Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
I don't have to do anything but die and pay taxes.
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Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?
- Thread starter Kenny
- Start date
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
If you want to be taken seriously you do. But then you probably know by now that the evidence does not support you.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
It's still the largest religion in the world.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
I know what I see, and I see evidence for God every day.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
True, and you still screwed up big time. You tried to act as if a majority opinion was evidence for your beliefs. The majority opinion is that your beliefs are false. That means by your own standards that Christianity is false. This is called a "self own". Your own argument refutes your claim.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Sorry, but you do not appear to understand the concept of evidence. Need I remind you that you have regularly run away from discussions on the nature of evidence? When you are afraid to discuss what is and what is not evidence it tells us that you do not want to know what evidence is in the first place. As a result your claim to have seen evidence for God has no credibility.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
I have no idea what you're going on about.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
False witness.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
That is really a pity. Everyone else sees it.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
No, and watch that sort of claim. You did regularly run away from discussing the nature of evidence. You could have changed that by being willing to discuss it right now. Instead you support my claim by running away again.
Do you want to discuss the nature of evidence or not?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Yes, you've made it very clear that you don't understand what evidence is.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
There are at least TWO ways we and our universe came to be.
1 - we are CREATED by someone/someone outside of the physical universe
2 - our universe just popped into existence, creating time, physics, numbers, space etc by MAGIC. And for no reason whatsoever.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Historians believe the Gospel Jesus is 100% myth. They believe he was a Rabbi teaching reformed Judaism like Rabbi Hilell Hillel the Elder - Wikipedia and was later mythicized into a Greek savior demigod. Bart Ehrman and most historians believe this
However some historians like Dr Carrier or Lataster don't even think there was a human Rabbi the stories were based on. But that doesn't matter.
The gospel Jesus is not supported by any historians? They believe he was human and was possibly executed. That is it.
Theologians (NT scholars) START with the assumption that the supernatural aspects of the story are true. That's why they believe because they won't question it. But Islam also has thousands of theologian scholars who will tell you it's the true religion. They also start out with the assumption that the Quran is actually a revelation from God. Obviously you are not going to take what they say serious because they are basically saying "it's true because it says so". Well Christian theologians don't get a special pass. They are using the same fallacy. Historians are actually looking at evidence and sources.
This is what a current Jesus historian has to say about the general beliefs among his peers:
When the question of the historicity of Jesus comes up in an honest professional context, we are not asking whether the Gospel Jesus existed. All non-fundamentalist scholars agree that that Jesus never did exist. Christian apologetics is pseudo-history. No different than defending Atlantis. Or Moroni. Or women descending from Adam’s rib.
No. We aren’t interested in that.
When it comes to Jesus, just as with anyone else, real history is about trying to figure out what, if anything, we can really know about the man depicted in the New Testament (his actual life and teachings), through untold layers of distortion and mythmaking; and what, if anything, we can know about his role in starting the Christian movement that spread after his death. Consequently, I will here disregard fundamentalists and apologists as having no honest part in this debate, any more than they do on evolution or cosmology or anything else they cannot be honest about even to themselves.
Historicity Big and Small: How Historians Try to Rescue Jesus • Richard Carrier
Sheldon
Veteran Member
You mean because no one ever set up a religion using chicanery they knew to be false, or were simply deluded about? Think about it.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Are you under the impression that the vast majority of human beings that have ever lived believe(d) in Jesus? It sure sounds like it.
It doesn't reach any "deep need" for me or the other billions of people who don't believe in your religion. And, fulling a "deep need in the human race" doesn't just automatically make the story true, assuming it actually does fill some deep need in people. Islam seems to fill a deep need in about a billion people too, I guess. Does that make it all true? (No)
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Nonsense. There's lots of Christians who are historians.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
That's just a snide way of claiming you can't believe in miracles and be a historian. The Guy is biased.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
So what?
Once upon a time, most people worshipped other gods. Lots of them.
The number of people who believe in a thing doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it's true.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
It's been the majority religion for centuries.
Christianity certainly isn’t the only prevalent religion in the world, but among all other major religious schools, Christianity is by far the most popular.
Christianity exceeds the other four major religious/non-religious bodies by a significant proportion of 0.6 billion.
And despite those claiming it's dying it's still gaining popularity.
One study conducted in 2018 by the Pew Research Center shows that Christianity is still the largest religion across all of Western Europe, with 71% of the population identifying as Christians.
Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world.
Over 100 million copies of the Bible are printed every single year.
Over 60,000 people have been recorded to be using a Bible app at any given moment.
You are missing the boat, man.
It almost makes me believe that the amillennialists might be correct and Christianity will basically take over the world.
Sorry for the slow reply. We lost Internet most of yesterday.
You're confusing unsound conclusion with unsound mind.
OK. So, it was the latter - you those possibilities dropped them for no logical reason. That is exactly how you come to unsound conclusions. It's easy. Just include one or more fallacies in your reasoning.
As I suggested, there is no rational argument that ends, "therefore God." You're argument ends that way, but it is unsound, flawed, fallacious, irrational. You're fallacy is argumentum ad lapidem, or simply dismissing a logical possibility with a wave of the hand and the utterance of the word "absurd." Allow me to demonstrate:
The universe:
I. Had no prior cause
1. Always existed
2. Arose uncaused from nothing
II. Had a source
1. Unconscious substance (multiverse)
2. Conscious (deity)
The last one is ridiculous. Just drop it. We are now down to:
The universe:
I. Had no prior cause
1. Always existed
2. Arose uncaused from nothing
II. Had a source
1. Unconscious substance (multiverse)
With that step, my conclusion went from sound to unsound (to irrational), although I did not not go from sane to insane. You did the same, but rejected different logical possibilities without cause. Your response became irrational.
But you're not alone. This is the same error Craig makes in his Kalam argument. Somehow, the multiverse never appeared on his list and was never ruled out, either. His argument ends with, "the universe had a cause, therefore God," but not before adding a bunch of features to this god without support.
Here it is to remind you:
That still doesn't refute the claim. We reached the end of this discussion the first chance you had to rebut and chose not to. Correct statements cannot be rebutted, which is the likely reason you don't try. I consider the matter resolved. All debates end with the last, unrebutted, plausible statement, which in this case, is one I made that you keep deflecting from.
You're confusing unsound conclusion with unsound mind.
OK. So, it was the latter - you those possibilities dropped them for no logical reason. That is exactly how you come to unsound conclusions. It's easy. Just include one or more fallacies in your reasoning.
As I suggested, there is no rational argument that ends, "therefore God." You're argument ends that way, but it is unsound, flawed, fallacious, irrational. You're fallacy is argumentum ad lapidem, or simply dismissing a logical possibility with a wave of the hand and the utterance of the word "absurd." Allow me to demonstrate:
The universe:
I. Had no prior cause
1. Always existed
2. Arose uncaused from nothing
II. Had a source
1. Unconscious substance (multiverse)
2. Conscious (deity)
The last one is ridiculous. Just drop it. We are now down to:
The universe:
I. Had no prior cause
1. Always existed
2. Arose uncaused from nothing
II. Had a source
1. Unconscious substance (multiverse)
With that step, my conclusion went from sound to unsound (to irrational), although I did not not go from sane to insane. You did the same, but rejected different logical possibilities without cause. Your response became irrational.
But you're not alone. This is the same error Craig makes in his Kalam argument. Somehow, the multiverse never appeared on his list and was never ruled out, either. His argument ends with, "the universe had a cause, therefore God," but not before adding a bunch of features to this god without support.
Here it is to remind you:
William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God:
1. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.”
2. “The universe began to exist.”
3. “Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.”
4. “If the universe has a cause of its existence, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”
5. “Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is “beginningless,” changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”
1. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.”
2. “The universe began to exist.”
3. “Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.”
4. “If the universe has a cause of its existence, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”
5. “Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans creation is “beginningless,” changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful and intelligent.”
That still doesn't refute the claim. We reached the end of this discussion the first chance you had to rebut and chose not to. Correct statements cannot be rebutted, which is the likely reason you don't try. I consider the matter resolved. All debates end with the last, unrebutted, plausible statement, which in this case, is one I made that you keep deflecting from.