Fine-Tuning Argument vs Argument From Miracles

[James Brown]

Here's a character some of you may know. You may have seen his picture. There have been books written about his life and adventures.

Is he real? Is he fictional? Does he represent something that is real? Does he embody principles that are real?

When was he born? Where did he live? Did he die, or does he still live? Or did he die and become alive again?

Are people inspired by his principles to do brave and noble things? If I told you that this man instructed me to sacrifice my life for the better of humanity, would that make him more legitimate? What if I told you that this man instructed me to sacrifice your life for the better of humanity, would that have the same effect?

But most importantly, is he real?

 

[Atheos]

Good point Skepticalbip. I don't have to do Jack Shit. There's no reason to waste any more time trying to identify the historical Jesus than there is to identify the historical Paul Bunyan.

Aaaaaaaaaand we're back to these useless walls of text.

I for one would be happy if Jesus Mythers packed up their conspiracy theories and went home.

Maybe I'll start a thread.

Topic : Jesus Mythers - if you truly disbelieve why do you need a proof that Jesus existed?

I'm certain that a lot of believers in myths would be very happy if everyone would just quit pointing out that they believe in myths. And the fact is that if they'd just leave their myths where they belong and quit using them to influence the legislative process, jimmy the tax laws and subvert the life and happiness of people who don't buy their silly nonsense nobody would be arguing the point.

But here we are. It's not fringe-level conspiracy theorizing to consider the very real possibility that the originators of Christianity did the same thing that the remaining thousands of originators of religious traditions did -- made up stories about their god/gods. To me it's just common sense. Believing something just because millions of other people do is really senseless in my opinion. Could millions of Mormons be wrong? Yes. Ditto christians in general.

 

[abaddon]

... I want to get to Heaven even if it's only a 60% or 50% probability))). I plead guilty of wanting my "ticket to Paradise" by whatever easy route there is to it, if there happens to be an easy route.

Why not?

Because you could focus on a change in attitude about dying instead. Coming to terms with the fact of death is the surer bet. Where seeking a miracle-working spirit to grant a wish for immortality is completely hare-brained.

Personally I think a life lived religiously can be a great life. If it's a life-centric spirituality and not a means to short-circuit a person's authenticity. Death can motivate a well-lived life. Whereas the hope for an afterlife is a diversion from life.

The simple case for salvation-by-faith-alone as a free gift:

1. Jesus did the miracle acts, showing power, even conquering death, and thus the possibility of eternal life. We have the fact of the evidence reporting this, telling us that he had this power.

People make stories like this because reality seems so daunting that they turn to fantasy.

IMV there'd be some truth to the tales... if they were metaphors about an internal self-transformation. There is a quite-possible transcendence of the terror of death, and it is a much better option than hoping to transcend reality.

If self-transcendence was the message (for example, if the christ was a symbol of a less fearful and less egocentric potentiality within everyone), then there'd be some value in these books.

... the Luke writer is telling us the salvation-by-faith principle with this text [and] both the epistles of Paul and the Gospel of John tell us many times that we can be saved just by believing...

Do you really believe or are you just doing a Pascal's wager? I hope you will carefully think about the critiques of that wager before taking it. I mean one could be authentic instead, even if the cost is he doesn't get to feel immortal.

3. The salvation-by-faith-alone principle is not a man-made teaching... the only explanation for it has to be that Jesus must have taught it, by saying things like "Your faith has saved you."

The mythmaker hoped goodness could happen "in the heart" rather than be a display people make to earn brownie points. He hoped they'd be good from the heart. So he figured that change can happen by taking up faith.

The problem is that salvation-by-faith is still behavior-focused. People think "if I take up this belief, that will cause the hoped-for miracle to happen". That's still ritualized behavior. The person now must go through motions to display his belief.

Nor what traditional religion imposes onto us, or what our religious instincts demand, nor any sermons requiring "Sunday attendance, or donations to the poor, not masturbating, maybe reading a bit of actual history" and other demands.

Requiring faith is a demand too.

So yes, I'll take my "ticket to Paradise" -- thank you very much.

Here on earth is where you will or won't experience any variety of "paradise". And that is entirely a matter of attitude; and not of wish-granting spirits and an escape into another world.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Whether a miracle claim is true depends on the evidence in each case, not on --

-- not on prejudice or dogma that no miracles are ever possible.

The only evidence against the MIRACLES OF JESUS is the dogmatic premise that miracles cannot happen.

Otherwise, all the evidence indicates that these events did happen.

The only evidence against anal probing aliens abducting people and . . .

There is very good evidence that something unusual did happen. It's a reasonable dispute as to exactly what did happen. But there is evidence about it, and all the evidence is that the miracle acts did happen. There is no evidence from the time of the event -- from the 1st century -- saying that it did not happen.

Whereas, by contrast, we have evidence that certain claimed miracles from that period of history DID NOT happen -- or, it can be shown that there is a LACK of any evidence for claimed miracles, based on the written record from that time. This distinguishes the miracles of Jesus from all the other miracle claims or miracle legends of the ancient world.

Also by contrast, there is much evidence that reported alien abductions did not happen. However, they can't all be disproved. Maybe some of these events did happen. You don't refute the Jesus miracles by tossing in other claims of crazy things that happened. Each claim has to be investigated, to judge in each case if it's credible or not.

So to just say "Well what about this goofy claim, or that!" is no way to refute this particular claim about what happened in the 1st century. Some dubious claims are true, and others are false. Probably many of them are partly true. They're not all in the same category. We can believe some and not others, depending on the evidence.

The only evidence against anal probing aliens abducting people and dragging them into their flying saucer for examination is the "dogmatic premise" that UFOs aren't real.

No, that's not the only evidence against those claims. In some cases the claims have been debunked. And where it was investigated and could not be debunked, and there was enough evidence, maybe the claim is true. In some cases someone might have been abducted, but they added extra details from their imagination, or they might have been drugged and suffered hallucinations, so that much of their report is unreliable.

Nothing is solved by having a religion which dictates that certain claims are always automatically false regardless of evidence that they are true. So, let's have the evidence in a case that is convincing. If there is no such case, then it's not analogous to the case of Jesus the miracle-worker, for which there is convincing evidence such as we have for other historical events.

ETA:
There are a hell of a lot of people who have attested to have been abducted and probed by aliens while . . .

Maybe the claim is true in cases where there's good evidence. Show us the example -- let's see the evidence, including any evidence claiming to debunk it. If there's more than one source debunking it, then it's much more doubtful. There's NO evidence from the 1st century debunking the Jesus miracle acts, like there's evidence or testimony debunking many paranormal claims.

. . . while there is no one who attested to have actually seen Jesus perform a miracle, . . .

Wrong -- there were probably some who attested to having seen it. It's true that the sources surviving to our time (the authors) don't claim to have seen it, just as our sources for history don't claim to have seen Alexander the Great and millions of other ancient figures of history. We have sources/authors telling us about historical figures they never saw do anything. In fact, 99% of our (ancient) historical figures were not seen directly by the writers who tell us about them.

That doesn't mean those persons in history did not do the things described in our sources. They probably did do most of what is described. To believe someone in history did something doesn't require that we have a source/writer claiming to have seen it directly. If that is required, then 99% of our (ancient) history events have to be tossed out as fiction.

. . . no one who attested to have actually seen Jesus perform a miracle, only those who claimed that others had claimed it was so.

That's what 99% of our (ancient) historical events are based on. Virtually all our sources for those events are writers who did not see it themselves but are reporting what others saw or claimed to have seen.

So the Gospel accounts are the same as almost all our sources for ancient history, reporting to us what was known or believed to have happened, according to all the existing information available to them, from written and oral accounts.

ALL the sources contain fact and fiction, and none can be totally relied upon. But all must be accepted as sources to tell us what happened, and we can separate the fact from fiction, using reason and critical judgment. And when we separate fact from fiction, there is only one reason to reject the Jesus miracle acts or put them in the fiction category, and that is the dogmatic premise that those events could not have happened because they're impossible regardless of any evidence. Except for this premise, there is no evidence against the Jesus miracles.

Although, once again, the multiplying the fish and loaves is problematic because it resembles too closely the similar story in II Kings 4:42-44. So this is one piece of evidence to cast doubt on one of the reported Jesus miracle acts. Other than this, there is no evidence against the Jesus miracle acts as being real historical events.

 

[DBT]

''...there is no evidence against the Jesus miracle acts as being real historical events.''

As there is neither evidence for or against the Jesus Miracles, there is no reason to believe they happened as described by anonymous authors writing about what they had heard decades later.

 

[bilby]

Whether a claim is true depends on the evidence.

BY DEFINITION, a claim is only a miracle claim if it describes something that the evidence suggests is false, but which happened anyway. That's how you distinguish a miracle claim from a mundane claim. If I claimed to have seen a man walk on the beach, that's just a claim. But if I claimed to have seen a man walk on water, then that's a miracle claim - because we all know from observation that this is something that doesn't happen.

As soon as you call a claim a miracle, you are defining it as contrary to evidence.

 

[Lion IRC]

miracle
/ˈmɪrək(ə)l/

noun
- an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

I don't see anything in that definition which says... "the evidence suggests is false...contrary to evidence"

 

[DBT]

miracle
/ˈmɪrək(ə)l/

noun
- an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

I don't see anything in that definition which says... "the evidence suggests is false...contrary to evidence"

It's the absence of evidence where evidence should be found that is the problem.

 

[Atheos]

Argument by Websters is poor argumentation indeed. An individual or team attempts to nail down a definition and no sooner is that definition set in stone than common usage wanders off in some other direction.

From my perspective the word "miracle" is the same as the word "unicorn." It describes something that does not exist. Nearly everyone knows what a unicorn is but nobody has ever produced one. And it's the same thing with miracles. One only hears stories about miracles, one never actually finds testable evidence of them.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's an inconvenient truth for those who wish to cling to the belief that there really was a Jesus who performed great miracles. If there was a Jesus (and I'm not convinced that story wasn't made from whole cloth either) and that Jesus wanted people to believe because he performed miracles, and if he had half a brain he would have known that every miracle he performed in these lame stories was pointless. He might as well have created an ice sculpture in mid July in rural Podunk Alabama. Maybe a few people got to see it before it melted but all the evidence ... all of it ... would be gone quickly.

He could have actually moved a mountain. Said so himself according to the stories. Now there's some evidence people could examine for all time. Instead of cursing a fig tree he could have turned it into a tree made of solid unobtainium that could never be damaged or moved so that anyone who ever wanted to investigate for themselves could examine the evidence first hand instead of having to rely on 1000th-hand reports from people who have no more reason to believe these cockamamie stories than nonsense about a sleigh-riding jolly old fat man living in an invisible workshop at the north pole.

But no. Instead he (supposedly) healed people. Walked on water. Levitated off into the sky, never to be seen again. And left only the worst possible "evidence" - oral testimony. The same evidence we have for every other god-myth that has ever existed, every vampire, every Sasquatch, every alien abduction, every guy who wakes up in a bathtub without his kidneys and every spaceship hiding in a comet.

People lie. Sometimes lots of people believe the lies, live their lives based on these lies. Write them down and venerate the writings as scripture. Has happened countless thousands of times over the course of human history.

But nobody actually walks on water, heals blindness with a mere touch or actually levitates unassisted into outer space. Adults have no business believing stories like this. Yet here we are.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I'm pretty certain all the gospel magic has been credibly posted and peer reviewed in the appropriate scientific journals. The consensus seems to be that Jesus was either from Krypton or possibly descended from the the lineage of Mighty Mouse and Superman. The miracle is that he was able to perform these feats of derring-do without a cape. Flying around Jerusalem without a cape is a miracle, I'm sorry. It just doesn't happen so it must be true.

And there is no mention of either reindeer or sleighs in the tales so we can know that he didn't use magic like Santa uses. And those tens of millions of Santa accounts, all those presents miraculously appearing, where's the scientific refutation about all that? Where's the evidence that this can't happen?

 

[bilby]

miracle
/ˈmɪrək(ə)l/

noun
- an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

I don't see anything in that definition which says... "the evidence suggests is false...contrary to evidence"

What do you imagine makes a 'natural or scientific law', if not evidence?

 

[Lion IRC]

Argument by Websters is poor argumentation indeed. An individual or team attempts to nail down a definition and no sooner is that definition set in stone than common usage wanders off in some other direction.

bilby was the one who used the term..."by definition".
I'm happy to oblige.

Whether a claim is true depends on the evidence.

BY DEFINITION, a claim is only a miracle claim if it describes something that the evidence suggests is false, but which happened anyway. That's how you distinguish a miracle claim from a mundane claim. If I claimed to have seen a man walk on the beach, that's just a claim. But if I claimed to have seen a man walk on water, then that's a miracle claim - because we all know from observation that this is something that doesn't happen.

As soon as you call a claim a miracle, you are defining it as contrary to evidence.

miracle
/ˈmɪrək(ə)l/

noun
- an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

I don't see anything in that definition which says... "the evidence suggests is false...contrary to evidence"

What do you imagine makes a 'natural or scientific law', if not evidence?

I don't assert that God's ability to do things we can't violates "natural law".
Show a caveman a cigarette lighter and they think it's supernatural... "a miracle".

"The ancient Mesopotamians had no distinction between rational science and magic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(supernatural)

 

[skepticalbip]

I don't assert that God's ability to do things we can't violates "natural law".
Show a caveman a cigarette lighter and they think it's supernatural... "a miracle".

"The ancient Mesopotamians had no distinction between rational science and magic."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(supernatural)

That is a strange argument. Are you claiming that Jesus was a time traveler or an extraterrestrial alien using technology unknown to the people at the time (that doesn't violate natural law) so he wasn't a divine being? Or are you suggesting that Jesus was like the many fakirs in India that use trickery to fool the people and make them believe they possess magic powers?

 

[Atheos]

bilby was the one who used the term..."by definition".
I'm happy to oblige.

This is a red herring and is consistent with a pattern I've observed in every thread in which I've read your responses or engaged in discussion with you. I cannot remember ever seeing you deal with the main point anyone makes. As an example you removed everything from my post that you quoted except for the least significant thing I said. Here's the real meat of my post once again:

I've said this before and I'll say it again. It's an inconvenient truth for those who wish to cling to the belief that there really was a Jesus who performed great miracles. If there was a Jesus (and I'm not convinced that story wasn't made from whole cloth either) and that Jesus wanted people to believe because he performed miracles, and if he had half a brain he would have known that every miracle he performed in these lame stories was pointless. He might as well have created an ice sculpture in mid July in rural Podunk Alabama. Maybe a few people got to see it before it melted but all the evidence ... all of it ... would be gone quickly.

He could have actually moved a mountain. Said so himself according to the stories. Now there's some evidence people could examine for all time. Instead of cursing a fig tree he could have turned it into a tree made of solid unobtainium that could never be damaged or moved so that anyone who ever wanted to investigate for themselves could examine the evidence first hand instead of having to rely on 1000th-hand reports from people who have no more reason to believe these cockamamie stories than nonsense about a sleigh-riding jolly old fat man living in an invisible workshop at the north pole.

But no. Instead he (supposedly) healed people. Walked on water. Levitated off into the sky, never to be seen again. And left only the worst possible "evidence" - oral testimony. The same evidence we have for every other god-myth that has ever existed, every vampire, every Sasquatch, every alien abduction, every guy who wakes up in a bathtub without his kidneys and every spaceship hiding in a comet.

People lie. Sometimes lots of people believe the lies, live their lives based on these lies. Write them down and venerate the writings as scripture. Has happened countless thousands of times over the course of human history.

But nobody actually walks on water, heals blindness with a mere touch or actually levitates unassisted into outer space. Adults have no business believing stories like this. Yet here we are.

I could care less about the "argument by definition" crap and for sake of argument I'll gladly cede that you won the day on it. Bravo. Now try tackling a real problem with the miracle narratives for once.

 

[Lion IRC]

OK.
Lets start with three simple points to check if its worth continuing the dialogue.

1. Not all miracle claims are demonstrably untrue? Agreed?
2. Not all miracles are not impossible? Agreed?
3. Some things considered miraculous in ancient times are now understood as natural? Agreed?

 

[atrib]

bilby was the one who used the term..."by definition".
I'm happy to oblige.

Whether a claim is true depends on the evidence.

BY DEFINITION, a claim is only a miracle claim if it describes something that the evidence suggests is false, but which happened anyway. That's how you distinguish a miracle claim from a mundane claim. If I claimed to have seen a man walk on the beach, that's just a claim. But if I claimed to have seen a man walk on water, then that's a miracle claim - because we all know from observation that this is something that doesn't happen.

As soon as you call a claim a miracle, you are defining it as contrary to evidence.

miracle
/ˈmɪrək(ə)l/

noun
- an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

I don't see anything in that definition which says... "the evidence suggests is false...contrary to evidence"

What do you imagine makes a 'natural or scientific law', if not evidence?

I don't assert that God's ability to do things we can't violates "natural law".
Show a caveman a cigarette lighter and they think it's supernatural... "a miracle".

Agreed. It is possible that a universe creating god (if it exists) possesses technology that would appear to violate natural law to us relatively unsophisticated humans. So what? How do you use this supposition to support the assertion that a corpse was seemingly miraculously resurrected and then flown off into space, seemingly without the aid of any technological device?

 

[atrib]

OK.
Lets start with three simple points to check if its worth continuing the dialogue.

1. Not all miracle claims are demonstrably untrue? Agreed?
2. Not all miracles are not impossible? Agreed?
3. Some things considered miraculous in ancient times are now understood as natural? Agreed?

Why do we have to play these games with questions and definitions? Why not just present the evidence for God's existence and be done with it? I know why. The games are necessary to divert our attention from the fact that no good evidence is available to support the existence of Biblegod. Just as there is no good evidence for the resurrection of someone named Jesus.

 

[bilby]

OK.
Lets start with three simple points to check if its worth continuing the dialogue.

1. Not all miracle claims are demonstrably untrue? Agreed?
2. Not all miracles are not impossible? Agreed?
3. Some things considered miraculous in ancient times are now understood as natural? Agreed?

Why do we have to play these games with questions and definitions? Why not just present the evidence for God's existence and be done with it? I know why. The games are necessary to divert our attention from the fact that no good evidence is available to support the existence of Biblegod. Just as there is no good evidence for the resurrection of someone named Jesus.

Yup.

Adding together all of the evidence for Christian beliefs gets you a total collection of evidence no better than the evidence for any other fictional work.

1) It's in a book; and
2) Lots of people think highly of it.

If it were a collection of trivial and mundane claims, that might be sufficient to at least suspend disbelief. But then, if it were a collection of trivial and mundane claims, we wouldn't really care. Some guy lived in the Middle East in the first century? Sure, why not. Lots of guys lived there. But if you want to claim that his life, teachings, and actions are somehow relevant to people in the 21st century, you're going to need more evidence for his existence than we have for Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, or Tony Stark, before you're going to persuade me to donate ten percent of my income to your organisation.

 

[skepticalbip]

OK.
Lets start with three simple points to check if its worth continuing the dialogue.

1. Not all miracle claims are demonstrably untrue? Agreed?

You are shifting the burden of proof. The burden is on the one making the claim.
Example: I could claim that I had a pet invisible dragon when I was a kid... you can not demonstrably prove it is untrue.

2. Not all miracles are not impossible? Agreed?

Which 'miracles' are you talking about? If you mean Jesus' miracle claims then it isn't possible that a Jew at that time walked on water, turned water into wine, fed 5,000 with a couple fish and loaves of bread and had much more left over than he started with, etc. as described in the Bible. Now if you want to claim that the stories were written describing the feats of an extraterrestrial alien using technology that people of the time didn't understand then you may have a point, a rather silly point but still a point. But then you need to prove that there was an extraterrestrial visitation by a highly technically advanced civilization before your point would have any significance.

3. Some things considered miraculous in ancient times are now understood as natural? Agreed?

Agreed.

 

[atrib]

OK.
Lets start with three simple points to check if its worth continuing the dialogue.

1. Not all miracle claims are demonstrably untrue? Agreed?
2. Not all miracles are not impossible? Agreed?
3. Some things considered miraculous in ancient times are now understood as natural? Agreed?

Why do we have to play these games with questions and definitions? Why not just present the evidence for God's existence and be done with it? I know why. The games are necessary to divert our attention from the fact that no good evidence is available to support the existence of Biblegod. Just as there is no good evidence for the resurrection of someone named Jesus.

Yup.

Adding together all of the evidence for Christian beliefs gets you a total collection of evidence no better than the evidence for any other fictional work.

1) It's in a book; and
2) Lots of people think highly of it.

If it were a collection of trivial and mundane claims, that might be sufficient to at least suspend disbelief. But then, if it were a collection of trivial and mundane claims, we wouldn't really care. Some guy lived in the Middle East in the first century? Sure, why not. Lots of guys lived there. But if you want to claim that his life, teachings, and actions are somehow relevant to people in the 21st century, you're going to need more evidence for his existence than we have for Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, or Tony Stark, before you're going to persuade me to donate ten percent of my income to your organisation.

Its all about the mystery. Without the mystery, its just a bunch of deluded people talking to their imaginary friends, which everyone would agree is creepy, and a waste of time.