Is It Reasonable to Believe Gods Don't Exist?

[Brian2]

I never denied or suggested otherwise. I wrote "No, the Jews of the time of Jesus used their own cultural prophecies to show that Jesus is the Christ and did what was prophesied and that He would return to judge the earth and end evil and bring in the fullness of the Kingdom of God."

Well I wrote that.

Evil did not end, there is no kingdom central for mankind and there has been no judgment day (end times). That is why revelations (book of) was written and still outstanding to occur.

Yes, Jesus has not returned yet, so there is still war and and evil etc.
I did say that these things would be resolved when He returns.
You are acting like a Jew when you point to the fact that Jesus has not done those things. That does not mean He is not the Messiah, it means He just has not returned yet.

 

[Brian2]

I define theology as the thinking that emanates from the assumption that a god exists (and in the West, usually that it has left a written testament). Those ideas come from human beings, and it's all useless if the god premise is false, and even useless if it isn't.

The record of what happened and what was said is there and is for all the world to see and hear and the fulfilled prophecies and the continuing fulfilling of prophecy are there to show it is not just from human imagination.

That is incorrect.

Yes my statement was not 100% correct and neither is yours.

We don't need to assume that no miracles happened to dismiss the claim that they do.

True, you probably first assume miracles in general do not happen and then dismiss miracles whenever and wherever you hear of them.

Nor need it. Naturalism is sufficient. No observation requires the existence of a deity to account for it, and none is better explained invoking a deity over naturalistic alternatives. If you're looking for a reason to believe in your god, you won't find it examining nature, which I think you understand. That explains all the claims that this god lives outside of time and space and can't be detected, because nothing that happens can be said to need a deity to have occurred.

That is an assumption, or a number of assumptions thrown together, and I do find confirmation for my God in nature.

Irrational means not arrived at using reason. That's not an insult. Perhaps you would prefer the word nonrational. Intuitions, like the experience of beauty during a sunset finding a joke funny are irrational, because we didn't come to those conclusions using reason. That's why we can't explain why we come to these conclusions. Unseen neural circuits employing unknown algorithms just inform us how we feel without showing their work to consciousness, just the conclusions. They tell me that strawberries taste good to me and liver bad. Neither of those ideas is derived from reasoning. Where reasoning comes in is knowing how to repeat those experiences.

People can also see someone walking on water and raising people from the dead and calming storms etc and come to the irrational conclusion that the person just did a miracles.

No, he wasn't. The Hebrew messiah was prophesied, a mortal man and not an alleged demigod who would leave the world as he found it largely unknown and unremembered without the help of people like Paul and Constantine.

Jesus was a mortal man who died and who was raised to life again by God and did all His miracles by the power of God, not because He was a demigod or a superman. Other normal people have done similar things.
I think you are missing many prophecies concerning the Messiah and who He is and what He would do etc.

He probably thinks you shouldn't believe any of them, and that if you believe any of them, you should have a rational criterion for accepting this claim while rejecting that one.

Could be.

Disagree. The tried to graft the history of Jesus onto messianic prophecy, and in so doing have generated specious arguments that convince nobody. Nobody at all looks at that scripture and the description of Jesus and says one describes or predicts the other. Only people that already accept that by faith a priori agree that it does.

Maybe, some people just presume people must be lying when their experience includes miracles I guess and fulfilled prophecies.

I don't possess a single belief that I would call truth that came from Jesus. There is some overlap in our values such as support for the Golden Rule, but I don't call such things truths, and they didn't come from scripture. They're moral intuitions of the circuits we call the conscience, which also deliver intuitions to consciousness without showing their work. They tell me what matters to me, and I defy those intuitions at my own peril, as those same circuits reward and punish the self just like a god according one's compliance with its moral imperatives.

Yes we are moral beings in whom God has written His law.

 

[Bthoth]

Yes, Jesus has not returned yet, so there is still war and and evil etc.
I did say that these things would be resolved when He returns.
You are acting like a Jew when you point to the fact that Jesus has not done those things. That does not mean He is not the Messiah, it means He just has not returned yet.

I what prophecy of Torah will messiah, show up leave the work incomplete and then come back to finish it.

As you are representing, he saved mankind, left and must come back to finish the job.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

It is illusory to think that our subjectivity is other to the world.

I'd say that it is illusory to think that a subjective view is not a real view or an inferior view.

There is a culture of epistemic nihilism that I find puzzling, and find myself pushing back more and more these days on ideas of the nature that experience is illusion and that truth is impossible to know.

Yes, the subjective view is just one perspective, all perspectives combined into no perspective being objective reality, but that doesn't invalidate the subjective or even subordinate it to any extra-conscious reality that we can never experience except subjectively. It's in here that we live, not out there.

I'm thinking of comments like "the self is an illusion" or "in the grand scheme of things, we don't matter" or "all is folly" or "we can never know the essence of anything." What value are such ideas after one has realized that there are other perspectives and considered them? OK, from the perspective of all of space, yes, we are but an insignificant speck, but that's not the scale at which we live, so why would I give priority to being a speck over having a rich, full, complex life packed with meaning at this scale and from this individual perspective? And yes, I cannot arrive at ultimate truth, but that's not an issue. I don't need to. I my job is to get through my days optimizing my subjective experience of them.

I see this type of thinking coming from religious teaching, but I doubt it's the only source of it. In the Abrahamic traditions, one is not to trust his lying eyes. The wisdom of the world with all of its reason and empiricism is foolishness. Anybody who tells you that the Big Ban or evolution occurred cannot know what they are talking about. Nobody can, because nobody was there. And there are any number of ways to interpret the same evidence and none is more valid than the rest. Materialism is myopia or scientism.

This all supports supernaturalism and faith-based thought in general, but I've seen it elsewhere as well. We see it in the dharmic religions with references to ego and dualism both being undesirable conscious states. But I've also seen it in other types of freethinkers with wild ideas about the Egyptian pyramids, and also in what I understand to be atheistic, neurodiverse minds that just can't focus or get grounded and who challenge whatever they read in the same way - 'you can't know that' because you aren't omniscient.

The record of what happened and what was said is there and is for all the world to see and hear and the fulfilled prophecies and the continuing fulfilling of prophecy are there to show it is not just from human imagination.

That record is strong evidence that scripture is all anthropogenic, but only if one evaluates it critically, that is, skeptically, dispassionately, and skillfully.

you probably first assume miracles in general do not happen and then dismiss miracles whenever and wherever you hear of them.

No. I start with evidence and derive conclusions from it (seeing is believing). You're describing the motivating reasoning of faith, where one begins assuming that miracles do occur and then looks at the evidence not to interpret it, but to make it support his a priori beliefs about what the evidence must show (believing is seeing). That's why you see biblical history as correct and biblical prophecy as fulfilled. You began with those beliefs, and nothing you read thereafter can modify them, only support them.

That is an assumption, or a number of assumptions thrown together

I wrote, "Naturalism is sufficient. No observation requires the existence of a deity to account for it, and none is better explained invoking a deity over naturalistic alternatives. If you're looking for a reason to believe in your god, you won't find it examining nature, which I think you understand. That explains all the claims that this god lives outside of time and space and can't be detected, because nothing that happens can be said to need a deity to have occurred."

Yes, it's a collection of ideas strung together to make an argument. Go ahead and rebut it if you think that you can demonstrate an error. Until then, the argument stands and should be provisionally considered correct until falsified. You don't falsify it with scripture including prophecy, which needs no god hypothesis to account for.

People can also see someone walking on water and raising people from the dead and calming storms etc and come to the irrational conclusion that the person just did a miracles.

Agreed, which is why we shouldn't just accept their understanding of what they saw or said they saw.

Jesus was a mortal man who died and who was raised to life again by God and did all His miracles by the power of God, not because He was a demigod or a superman. Other normal people have done similar things.

Jesus was a demigod, born from the union of a deity and a mortal who was a virgin, who performed miracles during his life, and then rose from the dead. No normal person has that biography.

I think you are missing many prophecies concerning the Messiah and who He is and what He would do etc.

I think you are missing the ones that describe a triumphant, mortal messiah.

some people just presume people must be lying when their experience includes miracles I guess and fulfilled prophecies.

Maybe. I don't. I assume that they're faith-based thinkers seeing what they believe. You see fulfillment of biblical prophecy to a degree warranting belief in a transhuman prescience for their origin. I see weak predictions lacking the specificity and unlikelihood of scientific prophecy.

Yes we are moral beings in whom God has written His law.

The idea works well for me without adding gods. Evolution gifted me with a conscience and programmed to generate moral imperatives. Its other function is to reward and punish me according to the degree to which I comply with its dictates, which I disregard at my own peril.

 

[Bthoth]

Well I wrote that.

I know, you expect jesus to come back to finish the job, exposing that he was not messiah when He was canonized about 2000 yrs ago

Yes, Jesus has not returned yet, so there is still war and and evil etc.
I did say that these things would be resolved when He returns.
You are acting like a Jew when you point to the fact that Jesus has not done those things. That does not mean He is not the Messiah, it means He just has not returned yet.

Messiah of prophecy enables the truth via christos and lives during the end times. That is what 'saves' or better yet enables that heaven on earth.

Dying for sins is NOT what to look for or await as nothing undoes sins or gives life, peace and the everlasting truth.

I understand how the religions encourage people to overcome their own guilty conscious. But to mislead people that a god created the methodology is blatantly lying.

 

[Windwalker]

Isn't it rather how animals evolved? The ones that tended to survive and breed best were the ones best able to cope with their environment and where possible take advantage of it; and this involved responses from the individual critter "personal" to that critter. If there had been a better way towards surviving and breeding, it would have asserted itself automatically, no?

Oh yes, of course. Our differentiating this from that, drawing boundaries around objects and so forth is a natural product of evolution itself. All humans do is take these functional tools from nature, and use our intelligence to develop and expand them to greater and greater levels of sophistication and complexity.

I'm not saying that language and dualistic perceptions, which is what language grows out of, is wrong or bad or anything like that. We need to differentiate this from that in order to survive as individual organisms in the physical environment itself in order to distinguish food from not food, threats and not threats, and so forth. But also in the social systems, which is where and why we develop our individual egos, that construct of "me and not me" at the social level. And even that too arises out of nature through evolution as well. We just carry it to the next level is all.

What I am saying is problematic however, is when we take this dualistic system of perception, reinforced by language to become the absolute truth itself about what we are perceiving, the world "as it is", is where we run into errors. And even the very assumption that the world can be discerned accurately that is is a flaw of dualism itself.

Dualism is functionally valid for survival physically, socially, and psychologically. But in regards to the pursuit of absolute truth, universal statements about reality "as it is", it is more than out of its reach. And again, the prempution that is can be determined at all, shows the very the limits of its utility.

This is where moving beyond language and dualism comes into play. To declare our scientific perceptions of reality, to be its true actuality, is an illusion of the mind through language. It shapes the corneas of our perceptual eyes itself, and is invisible to us unless we specifically address its inherent presence and direct influence. As I said, no one is really seeing objective reality. They are seeing a subjective perception of objective reality, shaped and molded by a dualistic system of language. We don't see the eyes we are looking through, but they are there and doing all the looking nonetheless.

Hmm. I think language exists in many forms, from meerkat eagle and snake alarms to the body language of mating throughout the animal kingdom to birdsongs that identify birds' different groups even though they're the same species and so on. Humans have complex language and powers of abstraction and conceptualization not apparently found elsewhere, and this has greatly aided human tribal living with the advantages of planning and cooperation,

I agree. We didn't invent communication. We just expanded upon it, from early grunts all the way to poetry. It all has its purpose, and function. But what serves us well at one level, at the highest levels can and does interfere. Grunts and pointing to objects of desire is simple. Layering complexities of concepts through limited language signs is not simple. Trying to understand Reality itself through any words at all, is comparable to pointing at the moon and going, "arrgh arghh arghh," excitedly.

In a sense. But in another sense, we're born alone and we live and die alone. Each of us is a 'me' before we're an 'us'.

Actually, no. Not to the infant. The infant born is adrift in an undifferentiated ocean. It's an oceanic state of being and bliss. It doesn't at first differentiate between self and other. That realization happens in stages of development and discovery, first biting the blanket and then biting the hand, eventually discerning self from not self.

You are right they were not seeing an "us", because you cannot have an "us" until there is a differentiation between me and you, between self and other. To them, it is simply ONE, or not even that, it just IS. There is no this or that, no one or two, etc. That is how consciousness awakens to a world of dualities. All of this is mapped out in Piaget's stages of cognitive development.

And all of that, is necessary to function in a dualistic system of individual organisms in the natural world and society. But as I'm saying, that has it limits. We're trying to use a blunt hammer of dualism to play a symphony of exquisite subtlety and nuance and scope and depth and allness of nonduality, when it comes to understanding what is ultimately true about Reality, which ultimately is nondual.

I'd say we're stuck with our subjectivity, whoever we happen to be. We evolved that way, because it works in all the circumstances it's faced so far.

I'd say we aren't. We aren't born that way, with dualistic perceptions, even though they are developed quickly quite early on. We adapt to it quickly because of the influence of evolution itself, being caught into its stream. But we aren't born at age 20. We are born at 0, and it takes time to slide into that evolutionary stream and assume it in our developed adult bodies. Same applies to the world of dualities.

Now we can in fact move beyond dualism as adults. That is in fact, setting aside the religious window dressings here for a moment, what mystical states of consciousness are all about. It is dissolving this world of differentiation as seeing beyond language and ideas and concepts derived from that. It is falling into that Ocean again, in a sense like that natural state of the undifferentiated infant mind, except now with 'eyes wide open'. It's on the other side of reason, the other side of ego differentiation and development at the rationalist stage, in other words, not prior to it like in the infant.

It's actually something that can be cultivated and developed through practices like mediations, where thoughts are let go off and awareness is expanded through not being drawn into focus on mental ideas and such, as it is all day everyday for everyone alive. Then once that type of perception occurs, the nature of Reality is more than simply what the 'thinking' mind in its language boxes can perceive. It's putting on new glasses, in other words. Reshaping the eyes which do the seeing.

Nor do I see HOW one can get rid of it.

Well, there you go. Now you do.

It's still one's brain monitoring its sensory input so that the reacting and planning parts of the same brain can do their thing.

It is, but it's not processing it through the lens of language and conceptual frameworks as before. That whole processing is invisible to us, unless we very specifically examine it, or unless you've had some sort of actual Awakening experience, moving beyond it, which then makes it really apparent of what is has been. It's seeing what was there the whole time, but remained unseen because of how we were seeing. All of this is very much confirmed by experience itself.

They're subjective, but I like the approach of reasoned enquiry, that we consciously maximize objectivity ─ with observations recorded, conclusions reasoned from them reported, publications peer reviewed where possible, consensus-seeking or clear-cut issues of debate amongst the best qualified, and so on.

And my point is that while all that has good, reasonable use, it is not capable of moving beyond the inherent limits of itself. It is not the highest levels we can go in understanding truth and reality. A size 6 shoe simply does not support a size 10 foot.

There are truths, just no absolute truths. Truth can vary as we continue to learn, and when it changes, it's retrospective eg until 2012 the Higgs boson was a theoretical particle but now there's always been such a beast. And if in future we find we've misunderstood the Higgs boson, that too will be retrospective and only relevant after it happens.

But when one argues that reason and rationality is how we discern reality from non-reality, that is making a statement of absolute truth. And it is simply wrong. While is is a powerful tool for many functional matters, it cannot proclaim itself as the ultimate judge of what is ultimately real or not. Science and reason is not where the inquiry in to the nature of reality stops. It has its limitations. And we do reach those now.

 

[Heyo]

If people experience things that are generally impossible in real life, they would see them as miracles and that does not mean that they were deeply irrational.

If you know that your senses are not trustworthy (and anybody who got fooled by a magic trick or an optical illusion should know that) and you know that some thing are impossible by natural laws or logic, then believing upon experience over rational thought is irrational.

 

[blü 2]

Oh yes, of course. Our differentiating this from that, drawing boundaries around objects and so forth is a natural product of evolution itself. All humans do is take these functional tools from nature, and use our intelligence to develop and expand them to greater and greater levels of sophistication and complexity.

I'm not saying that language and dualistic perceptions, which is what language grows out of, is wrong or bad or anything like that. We need to differentiate this from that in order to survive as individual organisms in the physical environment itself in order to distinguish food from not food, threats and not threats, and so forth. But also in the social systems, which is where and why we develop our individual egos, that construct of "me and not me" at the social level. And even that too arises out of nature through evolution as well. We just carry it to the next level is all.

What I am saying is problematic however, is when we take this dualistic system of perception, reinforced by language to become the absolute truth itself about what we are perceiving, the world "as it is", is where we run into errors. And even the very assumption that the world can be discerned accurately that is is a flaw of dualism itself.

Dualism is functionally valid for survival physically, socially, and psychologically. But in regards to the pursuit of absolute truth, universal statements about reality "as it is", it is more than out of its reach. And again, the prempution that is can be determined at all, shows the very the limits of its utility.

This is where moving beyond language and dualism comes into play. To declare our scientific perceptions of reality, to be its true actuality, is an illusion of the mind through language. It shapes the corneas of our perceptual eyes itself, and is invisible to us unless we specifically address its inherent presence and direct influence. As I said, no one is really seeing objective reality. They are seeing a subjective perception of objective reality, shaped and molded by a dualistic system of language. We don't see the eyes we are looking through, but they are there and doing all the looking nonetheless.

I agree. We didn't invent communication. We just expanded upon it, from early grunts all the way to poetry. It all has its purpose, and function. But what serves us well at one level, at the highest levels can and does interfere. Grunts and pointing to objects of desire is simple. Layering complexities of concepts through limited language signs is not simple. Trying to understand Reality itself through any words at all, is comparable to pointing at the moon and going, "arrgh arghh arghh," excitedly.

Actually, no. Not to the infant. The infant born is adrift in an undifferentiated ocean. It's an oceanic state of being and bliss. It doesn't at first differentiate between self and other. That realization happens in stages of development and discovery, first biting the blanket and then biting the hand, eventually discerning self from not self.

You are right they were not seeing an "us", because you cannot have an "us" until there is a differentiation between me and you, between self and other. To them, it is simply ONE, or not even that, it just IS. There is no this or that, no one or two, etc. That is how consciousness awakens to a world of dualities. All of this is mapped out in Piaget's stages of cognitive development.

And all of that, is necessary to function in a dualistic system of individual organisms in the natural world and society. But as I'm saying, that has it limits. We're trying to use a blunt hammer of dualism to play a symphony of exquisite subtlety and nuance and scope and depth and allness of nonduality, when it comes to understanding what is ultimately true about Reality, which ultimately is nondual.

I'd say we aren't. We aren't born that way, with dualistic perceptions, even though they are developed quickly quite early on. We adapt to it quickly because of the influence of evolution itself, being caught into its stream. But we aren't born at age 20. We are born at 0, and it takes time to slide into that evolutionary stream and assume it in our developed adult bodies. Same applies to the world of dualities.

Now we can in fact move beyond dualism as adults. That is in fact, setting aside the religious window dressings here for a moment, what mystical states of consciousness are all about. It is dissolving this world of differentiation as seeing beyond language and ideas and concepts derived from that. It is falling into that Ocean again, in a sense like that natural state of the undifferentiated infant mind, except now with 'eyes wide open'. It's on the other side of reason, the other side of ego differentiation and development at the rationalist stage, in other words, not prior to it like in the infant.

It's actually something that can be cultivated and developed through practices like mediations, where thoughts are let go off and awareness is expanded through not being drawn into focus on mental ideas and such, as it is all day everyday for everyone alive. Then once that type of perception occurs, the nature of Reality is more than simply what the 'thinking' mind in its language boxes can perceive. It's putting on new glasses, in other words. Reshaping the eyes which do the seeing.

Well, there you go. Now you do.

It is, but it's not processing it through the lens of language and conceptual frameworks as before. That whole processing is invisible to us, unless we very specifically examine it, or unless you've had some sort of actual Awakening experience, moving beyond it, which then makes it really apparent of what is has been. It's seeing what was there the whole time, but remained unseen because of how we were seeing. All of this is very much confirmed by experience itself.

And my point is that while all that has good, reasonable use, it is not capable of moving beyond the inherent limits of itself. It is not the highest levels we can go in understanding truth and reality. A size 6 shoe simply does not support a size 10 foot.

But when one argues that reason and rationality is how we discern reality from non-reality, that is making a statement of absolute truth. And it is simply wrong. While is is a powerful tool for many functional matters, it cannot proclaim itself as the ultimate judge of what is ultimately real or not. Science and reason is not where the inquiry in to the nature of reality stops. It has its limitations. And we do reach those now.

Well, we're not too far apart on the data, just the conclusions we draw from it.

Go well!

 

[Brian2]

I know, you expect jesus to come back to finish the job, exposing that he was not messiah when He was canonized about 2000 yrs ago

The OT teaches that after God's Word goes out from Jerusalem then wars will cease.
The gospel is preached to the world before the Messiah finishes His work.

Messiah of prophecy enables the truth via christos and lives during the end times. That is what 'saves' or better yet enables that heaven on earth.

Dying for sins is NOT what to look for or await as nothing undoes sins or gives life, peace and the everlasting truth.

I understand how the religions encourage people to overcome their own guilty conscious. But to mislead people that a god created the methodology is blatantly lying.

The Messiah lives, He was resurrected and given the everlasting Kingdom (Dan 7:13,14)
Now the gospel is being preached to all.
The gospel is what the OT tells us, that He suffers and dies to bear our sins (Isa 53) and He brings in the New Covenant and gives us God's Spirit to change us (Ezek 36:26)
Then at the end He comes and fights for Israel and Israel repents and follows Him.
Then He judges the earth and sets up the Kingdom fully on earth.
It's all there in the OT even if not spelled out in point form.

 

[Brian2]

If you know that your senses are not trustworthy (and anybody who got fooled by a magic trick or an optical illusion should know that) and you know that some thing are impossible by natural laws or logic, then believing upon experience over rational thought is irrational.

When you and everyone around you is experiencing the same miracle?
Not just optical illusions, the miracles went further than that.
Sure it is good to be skeptical and go into things with eyes open to the possibilities but skeptical can be taken too far, to the point of, "No evidence is ever going to convince me, I have made up my mind that naturalism is the only possibility and if miracles start happening to me and my friends I'll make sure we go to seek medical help".
I suppose belief that cannot be tested by science is beyond some people. The skeptical illusion about the stupidity of faith is a strong one.
Science of course is based sensory experience and we don't want to pull down the foundations of science because of our skepticism, and really we don't KNOW that miracles are impossible unless we are looking at them through the eyes of faith in what the skeptic manual tells us.

 

[Bthoth]

The OT teaches that after God's Word goes out from Jerusalem then wars will cease.

Did it mention how many wars will be surrounding the city of blood?

The gospel is preached to the world before the Messiah finishes His work.

OK.... did you ever consider that Jesus was not messiah? Does that even compute in your model of consideration?

The Messiah lives, He was resurrected and given the everlasting Kingdom (Dan 7:13,14)

Quoting Dan has nothing to do with Jesus.

Now the gospel is being preached to all.

So to speak but not the last word as revelations suggests there is more to come.

The gospel is what the OT tells us, that He suffers and dies to bear our sins (Isa 53) and He brings in the New Covenant and gives us God's Spirit to change us (Ezek 36:26)

The gospel is not the OT and the OT does not convey that jesus is messiah. The new covenant does not mean the church tells us all what is true.

Then at the end He comes and fights for Israel and Israel repents and follows Him.

Try to tell israelis that.

Then He judges the earth and sets up the Kingdom fully on earth.

AS I mentioned, it was not jesus setting up any such kingdom. Not even remotely.

It's all there in the OT even if not spelled out in point form.

I know the OT has many prophecies but jesus is not the guy or the christos of OT. Just ask the people claiming to keep the OT as the benchmark

 

[Brian2]

That record is strong evidence that scripture is all anthropogenic, but only if one evaluates it critically, that is, skeptically, dispassionately, and skillfully.

Yes if the presumption is that it is anthropogenic because of supernatural elements then that is the conclusion you get to at the end.

No. I start with evidence and derive conclusions from it (seeing is believing). You're describing the motivating reasoning of faith, where one begins assuming that miracles do occur and then looks at the evidence not to interpret it, but to make it support his a priori beliefs about what the evidence must show (believing is seeing). That's why you see biblical history as correct and biblical prophecy as fulfilled. You began with those beliefs, and nothing you read thereafter can modify them, only support them.

You can't really look at the scriptures as evidence if you conclude from the start that the miracles mean anthropogenic scriptures, made up by humans. That is a closed mind from the beginning.
But maybe I do believe the miracles because I believe in Jesus first. Nevertheless it seems to me that the evidence of a number of witnesses do point to the truth of the gospels.
The reality seems to be that the church knew who wrote the gospels and that they were reliable and that the later non believers started tearing down the credibility with ideas such as "Prophecy does not happen so the gospels were written after 70AD by people who did not know the story of Jesus".

I wrote, "Naturalism is sufficient. No observation requires the existence of a deity to account for it, and none is better explained invoking a deity over naturalistic alternatives. If you're looking for a reason to believe in your god, you won't find it examining nature, which I think you understand. That explains all the claims that this god lives outside of time and space and can't be detected, because nothing that happens can be said to need a deity to have occurred."

Yes, it's a collection of ideas strung together to make an argument. Go ahead and rebut it if you think that you can demonstrate an error. Until then, the argument stands and should be provisionally considered correct until falsified. You don't falsify it with scripture including prophecy, which needs no god hypothesis to account for.

You just rebutted yourself. Making up a possible naturalistic explanation for prophecy and then saying you have shown that the prophecy is not true is no more than saying "I am a naturalist and will believe a naturalistic explanation of both witness reports and even if it looks to me as if prophecy is being fulfilled before my eyes".
You can be a naturalist and have faith in your naturalism and I will be a theist and have faith that the witnesses were telling the truth".

Agreed, which is why we shouldn't just accept their understanding of what they saw or said they saw.

How do you propose to test it? You don't, you just propose to dismiss reports of the supernatural because of your faith in naturalism.

Jesus was a demigod, born from the union of a deity and a mortal who was a virgin, who performed miracles during his life, and then rose from the dead. No normal person has that biography.

True, Jesus is the Son of God, but lived just like any of us and did all the miracles through the power of God's Spirit in Him just as any one of us could do with God's Spirit in us to enable us.

Maybe. I don't. I assume that they're faith-based thinkers seeing what they believe. You see fulfillment of biblical prophecy to a degree warranting belief in a transhuman prescience for their origin. I see weak predictions lacking the specificity and unlikelihood of scientific prophecy.

Prophecy and scientific prediction are not the same thing.
But yes, if you don't believe the prophecies then you will be able to explain them away.

The idea works well for me without adding gods. Evolution gifted me with a conscience and programmed to generate moral imperatives. Its other function is to reward and punish me according to the degree to which I comply with its dictates, which I disregard at my own peril.

It's all in the chemistry of our genes. Hmmm.

 

[Brian2]

Did it mention how many wars will be surrounding the city of blood?

There is mention of wars and around Jerusalem and in other places yes.

OK.... did you ever consider that Jesus was not messiah? Does that even compute in your model of consideration?

Of course.

Quoting Dan has nothing to do with Jesus.

So are you saying that OT prophecy has nothing to do with any Messianic claimant because there is no name for the Messiah in the OT?
Whom do you say that Dan 7:13,14 is about?

I know the OT has many prophecies but jesus is not the guy or the christos of OT. Just ask the people claiming to keep the OT as the benchmark

We all know that some Jews accepted Jesus as the Messiah and that most of them did not.
IMO the rejection of the Messiah by Jews is also there in the OT (Psalm 89 for one) and they have their interpretations of the prophecies of course.

 

[blü 2]

So are you saying that OT prophecy has nothing to do with any Messianic claimant because there is no name for the Messiah in the OT?
Whom do you say that Dan 7:13,14 is about?

It says it's about "one like a son of man" (13.13 RSV) to whom was given "dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him." (13.14)

That wasn't true of Jesus in the first century CE and it's not true of Jesus in the 21st century, or any intervening century. (Which reminds me of Jesus' promise in Mark, Matthew and Luke that he'd return and establish the Kingdom in the lifetime of some of his audience ─ Mark 9.1, Matthew 10.23, 16.28) and Luke 9.27. Now it's 2023 and still no sign of him.)

Prophecy is a political and propaganda tool. It's not a method of telling the future, any more than tarot-reading or astrology.

We all know that some Jews accepted Jesus as the Messiah and that most of them did not.

What was there about Jesus that might cause any Jewish onlooker to think he qualified as a messiah? After all, (a) he was never a military, civil or religious leader of the Jews (b) he was never anointed by the priesthood (which is what 'messiah' means) and (c) no one in Jerusalem had encountered him till he arrived there a very few days before the end of the story.

 

[Heyo]

When you and everyone around you is experiencing the same miracle?

Has a stage magician ever fooled multiple people at once?

Not just optical illusions, the miracles went further than that.
Sure it is good to be skeptical and go into things with eyes open to the possibilities but skeptical can be taken too far, to the point of, "No evidence is ever going to convince me, I have made up my mind that naturalism is the only possibility and if miracles start happening to me and my friends I'll make sure we go to seek medical help".

I have a personal experience of 61 years of no miracle happening and every supposed miracle being debunked and nature acting as expected by the assumption of an orderly universe.
What is more likely, me having accidentally consumed a hallucinogenic substance or the universe suddenly having turned crazy?

I suppose belief that cannot be tested by science is beyond some people.

I do understand belief. What I don't understand is people confusing belief with reality. According to some that is a problem small children have but in my experience kids know very well what is pretend and what is real - in contrast to some adults.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You can't really look at the scriptures as evidence if you conclude from the start that the miracles mean anthropogenic scriptures, made up by humans. That is a closed mind from the beginning.

Agreed. But that's not how I came to my present position. I began with examining the evidence which led to a tentative conclusion based on the evidence. What you describe is more like what the faith-based, Bible believer does. He begins with a belief such as that the Bible is an honest account of an actual god, and THEN looks at scripture through THOSE eyes and sees what he's decided in advance he wants to see.

Making up a possible naturalistic explanation for prophecy and then saying you have shown that the prophecy is not true is no more than saying "I am a naturalist and will believe a naturalistic explanation of both witness reports and even if it looks to me as if prophecy is being fulfilled before my eyes".

That's also not what happens. If there is a naturalistic explanation possible, it makes the supernatural one much less likely, not wrong. Occam's parsimony principle is a razor, that is, it orders hypotheses by likelihood according to the degree of complexity of the narrative relative to the degree of complexity it needs to account for. The optimal hypothesis is the one complex enough to do the job by no more complicated than that.

How do you propose to test it?

I don't. I'm not the one making the claim of miracles having occurred.

Prophecy and scientific prediction are not the same thing.

Prophecy and prediction are synonyms.

 

[Bthoth]

So are you saying that OT prophecy has nothing to do with any Messianic claimant because there is no name for the Messiah in the OT?
Whom do you say that Dan 7:13,14 is about?

Not about Jesus. There is nothing about a 2 time messiah. It's the church that has kept revelation as canon because of the unfinished business of messiah.

We all know that some Jews accepted Jesus as the Messiah and that most of them did not.

Why? Do any note that what was promised did not occur?

IMO the rejection of the Messiah by Jews is also there in the OT (Psalm 89 for one) and they have their interpretations of the prophecies of course.

Since when are the songs of David as prophecy? There are so many misinterpretations of bible that it is sad to even have these debates.

Thank you for being pleasant about the conversation.

 

[Valjean]

The record of what happened and what was said is there and is for all the world to see and hear and the fulfilled prophecies and the continuing fulfilling of prophecy are there to show it is not just from human imagination.

There are a thousand different "records." What makes yours more accurate than the Sumerian's or Mayan's?
How does one tell folklore or myth from fact? Even if a report were accurately recorded, how reliable was the reporter? There are many completely sincere people reporting all sorts of bizarre things, mental hospitals are full of them.

True, you probably first assume miracles in general do not happen and then dismiss miracles whenever and wherever you hear of them.

What defines a miracle? Is it something inexplicable, or just unexplained? Can something truly inexplicable even happen?

That is an assumption, or a number of assumptions thrown together, and I do find confirmation for my God in nature.

What do you find in Nature that confirms God? Why do those who study nature not see this?

People can also see someone walking on water and raising people from the dead and calming storms etc and come to the irrational conclusion that the person just did a miracles.

The more interesting question would be how? By what mechanism?
And what makes you think these things even happened? If they were reported by someone today, would the reporter be believed?

Jesus was a mortal man who died and who was raised to life again by God and did all His miracles by the power of God, not because He was a demigod or a superman. Other normal people have done similar things.
I think you are missing many prophecies concerning the Messiah and who He is and what He would do etc.

"The power of God" explains nothing. It just dodges the question of mechanism.

Maybe, some people just presume people must be lying when their experience includes miracles I guess and fulfilled prophecies.

Not necessarily lying. Maybe just mistaken. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. And again, what makes 2,000 year old testimony reliable, after thousands of retellings? What makes it more believable than Hindu or Zulu religious folklore?
Prophecy? Vague, ambiguous, apophenic patterns perceived in random events? Faces in the clouds?

 

[Brian2]

It says it's about "one like a son of man" (13.13 RSV) to whom was given "dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him." (13.14)

That wasn't true of Jesus in the first century CE and it's not true of Jesus in the 21st century, or any intervening century. (Which reminds me of Jesus' promise in Mark, Matthew and Luke that he'd return and establish the Kingdom in the lifetime of some of his audience ─ Mark 9.1, Matthew 10.23, 16.28) and Luke 9.27. Now it's 2023 and still no sign of him.)

Prophecy is a political and propaganda tool. It's not a method of telling the future, any more than tarot-reading or astrology.

What was there about Jesus that might cause any Jewish onlooker to think he qualified as a messiah? After all, (a) he was never a military, civil or religious leader of the Jews (b) he was never anointed by the priesthood (which is what 'messiah' means) and (c) no one in Jerusalem had encountered him till he arrived there a very few days before the end of the story.

So when do you think the gospels were written and by whom?

 

[Brian2]

Has a stage magician ever fooled multiple people at once?

Yes magicians spend a lot of time and effort to set up their illusions. Jesus just walked around and healed blind and deaf people and raised others from the dead and calmed storms and walked on water etc

I have a personal experience of 61 years of no miracle happening and every supposed miracle being debunked and nature acting as expected by the assumption of an orderly universe.
What is more likely, me having accidentally consumed a hallucinogenic substance or the universe suddenly having turned crazy?

Miracles have not happened to me so if they do I won't believe it anyway. OK.

I do understand belief. What I don't understand is people confusing belief with reality. According to some that is a problem small children have but in my experience kids know very well what is pretend and what is real - in contrast to some adults.

I have a problem with people being talked out of their God belief and into another belief, one that says only the material is real and anyone who claims to have experienced more is delusional or lying.