All right, so the post I've been writing for like an hour decided to disappear on me after hitting some wonky combination of keys. I'll make it short.
C.S. lewis on miracles. http://www.amazon.co...s/dp/0060653019
As for court evidence, see hhttp://www.amazon.com/Miracles-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060653019ttp://coldcasechristianity.com/
Hume: http://www.probe.org...0597&ct=8162495
https://www.youtube....1&v=oJ2yx9e-PyU
https://www.youtube....h?v=dnYvkeomwM0
https://www.youtube....=em-uploademail
This is your topic, but for the sake of any future discussions with me you might have in this thread, I'd prefer if you'd stick to posting arguments
clearly, succinctly, and most importantly in your own words; it's really tiring (and I honestly don't have the time for it) to hash through entire books and hour-long YouTube videos without Very Good Reason.
There are many historical examples that miracles have occurred.
Humor me.
All you have done is dismiss them and set up the evidence so that a miracle cannot occur.
This is half right. I do dismiss miracles. But saying that I've "set up the evidence so that a miracle cannot occur" mischaracterizes my argument. If it wasn't clear, I should point out that I
believe that gods and miracles are possibilities, if vanishingly improbable.Miracles are, by definition, events that are without precedent (a nod to your video of Lennox). It follows that unprecedented evidence must be provided for such events that make them more rational to believe
in lieu of explanations that do not break continuity of experience.
For example, we do not permit as likely the possibility that a knife could commit murder by floating up to stab its victim. Even if multiple innocent, sane eyewitnesses were present at the scene and said the same thing, it is rational, sane for those who were not at the scene to question if a floating knife actually committed murder.
This ties in to a point about improbability that one of your links brought up. That a thing is unlikely does not make it irrational to believe. This is true, and I admit that I had not considered this before.
Suppose we have the two following hypothetical scenarios:
1. A newscaster gives a very specific lottery number that was chosen out of millions.
2. (Let's up the ante!) A series of writings says that a man was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead after three days, then rose into heaven.
These are superficially similar. Faith is used to believe the newscaster as well as the writings. Both accounts describe highly improbable events. But what needs to be considered is the
context of that improbability.
1. The lottery number is picked out of a pool of millions of lottery numbers. While the individual combination is extremely unlikely, the concept of
an arbitrary lottery number being drawn is exceedingly mundane. The probability per draw of
some number in the set of all drawable numbers, all told, is 1. The specific number, though one in millions, falls under the category of
some number.
2. Other than accounts of people resuscitating after a brief period of (death? unconsciousness?), the idea of the dead miraculously returning to life is exceedingly rare in practice. The same could be said for, oh, turning water into wine, or ascending into heaven, or walking on water, or cursing fig trees, or being the Son of God. These things are not typically seen in any kind of everyday or empirical capacity. Unlike with the draw, there is no guarantee that any of these events is even a possibility.
In terms of rationality, the miracles cited in #2 are a step behind the lottery draw in that they fall outside the realm of things that physics and biology have been mostly (exclusively?) observed to allow. Naturally, there are other factors involved in the believability of each of these, but I think this is enough to begin a discussion for now.
Reject all possiblities of evidence that mirracles can occur and then conclude none have.
To reiterate, I have said that I find it unlikely that miracles have occurred and more rational to believe that there is another explanation.
This does not mean that miracles are rejected as possibilities. The conclusion that "not-miracle" is the explanation for a given event is both
tentative (not absolutely certain) and
evidenced by the vast majority of events being "not-miracle."
This is not evidence for Atheism or rational.
In short, you are correct that
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; however,
in the context of theistic claims, where God or the gods are or have been involved in world affairs, it is within reason to believe in absence of the gods where events have shown no evidence of doing anything but following the usual order of things. Of course, one could claim that the gods ordained everyday/empirical experience as well, but I do not think there is any way to prove or disprove this.
Given atheism, what is wrong with suffering? Natural selection, that should not bother you.
"Bother," "value," "should," "wrong." These are all concepts belonging to subjective evaluations and are not necessarily based on rationality. They start with what is ultimately an arbitrary preference. Suffering shouldn't bother me, you say. But it does. The "ought" here comes from the "is" of preference first, and
after the "is" of circumstance.
Edited by Vardarac, 23 March 2014 - 07:49 AM.
LongeCity
