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I did not say that QM was supernatural. However QM did not produce empty tombs (which is one of the most attested facts in the bible), water into wine, or hundreds of millions who claim to have been born again or have medical miracles.
That is not what I said. I don't care how many people have intellectually consented to a proposition they have no idea if it is true or not. I spoke about personal experience. I do not care about how many people in the 1600's believed the grand canyon existed. I care about the millions that have today been there and experienced it. There is a huge difference and one that separates Christianity from all other faiths. BTW the scientific community by and large has adopted dark matter yet it can't be detected by any means what so ever. Why the double standard?
So, not very well attested, then?
Not a single one of which has ever been demonstrated to be any kind of miraculous event. It's irrelevant. For every person you can claim as having direct experience of your God, there is another who will claim to have had a direct experience with some other religion's conception of God. If we rely on experience, we must believe that all of these different and often contradictory notions of a supreme being exist side-by-side.
Dark matter is hypothesized to exist in order to account for the properties of matter and careful observation of how particles react in deep space. There's no double standard whatsoever. There's a difference between hypothesizing the existence of an as yet unobserved form of matter, and asserting the existence of a magical, supernatural entity.
What is not attested? I did not make any claim that required attestation about QM.
No there is not anything even remotely comparable concerning numbers that you suggest. There are not even many similarities in doctrines about the availability of the potential for experiencing other God's. For example neither Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, or Buddhism contain any doctrinal promises about all of it's adherents experiencing God. So not only is there not anything even remotely comparable to the numbers who attest to divine experience in Christianity and any other faith, but not even any doctrinal reasons to think there should be.
I believe that dark matter exists and on the same basis by which I believe miracles occur or objective morality exists. I find evidence for them. I am consistent, my comments were intended to show that your side is not. You throw identical methodologies into two categories. Anything (regardless of how untestable) that is termed natural is valid and anything (no matter how much evidence) that is termed supernatural is rejected. I have the same standards by which both dark matter and miracles are valid, you do not and so must reject one and accept the other without justification.
You said that "an empty tomb" was "one of the most attested facts in the Bible". I was responding to that.
You've not even approached a refutation of my argument. My point had absolutely nothing to do with doctrine or numbers. It's to do with the notion of using claims of experience as evidence of miraculous events, and how the impossibility of divining the accuracy of those events means that using them as evidence puts us into a position where we must accept contradictory experiences as being as valid as each other.
But that evidence is not scientific - it is personal, based on emotion, faith, doctrine and unverifiable experience. That's the difference. The existence of dark matter is inferred directly and consistently through scientific observation. Your faith in compounded not by a scientific observation of the world around you, but by you starting with that prejudice and building the world you see in your head around it.
That's total nonsense and an obvious strawman. Not all natural explanations are equal. Such a position is absurd and not at all scientific.
The existence of dark matter is directly inferred by observations based on reality. Miracles are not - they are personal accounts of unverifiable events. This is not inconsistency. Do you accept every miraculous claim made? Even ones attributed to Allah, or Buddha, or reincarnation? If not, then you are not consistent. In fact, I believe you are less consistent than we are, because we only ever believe things based on evidence and good reason. You're willing to believe anything, regardless of how absurd and poorly evidenced, as long as it fits your presupposition of belief in your specific version of God, and deny anything - regardless of how well supported it is - that even remotely contradicts it. Your desperate attempts to refute evolution, and the lies you use to do so, are proof of that.
Do you need help quoting posts? I almost did not see this one was directed towards me.
There is not anything comparable about numbers between those that claim that experience with UFO's and those that claim miraculous experience. There is at least two or three orders of magnitude and probably far more disparity between them. However just to make the argument more easily seen, let's pretend there is anything like a similarity in numbers. There is still a huge difference in quality. If I claim my bottle of water instantly changed to wine, unless you call me a liar there exists no natural explanation for my claim. A person who claims to have seen a light in the sky (and I do not call them liars) has about a thousands natural explanations that can explain the event. I only gave single example but almost every single type of claim has this disparity in quality even if it had (and it does not) had any similarity in numbers. The only group of those that make claims of similar quality are those that claim to have been abducted or to have interacted directly with alien life. There are so few people in tis group that the normal disparity in numbers becomes and embarrassing gulf. So not on any level, even remotely, are the two groups even comparable.
I think I explained that above. Let me ask you this do you grant the people who believe in UFO's enough credibility to concede they very well might exist?
Please keep my comments in the contexts given and do not apply them to contexts and conclusions not given or made. It is certainly possible that all Christians are liars and Muslims actually hold the truth. However that is not the way these issues are resolved. They are resolved by adding up the evidence (both amount and quality) and making the best conclusions. In this case I have shown that evidence that lies within the realm of personal experience is overwhelmingly on the Christian's side. That was all my comment meant. I did not put it to the uses you did and it does not belong there.
Then please my response the their comments because nothing was resolved or explained by them. Of course it is a theory, so is evolution or even gravity. That is not a relevant fact. Not all of science or faith can be tested. The difference is faith does not claim to be fact and science routinely speaks of faith (in their pet theory) as a fact.
There exists no test for certainty for any fact ever believed to be true in any category. Other possibilities exist and can never be ruled out for all claims to certainty. This exists in every aspect of science and faith. There exists reasons and evidence for a supreme being and gravity, yet neither of these have an objectively available certainty. This is the absolute truth and exactly what I believe, me and reality have no conflict. However your general position is inconsistent. For some reasons you deny reliability to anything that comes under the heading of theology (even if evidence and very good reasons exist to believe it), and you propositions as valid if they come under the heading of the natural ( even though they may contain as much or more faith and less evidence that there exists for a supreme being).
Oh. Then let me respond to that then.
So your rejecting claims regarding experience as valid I guess. If that is the case then virtually everything you know is invalid. The fact that life and death matters are settled based primarily on claims about experience and have been for most of man's history is argument enough that your position is flawed but many additional arguments exist to confirm that. No discipline officially denies claims to experience and almost all rely on them exhaustively. Any formal debate about virtually any issue is proof of this.
Neither is much of science. I am not qualified to explain it, but many of histories greatest scholars point it out as a known fact that neither science nor math is explainable or proven by science or math. I can easily have more and better experiential evidence for salvation than quantum theory. I have experienced the former and only have the word of a few that the latter even exists. I did not settle on what I believe to be true by preference, most of what I believe I would prefer to be different. The majority of scientific opinion at least for most of us is simply the acceptance of the word of others based on faith. Even experts in one field have carried out few personal proofs of claims of another field. Today this is true even among most interdisciplinary claims. However the nature of the miraculous makes personal experience of it's truth available to potentially anyone. It requires no expertise, no years of training, and no faith in theory. I know I was born again with far more certainty than I know 99% of what I was taught in college is true. I did not attempt to supply a refutation. I attempted to supply the reasons that you made no claim that required refutation. I do not have to defend anything that was ineffectually attacked or vise-versa.
You have twice in one post given proof of what you claimed is a straw man. You have twice insinuated that what is scientific is true. It is not. Science is not a synonym for truth nor is it even relevant for most of what we each believe is true.
So is my faith. In fact Jesus himself and the apostles said that nature alone is enough to justify faith. There is more than enough evidence in a single blade of grass to consider the supernatural valid.
No, just certain experiences as evidence of claims which require vastly greater quantities of evidence to ascertain.
So, nothing is demonstrable, testable or based on reasonable conclusions drawn from facts? That seems odd of you to say since you were just a moment ago talking about "attested facts" in the Bible.
Which is as silly and pointless as saying out that you cannot bake baking. It's a vacuous statement that doesn't mean anything.
Quantum theory actually produces testable and observable facts that have a real world impact. The very computer you are typing on at this very moment is in part produced by mechanisms designed and understood using quantum theory. So this means, hilariously, that you are claiming you can more easily produce evidence of salvation than quantum theory, while accidentally and unwittingly demonstrating the reliability of quantum theory. You are emphatically defeated by your own argument.
This is just blatantly false. You chose to believe what you believe when you could have easily found a more rational conclusion to reach, and you clearly try to make reality fit this perception.
Perhaps, for most, but those people are more than welcome to go and investigate the facts for themselves. That's the beauty of science: it doesn't just assert things blindly and leave no working. In fact, every discovery made by science is woven into the world around us. It is the knowledge obtained by science that is to thank for all the modern conveniences and comforts we enjoy. The computer you type on, the light that lights it, the heating in your home. You'd have to be an absolute fool to think that you were taking scientific claims on faith when science produces tangible benefits to you every single day of your life.
So, in other words, no actual knowledge or understanding.
And there are many people in the world with similar experiences to you who came to believe completely contradictory things than you. The degree of certainty to which you believe something is irrelevant - you can still be wrong.
No, I have not.
And why should I agree with people who supposedly lived two-thousand years ago and knew very little - if anything - about how the universe actually functions?
I could easily go and read his book.
Yes. And where he was wrong, of course.
No, I accept them because their claims produce real, tangible results. If Newton's claims weren't accurate to an extent, we wouldn't be able to make predictions about speed and velocity. But we can. I don't have to take on faith what demonstrates it's validity to us every single day.
How could you possibly compare them?
But you don't. You just trust your interpretation and ignore any possibility of it being wrong.
Again, you're typing on a computer filled with microprocessors right now. You're demonstrating that quantum theory is demonstrable while simultaneously claiming we'll never know if it's true.
And everything you just said in those post proves that you don't actually know what quantum theory actually claims or produces.
I have far more personal evidence to satisfy my claims of the supernatural than most of that which I believe about the natural. Not one natural fact is certain. We could all be in a matrix type of state without the slightest way to be certain we are not. So no fact is certain this side of the dirt anyway. Take any of the scientific theories I am skeptical of. In fact take them all. No one (in this forum anyway) has access to the most basic of facts regarding them. Many of them have no one who is possessed of much evidence for them. You speak the truth above when you say that you do not reject all experience claims. You only reject some of them and have no coherent justification in your choice between which claims go into which category. That has been my point.
Based on the standards you apply to theological claims then most claims of every type would be without justification. I was agreeing with you. I was pointing out what the ultimate outcome of your thinking would mean. Based on my standards both most of scientific claims and much of theological claims can be justifiably valid. Your confusing what your standards would mean with what mine would mean. There is far more evidence to believe in an empty tomb than for multiple universes and on that basis I can be skeptical about the latter and adopt the former. You must reverse this logic to support illogical standards and arrive at the opposite conclusion.
I don't get the analogy. If you equate science with fact then since science cannot be validated through science alone, it is your problem not mine. I do not hold to that equivalence and so do not have the problem you do.
I did not deny anything about the quantum. I said you do not have access to any of the evidence and do not possess the ability to properly evaluate it even if you did. Most of us do not *** well. You, I, and most of us simply take others words on things like the quantum. Nothing wrong with that unless you simultaneously refuse to take others words for the sole reasons that you do not like them. Most of an individuals knowledge is based on faith. No problem unless you deny that fact as you seem to be doing.
It is statements like this that serve to confirm my position that your side simply does not understand what they are saying. I am the worlds greatest expert on why I have faith and my motivations. I spent 27 years trying my best to find rational reasons to deny God. Many of them being certain there was no God and even if he existed I hated him. I finally ran completely out of justifications for either view. I would change about 95% of what I believe to be true. How in the world is my faith wishful thinking in that case and how in the world do you expect me to believe you about science if you think you know more than I about what and why I have faith? This type of thing is certain proof of very flawed reasoning.
The key phrases being "personal experience" and "my claims". I cannot refute, or even really deny, your experiences - but I can still question the validity of them as evidence of your claim from an objective viewpoint, and as a reasonable assessment of reality.
And yet you must be beholden to some degree of certainty about reality, or else you wouldn't have formulated any conclusions about anything - even ones based on personal experience. In fact, especially ones based on personal experience.
Actually, yes we do. There are countless books and museums dedicated to them. And even if we don't see the evidence directly ourselves, we can still see the effect of the conclusions drawn from them from everything that the scientific method has provided for us. Every time you use a computer, heat your house, or take medicine you are utilizing machines built and designed entirely on predictions ascertained from the scientific method. You are, in fact, demonstrating these these predictions are accurate.
But I do have coherent justification. I only believe claims for which I have considered the evidence to be sufficient to judge the claim worth believing beyond a reasonable doubt.
In the same way that the "ultimate outcome" of your thinking would be to believe every claim made from personal experience about everything, even when they are claims made about things you don't believe?
This is a pretty poor comparison. A historical event vs. a proposed explanation for a given phenomena aren't even remotely equal. Nobody here has claimed the multiple universe interpretation of quantum physics to be a fact - and I've never particularly objected to the claim of an empty tomb.
So you cannot explain how my analogy is inaccurate?
But I don't. I've read up on quantum physics. I am familiar with the concepts involved and with the tests devised to demonstrate them, as well as the fact that we have predictions made by quantum mechanics to thank for the existence of such things as microprocessors and lasers. Are you denying that?
But you can still be wrong. While I cannot question your experience, I can still question them as a rational basis to make objective assessments of reality.
Because you are a flawed human being as well, and you are capable of being wrong - and even being capable of denying that to yourself. The fact that you have to deny empirical facts to support your beliefs is sufficient proof to me that your beliefs are not logical, and obtained through means of delusion. You don't believe that, I'm sure, but to me it is a reasonable conclusion.
So, science doesn't produce things that work? What on earth are you typing on?
Both science and Christianity are guilty of holding presupposed ideas that influence what is taken from data. No subject in human history is free from it. I concede Christianity's capacity to delude it's self and so will no expand on it. At no other time in history has science been as driven by money as it is now. The need to be published, tenured, accepted into the mainstream and get grant money has done to science what it has done to every form of government wayward man has ever coughed up. It has corrupted it where possible. This is present even in arenas where functionality must arise. I work in such a field and have seen billions go wasted on theories based on presumptions and pet theories. I was in the military and am an amateur military historian and know that tens of millions have died on the alter of sciences presumptions. However it gets far worse for the portions of science where proof is unavailable and unlikely to ever be. Things are constantly asserted as fact or likely that have no evidence, far more are asserted that depend entirely on either the dominant narrative, or presumptions. Every scientific argument against theology lies entirely within this most likely to contain error divisions of science.
No, little certainty but vast amounts of potential understanding.
You need far more specificity to even have this conversation. Needless to say very few people have experienced Christ and then went on to conclude he does not exist. Your are attempting to equate one thing you have little knowledge of with another you have little or knowledge of. You do not know and even less understand what my experiences are much less that bushman in Africa.
I believe you have.
Because what they did say turned out to contradict science as early as 60 years ago but prove correct in the end. There is not one single cosmological fact that does not agree with their straightforward claims. You should believe them because they are true. You should consider if they are from a God because they were ignorant, yet still were correct in-spite of even Einstein. His self admitted most abject professional failure would have been avoided by believing Genesis.
Does that get you any closer to the data? Does that make you any more qualified to understand what he stated? I have 190 semester hours in college and 90% of what he says that is scientific (50% of the total is philosophic and wrong anyway) I have no way whatever to know the truth of and neither does he. In his particular case I used the 10% I do understand to arrive at the conclusion that his philosophic conclusions arrive not from data but from his lack of knowledge in philosophy. However do not take my word. I will give you a link to a conference where two philosophers, a pure mathematics professor from Oxford, and a moral theorist from Cambridge not only point out his scientific assumptions but show easily how most of his conclusions are philosophic not scientific and completely unjustifiable.
What level of education is that exactly? I have been through partial DE and can't do it.
There are no actual results or data that confirm anything that would cause anyone to reject Genesis or any other book base on science alone. Everything used to debate against the bible lies firmly in theoretical arenas.
I gave you several of the vast numbers of ways in which that can be done. Until you acknowledge those there is little need for more.
Christians are the group above any other that have arrived at the position most in opposition to that which they began with. You cannot even become a Christian without having to admit that your entire being and world view is wrong. Your being silly and trite.
Yes and I can read a bible on it that I can run similar tests on. The exact same tests used in textual scholarship, the historical method, legal systems, and all other arenas in life and arrive depending on the claim at more or less the same assurance I can for processor theory. BTW connecting quantum THEORY, electronic THEORY, or any other with reality is the exact same as connected the authorities THEORY about any event and the data I can access. I can not see a single quantum event ever take place. Your belief that theory reflects reality is almost pure faith. I agree that it is probably true so once again I am consistent while you are not. Your excluding by categorization.
I meant me and you and unless you have a PhD and some very long and meaningful and experience I am 100% correct. Of course I am not a quantum