There is NO Historical Evidence for Jesus

[It Aint Necessarily So]

you do not seem to be familiar with the objections by religious people specifically Christians to the idea of praying in this way and studying it.

Yes, I am, but their objections aren't meaningful to me, just like their objections to abortion, also based in religious beliefs I don't share. When the objections are coming almost exclusively from believers, it tells you that they are manufactured by the religion. There's a good reason why don't atheists agree. They don't go to church, and so they aren't indoctrinated by teaching about gods and prayer, which appears to be necessary to hold such a position.

You don't seem to be aware of the idea that "My will be done" is witchcraft

None of that is meaningful to an unbeliever. There is no such thing as witchcraft, and prayer doesn't work except as placebo. You seem to want me to get into their heads and see it from their perspective. When I do that, I see ideas I reject. What believers believe about prayer and witchcraft is irrelevant to what I believe and to what the science showed. The claim from Christianity is exactly what you called witchcraft. We are told that we can move mountains with just a mustard seed. That's no different from eye-of-newt witchcraft.

the link I brought details these objections

From that link: "Prayer that tests for a response from God in the way the intercessor requires would not be considered prayer at all because it requires no faith, leaves God no options, and is presumptuous regarding God's wisdom and plan. Where is faith if science can validate the power of prayer?"

That's a religious belief. I don't share it. It appeals to faith as a legitimate form of discovery and knowledge acquisition. It assumes a god exists, and then creates just-so stories to explain why it can't be detected in this therapeutic trial. You're probably familiar with Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage. This is what we are seeing now - reasons why this god is undetectable, yet actually there anyway. This is a special god that won't reveal itself when people are looking:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."
"Show me," you say.
I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll offer to spray-paint the dragon to make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?

Did you ever see Mystery men, a spoof on wannabe superheroes? "Invisible Boy is a resident of Champion City who spent most of his adolescent life ignored even by his own father. Eventually he discovered that after years of being overlooked, he had developed the power of invisibility, but it only works as long as no one (including himself) is looking at him."

 

[Thrillobyte]

OK, that's a good point. But still, it's not a lie about Jesus to say that the Roman soldiers witnessed it if they didn't.



I'm not saying it's OK. The authors would have been wrong to fabricate those details. But they might have done it anyway. That doesn't invalidate all the events of the story. It just reduces the scale.

However, if you're assessing believability of the story, you're making excellent points. If you're assessing the method used for authoring an accurate story, you're making excellent points.

The piece I think you're missing is that the authors likely would have a different threshold for what exaggerations are permitted depending on whether they are Jesus' words or actions.

If the writers of the NT fabricated anything, then who's to say they didn't fabricate the whole story. One lie in a courtroom today calls all previous testimony made by that lying witness into question, even gets it thrown out. I don't have to tell you how damaging one lie in the scriptures would be.

 

[F1fan]

That's a religious belief. I don't share it. It appeals to faith as a legitimate form of discovery and knowledge acquisition. It assumes a god exists, and then creates just-so stories to explain why it can't be detected in this therapeutic trial. You're probably familiar with Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage. This is what we are seeing now - reasons why this god is undetectable, yet actually there anyway. This is a special god that won't reveal itself when people are looking:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."
"Show me," you say.
I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll offer to spray-paint the dragon to make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?

Naturally that would be in the verifiable physical effects, which we can't distill from happenchance or luck or bad luck, or no effect at all.

To my mind the additional question is how otherwise ordinary mortals can sense the invisible dragon, and how do other ordinary people, like skeptics, develop this sense so they can verify for themselves these invisible dragons exist, and aren't just lore that some people end up believing in, and not sure why they believe it, they just do, and it is meaningful.

 

[nPeace]

You should ask the question to Pew Research and the medical experts who conducted the prayer studies, not me. I'm sure you can find some cockamamie excuse for why God operates the exact same way the laws of chance and odds do.

I don't have to come up with anything. It's been written there in the ancient documents, some 20 centuries ago... and beyond.
However, you are the one raising the subject, on a forum, so if you have no answer, it would seem you are choosing only what appeals to your interests.
Is that the case?

 

[F1fan]

I don't have to come up with anything. It's been written there in the ancient documents, some 20 centuries ago... and beyond.

An era when embellishment and exagerations were common writing techniques. Why believe in these stories in the 21st century when we have better rules for critical thought and skepticism? Just because it is a comfortable tradition of belief?

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Regardless of whether or not they had disobeyed God by eating the fruit from the tree eventually they would have died physically since all humans were created to be mortal.

Being able to die, does not mean they *had* to die.

Why do you think their immediate offspring, for the first several generations, had such long lifespans?

Because those offspring were genetically closer to the perfect lives that Adam & Eve lost.

Regaining perfection for humankind, is the main reason Jesus’ sacrifice is called a ransom. Matthew 20:28

See Ephesians 1:10

I’m going to address this idea of graves referring to spiritual death.

Where did you get such a concept?
And ‘Lazarus death was a spiritual death’? Never heard such an idea.
The context of John 11 dispels that.
People “weeping”? Lazarus being “laid” in a “tomb”? Come on now.

I’ll go deeper into this, later.

Take care.

 

[dybmh]

Yes, I am, but their objections aren't meaningful to me, just like their objections to abortion, also based in religious beliefs I don't share. When the objections are coming almost exclusively from believers, it tells you that they are manufactured by the religion. There's a good reason why don't atheists agree. They don't go to church, and so they aren't indoctrinated by teaching about gods and prayer, which appears to be necessary to hold such a position.

Please, scroll back in the conversation we are having. I think you have lost the context.

In summary and paraphrashing: You said that Christians do not distinguish between "My will be done" and "Thy will be done". You said that "My will be done" is prayer to Christians. And that's not true.

None of that is meaningful to an unbeliever. There is no such thing as witchcraft, and prayer doesn't work except as placebo. You seem to want me to get into their heads and see it from their perspective. When I do that, I see ideas I reject. What believers believe about prayer and witchcraft is irrelevant to what I believe and to what the science showed. The claim from Christianity is exactly what you called witchcraft. We are told that we can move mountains with just a mustard seed. That's no different from eye-of-newt witchcraft.

This has nothing to do with believing or not. This is the definition of prayer, and from the Christian defintion, and the defintion of others too, the study did not test prayer.

From that link: "Prayer that tests for a response from God in the way the intercessor requires would not be considered prayer at all because it requires no faith, leaves God no options, and is presumptuous regarding God's wisdom and plan. Where is faith if science can validate the power of prayer?"

Correct. "Prayer that tests for a response from God in the way the intercessor requires would not be considered prayer at all"

At all. No correspondence in any way.

That's a religious belief. I don't share it.

No it's a definition. Whether or not you share the definition is rather meaningless. The study didn't test for "prayer" as it is defined in Christianity. It tested for black magic per Aliester Crowley and many devotees of Left Hand Path practices, theology, and philosophy.

It [prayer] appeals to faith as a legitimate form of discovery and knowledge acquisition. It assumes a god exists...

All true.

and then creates just-so stories to explain why it can't be detected in this therapeutic trial.

False. As I posted earlier, this was defined in Matthew 6, that predates the study by over a 1000 years. So your claim is fully rebutted. This definition predates the study, and the objections were not created "just-so" to explain why it can't be detected.

You're probably familiar with Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage. This is what we are seeing now - reasons why this god is undetectable, yet actually there anyway. This is a special god that won't reveal itself when people are looking:

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."
"Show me," you say.
I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
"Where's the dragon?" you ask.
"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
You'll offer to spray-paint the dragon to make her visible.
"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?

It's not relelvant. Scientifically testing for anything requires that this "thing" is properly defined. Otherwise the results of the test don't communicate anything.

Drop a feather and a bowling ball from a ladder at the same time. Are you observing a fluctuation in the force of gravity, or air resistance relative to mass? It's pretty important to know what you're actually testing.

Did you ever see Mystery men, a spoof on wannabe superheroes? "Invisible Boy is a resident of Champion City who spent most of his adolescent life ignored even by his own father. Eventually he discovered that after years of being overlooked, he had developed the power of invisibility, but it only works as long as no one (including himself) is looking at him."

Irrelevant. The shoveler shoveled, that's the definition. Prayer is "God's will be done", flipping that to "My researcher's will be done", is not testing prayer.

 

[Thrillobyte]

The Christian creed: "Pray, pay, and obey."

 

[nPeace]

I define "God" in terms of how the scientific community defines "God". They are the ones doing the studies and tests. They are the ones who have concluded that a there is no supernatural being having any discernible effect on earth.

I'm not aware of this. When did the scientific community define "God". and carry out studies and tests, leading them to conclude that there is no supernatural being having any discernible effect on earth?

As far as I am aware, Science likes to distinguish the world it works in, the natural world, from the world it cannot work in, the supernatural. The natural world is also the material world — composed of atoms, atomic particles, radiations, and laws that describe how all of these are organized, work, and produce the phenomena we call the universe from quarks to quasars, from the incredibly small to the incredibly large beyond our imaginations. Outside this immense realm in which much remains to be learned, is a world closed to scientists. It is the realm of spirits, souls, and gods; a world that requires faith for its acceptance because, however much we might infer about the existence of a supernatural process or thing, we cannot demonstrate it by the tools of science. The supernatural is, by definition, beyond the natural or material world accessible to science. Source

Science investigates, seeks to understand, natural or material phenomena. If supernatural or non-material phenomena exist, if there is a non-material reality, it is outside the domain of science. This is why religious scientists can happily investigate the natural/materia world but still claim a belief in a god which cannot be investigated scientifically because it is supernatural, outside the natural/material world. Source

 

[nPeace]

Please, scroll back in the conversation we are having. I think you have lost the context.

In summary and paraphrashing: You said that Christians do not distinguish between "My will be done" and "Thy will be done". You said that "My will be done" is prayer to Christians. And that's not true.



This has nothing to do with believing or not. This is the definition of prayer, and from the Christian defintion, and the defintion of others too, the study did not test prayer.



Correct. "Prayer that tests for a response from God in the way the intercessor requires would not be considered prayer at all"

At all. No correspondence in any way.



No it's a definition. Whether or not you share the definition is rather meaningless. The study didn't test for "prayer" as it is defined in Christianity. It tested for black magic per Aliester Crowley and many devotees of Left Hand Path practices, theology, and philosophy.



All true.



False. As I posted earlier, this was defined in Matthew 6, that predates the study by over a 1000 years. So your claim is fully rebutted. This definition predates the study, and the objections were not created "just-so" to explain why it can't be detected.




It's not relelvant. Scientifically testing for anything requires that this "thing" is properly defined. Otherwise the results of the test don't communicate anything.

Drop a feather and a bowling ball from a ladder at the same time. Are you observing a fluctuation in the force of gravity, or air resistance relative to mass? It's pretty important to know what you're actually testing.



Irrelevant. The shoveler shoveled, that's the definition. Prayer is "God's will be done", flipping that to "My researcher's will be done", is not testing prayer.

Seems to me they are clamoring for pseudoscience, at this point. Desperation.

 

[Thrillobyte]

I don't have to come up with anything. It's been written there in the ancient documents, some 20 centuries ago... and beyond.
However, you are the one raising the subject, on a forum, so if you have no answer, it would seem you are choosing only what appeals to your interests.
Is that the case?

Look, I started the thread so I get to choose the topic. Responses in line with TOS should be about the topic. If the topic makes Christians uncomfortable then there are other threads they can visit. But while we're all on this topic, it isn't about prayers getting answered or not or if the Bible is a reliable source and the stories truthful. The topic is whether or not secular historians ( I have to use to word "secular" in all my posts because if I don't Christians jump on that to bring up Luke who they claim was a legitimate historian. He wasn't.) Anyway I have to use "secular" historians to eliminate Luke who had a vested interest in getting the Jesus story rolling.

So I posed the question to Windwalker THREE times if I recall correctly. Each time he sidestepped the question and got into all this esoteric New Age mumbo-jumbo but never dared try to answer my question which was:

Can you name one secular historian from the 1st century who mentions "Jesus the Christ" or Jesus anything that would identify him as Jesus the great rabbi son of God who died and caused a great earthquake, darkness at noon for 3 hours and zombie saints to rise from their graves?

And then he gets upset because I don't deal with a few New Age topics like "internal vs external" which don't have anything to do with the topic. Or maybe windwalker is just saying "You won't show me yours so I won't show you mine." Who knows?

 

[Thrillobyte]

a world closed to scientists. It is the realm of spirits, souls, and gods; a world that requires faith for its acceptance because, however much we might infer about the existence of a supernatural process or thing, we cannot demonstrate it by the tools of science. The supernatural is, by definition, beyond the natural or material world accessible to science. Source

And what hard evidence do you have such a realm exists?

 

[osgart]

I'm saying there is evidence the literal events of the Bible did happen. .. contrary to your claim.

Hadn't heard about this before, but I found it interesting. It says a lot.

Spoiler

In 2003, The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) argued that the inscriptions were forged at a much later date. In December 2004, Oded Golan was charged with 44 counts of forgery, fraud, and deception, including forgery of the Ossuary inscription. However, in an external expert report, dated September 2005, Wolfgang E. Krumbein's conclusions contradict those of the IAA stating "Our preliminary investigations cannot prove the authenticity of the three objects beyond any doubt. Doubtlessly the patina is continuous in many places throughout surface and lettering grooves in the case of ossuary and tablet. On the other hand a proof of forgery is not given by the experts nominated by the IAA.". The trial lasted seven years before Judge Aharon Farkash came to a verdict. On March 14, 2012, Golan was acquitted of the forgery charges but convicted of illegal trading in antiquities. The judge said this acquittal "does not mean that the inscription on the ossuary is authentic or that it was written 2,000 years ago". The ossuary was returned to Golan, who put it on public display. The Israeli Antiquities Authority has failed to offer any report explaining why it concluded the ossuary is a forgery. The lack of transparency with the IAA's findings have precluded international experts from giving their opinions on the authenticity of the ossuary.

The Bible is a collection of ancient documents.
What are the facts?

Are they historical?
Yes. No arguments have seriously challenged that fact.
True, there are debates on the question of how reliable is the Bible as an historical record? However, there is no good reason why one should accept those opinions, or one over the other. They don't know.

Are they accurate, reliable?
Yes. What has been discovered has not disagreed with what the Bible states.

People's debating something, does not make one side, or the other, right.
Often, evidence turn up later, and refutes beliefs and claim, as has happened numerous times with the evidence supporting the Bible.
Not sure if all these are accurate, but some are.
Bible critics have been proven wrong a thousand times, and in most cases this hasn’t humbled them or changed their opinion toward Scripture.

Isn't that how science works?

Christianity professes conviction from the Holy Spirit according to the Bible. The only way to know God in Christianity is through the Holy Spirit. That comes through hearing the word of God preached. According to the bible it becomes obvious to all who hear the word of God. For if they do not know God's truth no one could be yet held to a final judgment. According to Christianity all will know what they conscientiously reject or accept. Iow, they'll know the truth irrefutably, and reject it. Free will dictates that all must know the truth in order to accept or reject it. So those who reject the truth will know they reject the actual truth.

And that is the Bible.

So in conclusion conviction only comes through the Holy Spirit, and those who hear are without excuse because they know that they know that they know the truth and reject it.

All the evidence in the world won't matter without the Holy Spirit.

As an atheist I know no such truth. That is my honesty. I know the Bible salvation message accurately and still have no conviction of it's truth. So either Christianity is false, or the Holy Spirit has yet to convict me. Until I know it's true there is no free will choice.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, quite the contrary. It is amazing how the OT prophecies match who Baha'u'llah was, where He appeared, what He did on His mission, and what happened as the result of His coming, which is how I know those prophecies are accurate. They are so much on target that even if I had no other reason to believe that He was the promised messiah and the return of Christ, those prophecies would suffice.

That is far more likely reinterpretation after the fact. Christians have done the same thing. I have yet to see a Jesus prophecy that lives up to its claims. I am not going to wade through endless examples. You need to find your best example. If you want some guidelines on what it takes to be a valid prophecy this article can help you:

1. It must be accurate. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not accurate, because knowledge (and thus foreknowledge) excludes inaccurate statements. TLDR: It's true.
2. It must be in the Bible. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not in the Bible, because Biblical by definition foreknowledge can only come from the Bible itself, rather than modern reinterpretations of the text. TLDR: It's in plain words in the Bible.
3. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.
4. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened be true but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.
5. It must have been unknown. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of an educated guess based off contemporary knowledge, because foreknowledge requires a person to know a statement when it would have been impossible, outside of supernatural power, for that person to know it. TLDR: Ideas of the time don't count.

Biblical prophecies

There are numerous Biblical prophecies, some vaguely fulfilled, others strangely unfulfilled. Of course, like the Bible, the Quran also contains what its followers maintain are fulfilled prophesies. Christians tend to find these unconvincing or silly — which is coincidentally the attitude which...

rationalwiki.org

 

[Trailblazer]

Yes, I do, the god of Genesis and of Abraham as taught by Christianity. And once you've done that - ruled that god out - religion is toothless. That religion, if you believe it, holds the soul hostage. People succumb to it out of fear that they will be kept awake after death just to be tortured for mistakes mad before death. They worship that version of a god out of fear, "What if it's true?" Once you eliminate the possibility of that deity existing, the possibility of an afterlife is no longer a threat, since even if there is one and even if it is unpleasant, that outcome was always in your future.

I agree that once you have ruled out the god of Genesis and of Abraham as taught by Christianity the Christian religion is toothless, but that does not mean that religion is toothless, since Christianity is not the ONLY religion in the world.

I agree that the Christian religion, if you believe it, holds the soul hostage. You said: "They worship that version of a god out of fear, "What if it's true?" That just made me think of a Christian who posted a thread called Scared? on a Baha'i forum a few days ago. She is investigating the Baha'i Faith and seriously considering becoming a Baha'i, but she is afraid! She said that she has been a Christian her entire life, and she is having a lot of unexpected fear about declaring (which is what Baha'is do when they decide to join the Baha'i Faith). She said "I feel like it’s a lot of subconscious indoctrination but even thinking of anyone else as a Messenger worthy of following EXCEPT Jesus makes me feel like I’m going to be damned…"

I described it last year here. Thanks for asking. It was about a decade in Christianity for me.

Thanks for sharing your story. I read it and saved it in a Word document to refer to later. I might respond to some of it later when I have more time but I am kind of on the run now so I just want to reply to one thing that you said that jumped out at me.

You said: Some Christians have learned to compartmentalize their faith, and they can do science, for example, the same way an atheist would. But their god belief remains irrational, because it is believed by faith. #622

I do not consider it irrational to believe in God by faith, as long as faith is supported by evidence. The reason I do not consider it irrational is because there can NEVER be any proof of God’s existence, thus to expect proof in order to believe in God is irrational. Since we can never approach God, wherever He is located, and verify His existence, that means the only way that we could ever have proof that God exists is if God provided that proof.

There are two reasons that God doesn’t prove that He exists. The first reason is because God does not need our belief since God is fully self-sufficient and has no needs. He second reason that God does not prove He exists is because God wants our faith. If God proved He exists then we would no longer need faith because we would know for a fact that God exists. So it makes logical sense to me why there is no proof that God exists and that is why I believe on faith and evidence.

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

We must first believe that it is 'possible' for God to exist, and that requires faith since no man has ever seen God. Then we go looking for the evidence.
I believe that God will reward those who earnestly seek Him by helping them find the evidence they need to believe.

In case you are interested in the story of how and why I became a Baha'i, I posted it here:

Jesus Empty tomb narratives

Why would it be illogical to question that a woman had a baby without getting impregnated by a man? And it is "evident" that there was "direct" intervention of the Holy Spirit? And, it is an "established" fact? It is? But then God couldn't get a physical body to float off into space? And what...

www.religiousforums.com

And where you say, "reverted to logic and reason," I would say, "abandoned belief by faith." I never abandoned critical thinking. I set it aside provisionally to test the claims of a religion that called itself so absurd it must be true (Credo quia absurdum is Latin for "I believe because it is absurd").

I still do not understand why you would set aside critical thinking in order to test the claims of Christianity. Why would you even 'want' to believe in a religion that did not meet those standards? I guess at that time you had an emotional need to believe, which is why you said in post #622 "I believe that this is what predisposed me to investigate religion - psychological comfort.

I have long described tunneling back out of Christianity as being like a chick trying to hatch. It needs that sharp piece of beak called an egg tooth, without which, it presumably remains encased in shell. Critical thinking skills were my egg tooth. I don't know how one can escape that if one has completely silenced cognitive dissonance. And that's the state I see many people being in. I read what they write, and can see that they lack the egg tooth.

And they like it that way. They want that voice silenced, the one they have been told is Satan trying to steal their souls. "Not today, Satan!"

Frankly, I don't think that most Christians who are encased in that shell even think about critical thinking at all. It is not that they lack the skills, it is that they don't think to use them since they have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Church, and that tends to suspend all thinking and turn it into believing.

Yes, Christians are afraid of Satan, a being that Baha'is don't even believe exists.

 

[Windwalker]

I see it as a calculated gamble. Over centuries, science has explained more and more things that used to belong in the realm of religion. With some bumps in the road, science has won out over superstition, over and over again. It would seem to be reasonable to expect that to continue.

I would not say that seems reasonable to expect that to continue. On the contrary, while a new approach to something may yield great new benefits, it is in fact reasonable to assume it will reach a point of diminishing returns. In all great periods of advance in human history, there is the efficient phase, and then the deficient phase. That is what is reasonable to expect with the sciences, and what are already seeing. Take for instance what Kuhn said about paradigms: Paradigm shift - Wikipedia

But more than this, in dialectical thought, which is the basis of modern rational thought, you have a thesis followed by it's opposite or 'antithesis', through trying to reconcile these you have a synthesis, which forms the new thesis, which creates its new antithesis, which creates a new synthesis, and so on. This is how knowledge increases.

But there reaches a point where this maxes out. Where this process becomes deficient, and cannot spawn further advances in knowledge through dialectical processes. You begin to run into paradoxes which cannot be resolved with reason. In order to take the next major leap, you have to go beyond that system of understanding truth. Now you are 'transcending rationality', which is what I mean by speaking of the transrational.

It's like watching a rock roll down a hill. Half way down, we could argue about what will happen in the future. An assumption that it will continue to roll to the bottom of the hill seems like a good bet.

But this is upward in motion, not flowing down hill. And based upon history, it's a sure bet it will run its course and no longer be an efficient way of understanding reality. It's going to take a 'paradigm shift' to go further.

I'm not sure that is true. Take the nature of matter. Once a rock was seen as a solid lump. Then we came up with the idea of atoms, which were seen as little lumps of matter with smaller lumps in orbit around them, like a miniature solar system. Then we found that the nucleus of the atom could be broken down into smaller parts and the forces that hold them together could be identified and measured. Now we have even smaller components to examine and quantum theories to describe how they behave. It does seem as if we are approaching some kind of limit in what we can discover, where everything is seen as some form of energy.

Well, you are touching on what I am saying will eventually run its course in explanitory powers. It's sort of like a long strange route to come back to what we saw as children that it's "all magical", except not seen through the eyes of a prerational, child. It's sort of a full circle, but with eyes wide opened, not just a head full of nothing.

The question of how life diverged into different forms is now well explained.

Only at a certain level, but yes. I think we can be assured that evolution is real. It's the larger questions of 'why' that takes on a different way of looking at the world than through the analytic empiric eyes. It's far more mediative in nature, than logical.

And I have no idea what "transrational" might mean. Right-wing people will probably try to stop it being taught in schools, thinking it's related to trans-sexuality.

The transrational is defined as: "Beyond the rational; of a scope superseding yet including the rational." Rationality is not thrown out, or we operate in the prerational domain, but rather it is superseded into a new higher, paradoxical type of mind that sees in terms of wholes, or systems and systems of systems, rather than linear lines of causality. In other words, more complexity runs rationality to its limits.

 

[Trailblazer]

That is far more likely reinterpretation after the fact. Christians have done the same thing. I have yet to see a Jesus prophecy that lives up to its claims. I am not going to wade through endless examples. You need to find your best example. If you want some guidelines on what it takes to be a valid prophecy this article can help you:

1. It must be accurate. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not accurate, because knowledge (and thus foreknowledge) excludes inaccurate statements. TLDR: It's true.
2. It must be in the Bible. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it is not in the Bible, because Biblical by definition foreknowledge can only come from the Bible itself, rather than modern reinterpretations of the text. TLDR: It's in plain words in the Bible.
3. It must be precise and unambiguous. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if meaningless philosophical musings or multiple possible ideas could fulfill the foreknowledge, because ambiguity prevents one from knowing whether the foreknowledge was intentional rather than accidental. TLDR: Vague "predictions" don't count.
4. It must be improbable. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of a pure guess, because foreknowledge requires a person to actually know something true, while a correct guess doesn't mean that the guesser knows anything. This also excludes contemporary beliefs that happened be true but were believed to be true without solid evidence. TLDR: Lucky guesses don't count.
5. It must have been unknown. A statement cannot be Biblical foreknowledge if it reasonably could be the result of an educated guess based off contemporary knowledge, because foreknowledge requires a person to know a statement when it would have been impossible, outside of supernatural power, for that person to know it. TLDR: Ideas of the time don't count.

Biblical prophecies

There are numerous Biblical prophecies, some vaguely fulfilled, others strangely unfulfilled. Of course, like the Bible, the Quran also contains what its followers maintain are fulfilled prophesies. Christians tend to find these unconvincing or silly — which is coincidentally the attitude which...

rationalwiki.org

It must be 1-5 for you but it does not have to be for me. For me those prophecies were either fulfilled by the coming of Baha'u'llah or they were not.
I know how they were fulfilled by Baha'u'llah because I know Baha'i history. That is the key that unlocks the door.

 

[Trailblazer]

Being able to die, does not mean they *had* to die.

but being mortal means that they *had* to die since everything that is mortal has to die.

What does mortal being mean?

adjective. If you refer to the fact that people are mortal, you mean that they have to die and cannot live forever. A man is deliberately designed to be mortal. He grows, he ages, and he dies.

Mortal definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary​

 

[Subduction Zone]

It must be 1-5 for you but it does not have to be for me. For me those prophecies were either fulfilled by the coming of Baha'u'llah or they were not.
I know how they were fulfilled by Baha'u'llah because I know Baha'i history. That is the key that unlocks the door.

What are your standards? Those are rather rational ones. If you cannot justify your standards, those do have justification for them as part of listing what they are, then you do not have any prophecies that a rational person would accept.


So why would you attempt to convince those that can only reason poorly? They probably already have their own gods and your poor reasoning is less likely to convince them than rational reasoning would be and the odds of that happening are rather low. It appears that you are setting yourself up for failure.

 

[dybmh]

The Christian creed: "Pray, pay, and obey."

The critics creed: "Deny everything, admit nothing, demand evidence, make outrageous counter accusations."