernatural experiences claimed. PNG is an example of that. Witchcraft and Christianity happen to be the beliefs in this case, but my thinking on this is around belief. Fullstop. Replacement of (broadly) pagan belief systems with Islam along the borders of the Roman Empire would be a similar case study, perhaps, but it's less accessible to me, and I have no direct experience of it (obviously).

The general percentage of Christians to population is 1 in 3. That would put the Christian population at approx. 3 million. I will grant that outright. The relevant issue is how many you know personally that make supernatural claims of two self contradictory types. That number can't be more than a few hundred at best. It would take numbers in the tens millions to have any effect, however.

PNG is NOT typical. Depending on whether you only accept people who list Christianity as their primary religion, or also count people who consider themselves both Christian and traditionally religious at the same time, the country is between 83% and 96% Christian.
In terms of who I knew personally, I would estimate I knew maybe a hundred locals well enough to know their beliefs systems at a meaningful level. Of those, all were Christian, with the largest denomination being SDA. I saw direct evidence of what might broadly be considered contradictory beliefs in most of them (perhaps 80%) which is not quite the same as saying they claimed to have personally seen sorcery at work, etc. The stories were often of friends or family, rather than themselves. Suffice to say a witch doctor was active at one period of the year (around independence day) and was treated with equal parts extreme deference, fear, and mistrust.
In terms of numbers against Christian belief, this is negligible, and unimportant. Again, I am talking and thinking about belief and it's nature, not Christianity in particular.

I can agree that that is bad, unchristian, and should be terminated. I can't grant that has any impact on the veracity of Christianity as a whole.

I'm not arguing that a person holding both Christian and witchcraft beliefs proves that Christianity is not true. The seems a simplistic argument to me, and I have no reason to make it.

That is not a function of theology. It is a function of applying sacred labels and importance to ignorant superstitions. You cannot extrapolate from a slight exception to an overwhelming rule. I can grant whatever you sincerely claim as true and it has no impact on what I claimed. This is also a fallacy. Even if 99% of beliefs were known to be wrong that has no effect on the 100th claim. Each must be evaluated independently.

Except that it's not possible for me to evaluate each claim of personal revelation. I, myself, have had no personal revelations of a supernatural nature. When evaluating all sorts of supernatural claims, I am forced to rely on my own experience, and my experience of the broad framework of belief. I allow for the fact that I may be wrong, but I see this as the most sensible way forward for me.

I agree with the first half. You are right Christianity is a sophisticated belief. It is the most sophisticated and complex theological proposition in human history. It has been so for 3800 years. 2000 for it's own doctrines and 1800 for Judaism's. I do not understand the relevance in our context however.

Give me a witch doctor, and the ability to place him in scientific conditions, and I can disprove his claims pretty easily. Because of this, simply educating the population will directly impact on the level of belief in witchcraft, I believe.
Give me a Christian, and the ability to place him in scientific conditions doesn't really help. The belief system, in this sense, is more sophisticated. Where there have been more simplistic and ignorant aspects of belief, they have been supplanted and developed. Literalism has been replaced with allegorical understandings, for example.
This has a direct impact on the ability to disprove the beliefs involved. Hence, I do not claim the ability to disprove God.

That is my point. 1% of a specific population that claims X has been experienced is not meaningful. 35% of the total population that claims y has been experienced is very meaningful. This was my entire point.

I understand, but disagree. It's quite likely that more than 35% of the PNG population would claim experience with spirits and sorcery (Certainly in the area I lived in, anyway). However, this is not meaningful, in my mind. The claims are false. The original Christian population was negligible, far less than 1% of the population. And yet, you find their claims compelling. Neither of us would think a simple appeal to numbers is compelling.

They can be, but many tikes they are not. For instance no one in Israel had any expectation of a dyeing and arising messiah. That took even the apostles by surprise. They adopted beliefs their doctrines contradicted. This is in a way hostile testimony and is far more reliable than what you describe (advantageous or sympathetic testimony). Christianity is full of beliefs the people who had them were hostile to before they were experienced (myself included).

I find this an interesting topic. Could you offer suggestions on how I might read further on this?

I will make it even more prevalent. I think life begets belief. That does not prove that all beliefs are wrong. This is a genetic fallacy.

No, I am sure that not all beliefs are wrong. I think I am focusing more on why I don't find supernatural belief compelling, to be honest. IN terms of the OP, I would readily concede that I can't disprove God. Therefore, belief in God could conceivably be correct. Therefore, I cannot state that even a belief in God is wrong.

Christianity is full of experiences that contradicted belief. I will agree that wishful thinking is certainly a factor even in Christianity but Christianity more than any other posits beliefs that are inconvenient, not desired, and not expected. I can really expand on this if you wish.

I think this speaks more to the fact that there are true believers, than to the truth of the belief.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Wow! Just Wow! I can't believe you said that. The reality is that the indigenous people had every right to try and save their culture, and land, and to fight off the invaders.


Which Alaska rights are you referring to?

The idea that killing people and stealing their children, and land, is necessary to advancement - is absolutely ridiculous, and horrendous.

They were not savages. And there is nothing that makes it OK for Christians or others to take away a people's culture, or murder the people, and take their children, and land.

Totem poles and masks are not evil. That idea is just stupid. Totems are story poles. For instance there is one in Sitka with Abraham Lincoln in his top hat, carved on top. They carved him into the story when told about him freeing slaves.

However, other people's religions are NOT EVIL!

I get quite a kick out of the irony of people saying they are stopping "savages" from things like "cutting hearts out," - when they are using their own "godly" savagery of torture, rape, and murder.

Also - Shamanistic practices - led us to medicine and science.


I mean exactly what I said. The victors always fudge history to make themselves look better.

Alaska natives did fight the Japanese up there.


To imply that tribes fighting with other tribes, is somehow different then the European tribes fighting with each other, - and that this somehow makes it OK to slaughter them, and take their land, and force the Christian religion on them, is just wrong.


Dude, - YOU are the one that believes in invisible Gods and magic, - not me.


She was talking about normal human interaction.

If you do good, people will notice, they will be drawn to you, and they will in turn help you when needed.

Do bad, and they will also see this, and avoid you unless bad themselves. And when you need help - your actions will bite you in the butt, by none coming to your aid, or the police nabbing your butt.

No magic.

She also said, "Birds of a feather flock together."

And she didn't mean magical flying.


*

I couldn't believe someone could actually say such things when I read it either.

Oh dear, is all I can come up with in response.
Obviously you did better than that.

 

[SkepticThinker]

It was scary at times, and I had a few incidents which were more than merely scary, but I wasn't too scared of being accused of witchcraft. Being a man, and being white meant I was pretty much immune to that. I had a slight concern over being an atheist, more than anything else.
But in truth it was simple, plain old armed robbery that was the biggest threat.

And I got to do some seriously cool stuff up there too. The fishing, and the wreck diving alone were amazing. Hunting was good too. I'm not a hunter, but during tornado season we were cutoff from any shops, and so literally lived on rice and canned meat (mackerel and bully beef). So finding stuff to supliment that with was very important.

It sounds absolutely fascinating. I must admit, ever since I took that class I've always wanted to visit PNG. I don't know how good I'd be with hunting though, but I guess if I had no choice I'd have to get along.

What's bully beef?

 

[McBell]

What's bully beef?

Canned corn beef.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Canned corn beef.

Thank you.

And ick.

 

[McBell]

Thank you.

You're welcome

And ick.

I know, right...
Why would they put all that snot in the can with it?

 

[SkepticThinker]

You're welcome

I know, right...
Why would they put all that snot in the can with it?

That's what it looks like (and tastes like) to me.
Maybe snot is a good preservative? Yech!

My sister eats it out of the can with a fork, while I'm in the corner having dry heaves.

 

[McBell]

That's what it looks like (and tastes like) to me.
Maybe snot is a good preservative? Yech!

My sister eats it out of the can with a fork, while I'm in the corner having dry heaves.

Oh, I like corned beef.
You just gotta rinse the snot out of it before you eat it...

 

[lewisnotmiller]

It sounds absolutely fascinating. I must admit, ever since I took that class I've always wanted to visit PNG. I don't know how good I'd be with hunting though, but I guess if I had no choice I'd have to get along.

Yep. But most of the country isn't that extreme. I was working for a timber company, so I was about as remote as you can get, and the PNG version of remote is BLOODY remote, even by Australian standards.
I enjoyed fishing. Have always been an occasional fisherman, but I hooked a 9kg Spanish Mackerel up there. Had NO idea how to land a fish that big the first time, which had the other two guys I was with rolling around the bottom of the boat in fits of laughter.

What's bully beef?

Tinned corned beef. I was a tinned fish man, myself. Had lots of health issues (not just me, all the expats) based on poor diet during that point of the year. I actually had a boil 'dealt with' with a sterilised carving knife and a quarter of a litre of scotch as a painkiller. Felt like a cowboy.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

The general percentage of Christians to population is 1 in 3. That would put the Christian population at approx. 3 million.

That is world wide. In any given situation the numbers can be far more or far less. The percentage in Iraq will be far less than Texas.

That is not a function of theology. It is a function of applying sacred labels and importance to ignorant superstitions. You cannot extrapolate from a slight exception to an overwhelming rule. I can grant whatever you sincerely claim as true and it has no impact on what I claimed. This is also a fallacy. Even if 99% of beliefs were known to be wrong that has no effect on the 100th claim. Each must be evaluated independently.

That is my point. 1% of a specific population that claims X has been experienced is not meaningful. 35% of the total population that claims y has been experienced is very meaningful. This was my entire point.

These two seem very contradictory. Can you explain more clearly why you hold both notions?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Oh, I like corned beef.
You just gotta rinse the snot out of it before you eat it...

I can't get past the snot. As soon as I see that, it's over.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yep. But most of the country isn't that extreme. I was working for a timber company, so I was about as remote as you can get, and the PNG version of remote is BLOODY remote, even by Australian standards.
I enjoyed fishing. Have always been an occasional fisherman, but I hooked a 9kg Spanish Mackerel up there. Had NO idea how to land a fish that big the first time, which had the other two guys I was with rolling around the bottom of the boat in fits of laughter.

Haha! I bet. I would have ended up in the water with the fish. That thing weighs more than my niece!

Tinned corned beef. I was a tinned fish man, myself. Had lots of health issues (not just me, all the expats) based on poor diet during that point of the year. I actually had a boil 'dealt with' with a sterilised carving knife and a quarter of a litre of scotch as a painkiller. Felt like a cowboy.

Holy ****! I almost passed out just reading that!

 

[1robin]

That was one of our prescribed readings for that class. It was a while back though, and I'm probably due to read through it again. Great book!

That is a very popular book referenced by many scholars. I have not read it but intend to.

 

[1robin]

First - I was answering a post.


However - to answer you - the books were chosen by patriarchal men. And are therefore not even necessarily the correct of the choices. They had a bias.


And of course women have been treated like crap for thousands of years because of patriarchal ideas, religious, or otherwise.


*

The books of the NT were chosen by universal use by the earliest churches and their apostolic nature. They have no sexual component of any criteria for selection. The OT is very similar in that it includes accepted witnesses to the events described. Jewish culture is patriarchal and they would claim God uses primarily men though he uses women at times in many cases. I do not know if I would agree in general with them but it does seem God uses primarily male authors. It had nothing to do with any sexual bias in choosing the books. Women are featured as prominently as men in many biblical stories and are heroes of many plots.

 

[1robin]

Wow! Just Wow! I can't believe you said that. The reality is that the indigenous people had every right to try and save their culture, and land, and to fight off the invaders.

No they do not. If we find an island full of people systematically torturing another islands culture by force they have no right to anything beyond a 100 megaton explosion. Once again the abject failure of your moral methodology reveals it's self in the most diabolical way. I can stop systematic torture, chattel slavery, and human right suppressions and remain consistent with my world views. You must either allow it as you suggest here or you must abandon your world view to find justification for intervention. Thank God almighty most of the world does not agree with you. If they did Hitler and Stalin would control everything and be systematically killing off all opposition. All cultures do not have justifiable reasons in defense of their existence.

Which Alaska rights are you referring to?

They have unusual rights to minerals, and game, etc.. that other indigenous peoples have not been granted. We have sent the Navy to fight of oriental fishing boats interfering with Alaskan's ability to harvest Salmon.

The idea that killing people and stealing their children, and land, is necessary to advancement - is absolutely ridiculous, and horrendous.

The idea of leaving unjust societies free to burden the rest of the world with tyranny, oppression, and superstitious sacrificial rights required of the unwilling is far far worse. I think we are talking past each other. I claim that a culture does automatically have immunity from justice because it is pre-existing. Hitler, the Aztecs, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.... have no right to abuse others in the name of almighty cultures. However the Bible does not allow for the systematic termination of a culture simply because it is different. I can not justify even taking out Cuba, the USSR, or the Congo even if systematic oppression exists just because they are different. However Sadam Hussein, Genghis Kahn, and Hirohito do not get immunity because they claim their torture and murder is a cultural norm there.

They were not savages. And there is nothing that makes it OK for Christians or others to take away a people's culture, or murder the people, and take their children, and land.

This point I made is not about rights. It was about the end result. I was asking why a backwards, poor, and primitive culture should resist the benefits of a greater one. I was not trying to justify taking children away from anyone. I am saying it makes little since for the Sioux who had no hospitals, no schools, no wealth, no technology, no unity, no right to any land they existed on, and insufficient military protection to guaranty safety to fight to the death to keep another society from making them available. I was not talking about rights. I was talking about common sense.

Totem poles and masks are not evil. That idea is just stupid. Totems are story poles. For instance there is one in Sitka with Abraham Lincoln in his top hat, carved on top. They carved him into the story when told about him freeing slaves.

You cannot possibly know that. If God exists then they are in fact absolutely evil. Neither he nor I wish to forcibly prevent anyone from making false idols or graven images. However there exists no wrong in telling a person why we believe they are evil. I do not support compulsion in religion. You can't force actual faith. In Cortez's case he tried to do so at the start. When his priest said God would not approve he outlawed the practice and never attempted it again. I also would not say all images are evil. I would however say any worship involving an image (even if done by Christians) is wrong, any image made to represent a God is strictly forbidden. I myself have always been repulsed by any anthropomorphic object. I hate dolls, manikins, and puppets. That is just me personally though not God.

However, other people's religions are NOT EVIL!

That is ridiculous. It is easy to see how someone that does not know the truth would think all lies are equally valid but it is still a nonsensical claim. This is like saying that any polio vaccine is fine. If you want to make one in the garage and give it to anyone stupid enough to let you that is fine or if you want to buy one from a black market in the Congo that is just as valid and good as taking one designed and tested by the CDC. Since almost every religion contradicts almost every other religion in claims to absolute knowledge then by law most are not true. Now if you do not equate wrong with bad then you are at least be consistent but unfortunately are also being irrational.

1. If Christianity is true then Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are lies that will separate people from God for eternity.
2. If any of the others are true then the followers of the balance will suffer for being wrong.
3. If they are all wrong then all of them are evil.

There is no way possible your statement above can be true.

A theological system or prophet if true is the greatest good possible and if wrong the greatest evil possible.

I get quite a kick out of the irony of people saying they are stopping "savages" from things like "cutting hearts out," - when they are using their own "godly" savagery of torture, rape, and murder.

If I wished to commit any one of those things not a single verse in the bible could be used to justify it. Even the militaristic and brutal Cortez never enslaved a single tribe (the Aztecs perpetually did so concerning dozens) for use as human live sacrifices. Even one of the most brutal and lethal of people who claim to be Christian did not do a fraction of the damage the Aztecs did yet your comparing what he Aztecs did to the average Christian. That goes well beyond irony into some kind of rabid bias so extreme as to distort reality into something unrecognizable. The entire Aztec nations favored cutting hearts out of tens of thousands of their neighbors. Less than 1% of Christians have committed a single instance of any one of the crimes you listed. Your claim is the result of a resentment and bias so hyperbolic as to become prohibitive to sanity.

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

Also - Shamanistic practices - led us to medicine and science.

So no matter how superstitious, violent, tyrannical, dark, or primitive a belief system is it is perfectly valid as long as the word Christ is not involved. That is quite some system. Between you theological criteria and your moral criteria you might just create a worm hole in reality and escape it altogether. One of the weirdest stories I ever heard was about a guy who opened a motel and had it designed with pipes going to its rooms by which he could poison its occupants and observation holes placed in the rooms walls, plus furnaces in the basement. He would kill the guests and burn the bodies in such a way he could salvage the skeletons which he sold off as medical specimens to universities and doctors. Is that good because it led to some medical breakthrough at some point? The Nazis also made breakthroughs in medicine by forcing operation on unwilling children. I guess they were good after all. If you keep digging this hole your going to fall out the other side.

So far you have justified any wrong if it can be labeled a culture, justified witch craft, ignorance, and defended a culture so evil that even other human sacrificing cultures drove them out. What is more amazing is doing all that in the defense of a moral system that protects them and in defiance of another system that actually prohibits every single one.

I mean exactly what I said. The victors always fudge history to make themselves look better.

I am very well aware of that and make every allowance for it. Cortez always gives a justifiable reason for his killings. I have repeated until I am sick of it that I grant he killed far more than necessary at times. However that does not make a single claim of yours concerning him true. The books I mentioned are considered authoritative because they do not display that embellishment methodology. They record all kinds of potentially immoral acts by Cortez but never one that you mentioned. I know more about military histories than anybody probably should. I notice you never mentioned this in connection with your Aztec records. The losers have the same propensity to exaggerate the injustices done to them yet you have been silent on that fact and I have allowed for your claim.

Alaska natives did fight the Japanese up there.

I have no idea if any Alaskans fired a few shots at a Japanese soldier or not. The major battles were fought by regular American troops and took place in the extreme western islands of the Aleutian chain where few natives ever lived. They may have been involved but their involvement was negligible in context of military history. Even the actual battles were extremely small that the army was in.

To imply that tribes fighting with other tribes, is somehow different then the European tribes fighting with each other, - and that this somehow makes it OK to slaughter them, and take their land, and force the Christian religion on them, is just wrong.

I never mentioned European tribes. I have never even heard that term before. I certainly never said any European wars were moral. Some were some were not. I never mentioned them at all.

Dude, - YOU are the one that believes in invisible Gods and magic, - not me.

How is believe in invisible atoms or invisible energy, or invisible and undetectable dark matter and energy any different. They are not any different and in fact many have less evidence than for God. The only difference is the labels natural and supernatural and the fact the inclusion of the supernatural is inconvenient for you. The rest is pure hypocrisy and double standards.

She was talking about normal human interaction.

If you do good, people will notice, they will be drawn to you, and they will in turn help you when needed.

That is exactly wrong. WE are drawn toward what we like not what is good. Many of us get as far away from what is actually good as we can. People without God do not notice good because good does not mean anything objectively. You simply redefine what you like or prefer as good, then redefine morality as what you think is good. Because you deny the half of reality that makes all this stuff actually coherent you have to define your system into coherence by arbitrary means.

Do bad, and they will also see this, and avoid you unless bad themselves. And when you need help - your actions will bite you in the butt, by none coming to your aid, or the police nabbing your butt.

I thought you were talking about another poster. I see we are talking about your grandmother. Since you will rabidly defend a family member at all costs (and maybe that is honorable). I will avoid the argument all together.

No magic.

She also said, "Birds of a feather flock together."

And she didn't mean magical flying.

Never mind this. If a family member is involved right and wrong are superseded by loyalty and that is understandable but best left alone. I will not pick on any ones grandmother but I would bet she is far more sympathetic to the supernatural than you are.

 

[outhouse]

People without God do not notice good because good does not mean anything objectively.


.

Utter nonsense.


I find this pathetic that you attempt to judge people you do not even know. :slap:

 

[1robin]

Meh...I mistyped anyway! There was no PNG 'thread', just my earlier PNG posts, which you'd already read. What I MEANT to say was that it might be worth rereading my earlier post once you'd got through my clarification. But I understand busy.

Hello, Lewis. No problem.

Well...much more than 2 million Christians, but I agree the number is minor when compared to the total number of Christians. Again, my point was in relation to belief. Fullstop. Not Christian belief.
Let me reword slightly, to try and get my meaning across better.

I understand what you are saying but the numbers of Christians are relevant as I will explain below.

If I was creating a scientific experiment to test the veracity of belief, and the impact of this belief on claimed supernatural experiences, I might design a large scale experiment where one belief system was replaced with another, and track the difference over time of the supernatural experiences claimed. PNG is an example of that. Witchcraft and Christianity happen to be the beliefs in this case, but my thinking on this is around belief. Fullstop. Replacement of (broadly) pagan belief systems with Islam along the borders of the Roman Empire would be a similar case study, perhaps, but it's less accessible to me, and I have no direct experience of it (obviously).

Ok the relevance to me of a discussion is almost always in how it impacts Christianity. In your example the data set would be approximately this:

1. 2 billon plus that make explicit and emphatic claims to have experienced God using the Bible as a road map.
2. Maybe tens of millions who make explicit and emphatic claims of having supernatural experiences that are not consistent with the bible.
3. Another group of several million that have negative experiences with the supernatural that are consistent with the Bible but are not of God or Christ.

Evaluation methodology: Groups that have supernatural experiences consistent with the bible are so vast a proportion of the general population and so much larger than the group that had experiences inconsistent with the bible that any lessons drawn from the smaller group are virtually irrelevant in considering the veracity of the much larger biblically consistent group.

Conclusion: The claims of biblically consistent supernatural experiences are likely true and valid. The claims of the far smaller groups are consistent with fringe group mentality and are in all likely hood false.

You threw in some points about replacement effects that I did not understand and I would not think have any significant impact on my claim.

It also gets much worse than this because what you can first hand have knowledge of for witchcraft claims to the supernatural would be only a few hundred or thousand. You claims may very well be true concerning millions but are not reliable enough to include in a study. The very nature of Christian theology makes all Christians members of a data set that includes 2 billion claims to the supernatural. Statistics are very hard to use. I had three classes in them and wound up hating them.

PNG is NOT typical. Depending on whether you only accept people who list Christianity as their primary religion, or also count people who consider themselves both Christian and traditionally religious at the same time, the country is between 83% and 96% Christian.

I have no reason to doubt this but it is also non-typical in the fact that it's Christians mostly come from witchcraft backgrounds which would offset their higher percentages. IOW you live in a place prone to the mixing of witchcraft and Christianity that is not indicative of most of the world. I bet it makes for interesting conversations however.

In terms of who I knew personally, I would estimate I knew maybe a hundred locals well enough to know their beliefs systems at a meaningful level. Of those, all were Christian, with the largest denomination being SDA. I saw direct evidence of what might broadly be considered contradictory beliefs in most of them (perhaps 80%) which is not quite the same as saying they claimed to have personally seen sorcery at work, etc. The stories were often of friends or family, rather than themselves. Suffice to say a witch doctor was active at one period of the year (around independence day) and was treated with equal parts extreme deference, fear, and mistrust.
In terms of numbers against Christian belief, this is negligible, and unimportant. Again, I am talking and thinking about belief and it's nature, not Christianity in particular.

What is SDA? I do not recognize the acronym. I would imagine where you live is extremely conducive and prone to a mixing and contradictory theological resultant. It is not however typical of Christianity as a whole and there for makes it a terrible data set for generalized beliefs and Christianity. In Christian theology Satan has had a stronghold in your nation for a long time. He will not give it up without a fight and what you observe is exactly what I would expect if that was true. The same is true of ministries that treat the addicted. You would find many Christians who are truly born again that still have trouble with old habits.

I'm not arguing that a person holding both Christian and witchcraft beliefs proves that Christianity is not true. The seems a simplistic argument to me, and I have no reason to make it.

I would have sworn you were making points very similar to this but I can certainly be wrong.

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

Except that it's not possible for me to evaluate each claim of personal revelation. I, myself, have had no personal revelations of a supernatural nature. When evaluating all sorts of supernatural claims, I am forced to rely on my own experience, and my experience of the broad framework of belief. I allow for the fact that I may be wrong, but I see this as the most sensible way forward for me.

That would be the same as rejecting most of cosmology, most of medical theory, and most of aspects associated with the opposite sex, etc.... Personal experience is not the only access to truth. If I conclude .5% of humans believe in Big foot I would probably ignore it. If I conclude billions claim to have experienced God even if I had not I would take it very seriously. People grant validity or assume validity for things that are only claimed by tiny fractions of the population based on the quality of the claim or it's claimant's credentials or trustworthiness. When a belief is held by a huge portion of the population and also has great detail and consistency it it's claims along with the greatest credibility of those who claim it (Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, etc...) dismissing or ignoring it becomes suspicious.

Give me a witch doctor, and the ability to place him in scientific conditions, and I can disprove his claims pretty easily. Because of this, simply educating the population will directly impact on the level of belief in witchcraft, I believe.

Agreed but I would have lower expectations than you because the commitment to witchcraft is not academic it is emotional or superstitious. Knowledge only counters knowledge based claims.

Give me a Christian, and the ability to place him in scientific conditions doesn't really help. The belief system, in this sense, is more sophisticated. Where there have been more simplistic and ignorant aspects of belief, they have been supplanted and developed. Literalism has been replaced with allegorical understandings, for example. This has a direct impact on the ability to disprove the beliefs involved. Hence, I do not claim the ability to disprove God.

Are you claiming that you believe both are false but Christianity has been designed so as to be more impervious to disproving?

I understand, but disagree. It's quite likely that more than 35% of the PNG population would claim experience with spirits and sorcery (Certainly in the area I lived in, anyway). However, this is not meaningful, in my mind. The claims are false. The original Christian population was negligible, far less than 1% of the population. And yet, you find their claims compelling. Neither of us would think a simple appeal to numbers is compelling.

You do not have access to the data to know this. However lets grant that you do. 35%of a population that is uniquely susceptible to witchcraft exhibiting beliefs in it is not significant. If I said the Christian population of the Vatican is 80% that would not mean very much. The larger the data or polling set the better. It removes local anomalies impact on the data like you have. The largest data set available is what I have been using. Statistics never produce known truths. They produce likely hoods or probabilities. I would never suggest even the 2 billion peoples claims to experiencing God is a be all end all argument. However combined with a thousand more just as compelling makes the Bible the best explanation for reality of any known candidate. Numbers do count but they alone are not usually convincing nor should they be. I was dealing only with numbers because that was the primary context of your posts. I have more arguments just as compelling or more so for the Bible than you have time and maybe the desire deal with. However let me know and I will lay a few out from the start.

I find this an interesting topic. Could you offer suggestions on how I might read further on this?

The case for Christ would be a good one. A William lane Crag debate on the evidence for the resurrection another, and a Ravi Zacharias speech of the empirical burdens of the Gospels another. If you let me know exactly which part you found the most interesting I can be more helpful. Maybe the best is a paper written by Simon Greenleaf (maybe the greatest expert on testimony and evidence in human history and co-founder of Harvard law). It is a legendary legal examination of the Gospel accounts. I will give you the link.
Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf

No, I am sure that not all beliefs are wrong. I think I am focusing more on why I don't find supernatural belief compelling, to be honest. IN terms of the OP, I would readily concede that I can't disprove God. Therefore, belief in God could conceivably be correct. Therefore, I cannot state that even a belief in God is wrong.

I would not find beliefs that had no spiritual or supernatural aspect to them worthy of note. If this life and materialism are the totality of reality then everything becomes very trivial to me. This life is an ultimately meaningless, pointless, purposeless, trivial, cosmic blink in time without the supernatural. We are simply biological anomalies with no actual dignity, equality, moral truths, or destiny without God. At best life becomes a transitory, arbitrary, accident without something beyond mere nature. That doe snot make the supernatural true but it does make it significant. Before I gave up on it I would exhaust any possibility it could be true.

I think this speaks more to the fact that there are true believers, than to the truth of the belief.

That is a good point but not one that really effects what I said. Christians more than any other faith in history have adopted beliefs completely foreign to them. I am not saying that makes them true. I am saying their source is often not wishful thinking, nor tradition, or expectations of any kind. Right or wrong the only explanation for much of a Christians faith is the quality of the evidence. I was speaking about sincerity and merit alone as motivation, not any kind of proven certainty.

 

[1robin]

Utter nonsense.


I find this pathetic that you attempt to judge people you do not even know. :slap:

I do not care what you think about me, nor your sarcastic commentaries. No one was mentioned in my claim so no one was judged. I made a conclusion from what is true about a belief not an individual. Your the one writing textual versions of violent actions in their posts. I have a very easy way for you to prove me wrong if your non-evidenced based assertion was true.


Prove a single action is a known good thing, and that everyone would notice it.

I will make it even easier, forget the noticing it part. Prove to me any action you can thing of is an objective moral good without God.

I will make it even easier. You can say for example that saving a child from drowning is good, then prove to me you can know it actually is good.


Tests do not get any easier if you are right. Good luck.