Some drivel today from theologian Alister McGrath about Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. It’s the same old vapid nonsense, refuted numerous times in the reality-based blogs such as Pharyngula, so I’m not going to bother to deconstruct the silly arguments again. (And you’ll see numerous people in the comments to the post, making the points anyway.) But one sentence stood out, which is saying something considering the dopey arguments presented throughout the article. It was this piece in the final paragraph, where he criticized Dawkins for “saying something more loudly and confidently, while ignoring or trivializing counter-evidence”. He followed that with:
For the gullible and credulous, it is the confidence with which something is said that persuades, rather than the evidence offered in its support.
Well yeah! But that describes exactly how religious fairy tales have been presented throughout the ages, and the sheep who believe them without a shred of evidence.
Mr. McGrath, I present two characters you should be familiar with:
Who you calling gullible and credulous?
...refuted numerous times in the reality-based blogs such as Pharyngula...
Bitch please. Peezee's knowledge of the philosophical arguments for theism is as pedestrian as Dawkins'
Posted by: Robert O'Brien | February 05, 2007 at 02:19 PM
Mr. O'Brien:
Strangely, I find that this quote by McGrath applies so well to your hit and run:
Unfortunately for you, I’m neither gullible nor credulous. Thanks for playing though.
Posted by: Skeptico | February 05, 2007 at 02:51 PM
Point made long ago: All the philosophical and theological arguments made about God are moot until evidence of its existence comes in.
Of course, most try to dodge that by repeatedly ad-hocking until there's nothing distinguishing God's existence from nonexistence.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | February 05, 2007 at 04:52 PM
If anyone is "the pot calling the kettle black" it's Dawkins. Everything he accuses religion of being...he is. All Alister is doing is pointing this obvious truth out.
Posted by: barney | February 11, 2007 at 07:35 AM
Evidence, barney?
Posted by: Bronze Dog | February 11, 2007 at 07:55 AM
Yes, barney - examples please.
Posted by: Skeptico | February 11, 2007 at 08:36 AM
Barney doesn't need examples, he has faith. Jeez, you skeptics and your evidence....
I mean, someone who isn't completely versed in every possible version of unicorn mythology and who won't refute every single aspect couldn't possibly talk about their non-existence could they? Therefore they are just as bad as someone who believes they do exist.
You skeptics are sooo stoopid.
Posted by: Jimmy_Blue | February 11, 2007 at 09:27 AM
Well, I guess barney has nothing to back up his claim. What a surprise.
In a related matter, Richard Dawkins replies to Alister McGrath in today’s Times.
Posted by: Skeptico | February 14, 2007 at 11:01 AM
It's amazing how atheists carrying on claiming that religious belief is based on no evidence, despite the obvious fact that their claim is based on no evidence.
Christian religious belief isn't based on no evidence; it's based on all sorts of different kinds of evidence. To name three:
(1) There's a world. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
(2) Jesus, who looks as much like God becoming human as it is possible to look, rose from the dead. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
(3) People all over the world and all throughout history, nearly all of them perfectly sane and some of them among the greatest geniuses who have ever lived (Pascal, St Augustine, Milton, Gandhi, Mohammed, Newton, Constantine...), have claimed to experience the divine in ways which certainly differ from one religion to another, but also show a great deal of overlap and convergence. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
Sounds like a good case to me. :)
Posted by: Tim Chappell | February 16, 2007 at 03:00 AM
Thanks for the link to Dawkins' reply to McGrath.
Whew, can't people talk about these things without getting abusive?
Seems a bit rich for Dawkins to accuse McGrath of building a career on criticising Dawkins. Where has Dawkins donated all the money he's made out of criticising theism?
Apart from that rather wild accusation, it's hard to see much substance in Dawkins' letter. As McGrath rightly says, this is just aggressive polemical bullying.
It's a shame, because these things matter, and it would be good to talk about them without resorting to mere abuse.
Posted by: Tim Chappell | February 16, 2007 at 03:08 AM
It's amazing how atheists carrying on claiming that religious belief is based on no evidence, despite the obvious fact that their claim is based on no evidence.
Atheism is not a reigious belief. It is not a belief system at all. However, you have hit the nail on the head. Atheism is based on "no evidence". It is based on not believing in something that has no evidence to support it.
Christian religious belief isn't based on no evidence; it's based on all sorts of different kinds of evidence. To name three:
(1) There's a world. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
Atheism doesn't attempt to explain anything at all. Having to invoke a supernatural being for the formation of the world seems like an added complication. I am quite happy with the Big Bang theory, for which there is plenty of evidence.
(2) Jesus, who looks as much like God becoming human as it is possible to look, rose from the dead. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
As a matter of fact, there is no evidence that Jesus even existed. All we have to go on is a book written decades after his supposed death. Reliable Jewish-Roman scribes do not record anything about him, apart from a widely acknowledged fake addition to the writing of Josephus. The Bible says Jesus rose from the dead, but so what? George Adamski wrote books saying how he travelled to distant planets. Jo Rowling writes books about a boy wizard who battles evil. Just because an ancient book says something is not evidence that it is true. Again, atheisnm does not need to explain anything.
(3) People all over the world and all throughout history, nearly all of them perfectly sane and some of them among the greatest geniuses who have ever lived (Pascal, St Augustine, Milton, Gandhi, Mohammed, Newton, Constantine...), have claimed to experience the divine in ways which certainly differ from one religion to another, but also show a great deal of overlap and convergence. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
Before Christianity, millions of people believed in pantheons, with tens and hundreds of gods. Devout Mormons still believe in the Angel Moroni and magic stones. People tend to believe what is stated as fact by people in authority when they are young. You mention the divine beliefs of some famous people. For many of them, religion was state-enforced; it would be very bad for their health not to toe the official line.
To counter yoir list, here are the names of some famous and intelligent atheists: Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Ernest Hemingway, Benjamin Franklin, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, Voltaire, Nietzsche, James Madison, John Quincy Adams.
So we both have lists of famous people who believed or didn't believe. This doesn't prove a thing.
Sounds like a good case to me. :)
Wouldn't have got you a place on my college debating team, I'm afraid ;)
Posted by: Big Al | February 16, 2007 at 03:36 AM
Very interesting, but you haven't addressed my main point, which is not, for the moment, to establish that the evidence for Christian theism is incontrovertible, but simply that it is evidence. I was disputing the atheist dogma that Christian belief is not based on any evidence. You're addressing a different issue: the issue of whether the evidence is good, or conclusive.
If you just accept the first point-- that religious belief is, at least sometimes, not based on a leap in the dark, but on evidence-- then you've already made a lot more progress than many atheists ever seem to manage.
Incidentally, the view that there is no evidence that Jesus ever existed was discredited a very long time ago. It is convenient to shut your eyes when you don't want to see, but it's not very intellectually honest.
Oh, and whether I'm upset about not making the college debating team depends on who's selecting it. :)
Posted by: Tim Chappell | February 16, 2007 at 03:47 AM
1. I don't see how theism explains the fact that there is a universe, anymore than "it's magic!" explains how a vacuum cleaner works.
2. I'm still not seeing any evidence of Jesus's existence, much less resurrection. Perhaps you'd better reference some.
3. Wishful thinking, even when done by otherwise smart people, isn't evidence.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | February 16, 2007 at 04:28 AM
Sorry, but you're still not making the distinction I began with, between "Christian belief is evidence-based" and "Christian belief is based on good/ decisive evidence".
The existence of X is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of X. So the existence of the universe is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of the universe. "And this", to quote Aquinas, "we call God". I'm not saying that this is a decisive argument; I'm saying that it is an argument. So it's wrong to say that theists don't base their belief on argument and evidence.
Likewise with Jesus. I'm not saying that the evidence for his life and resurrection, in the gospels and in contemporary and subsequent history, is decisive. I'm saying only that it is evidence; so again, it's wrong to say that theists don't base their belief on argument and evidence.
Likewise too with religious experience. I'm not saying that the fact that people throughout the ages have claimed to experience the divine *proves* that there is a divine. I'm saying that it is evidence for the divine. So, once more, it's a mistake to say that religious belief is not based on evidence.
Got it now? :)
Posted by: Tim Chappell | February 16, 2007 at 04:41 AM
Since you ask for references about the historicity of Jesus, here's Wikipedia on Jesus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
And Wiki on the view that Jesus never existed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_as_myth
As you'll see from the latter, the consensus among professional historians and textual scholars is that Jesus certainly existed. The view that he didn't is a marginal and cranky view:
"No peer-reviewed work advocating the Jesus Myth theory exists and it has had little impact on the consensus among New Testament academics of Jesus' historicity."
Posted by: Tim Chappell | February 16, 2007 at 05:03 AM
"No peer-reviewed work advocating the Jesus Myth theory exists and it has had little impact on the consensus among New Testament academics of Jesus' historicity."
The "New Testament academics" beit notwithstanding, this sounds far from an impartial piece, as is occasionally the problem with Wikipedia. If you read the discussions page for that article, you'll see that quite a few people argue with some justification that the article is biased.
The "Jesus never existed" standpoint is far from an isolated fringe position, as that article implies. It fails to mention that the "Josephus evidence" is actually widely acknowledged to be a forgery. Check out
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/josephus-etal.html
It may not be an impartial website either, but it does show evidence of some deep research.
Posted by: Big Al | February 16, 2007 at 06:51 AM
Oh, and for the record, Tim, although I'm an atheist and I don't care who knows it, I do find Professor Dawkins' polemics against religion somewhat over the top.
I have all his books, and I agree with his arguments in The God Delusion, but "militant atheism" doesn't sit well with me.
Posted by: Big Al | February 16, 2007 at 06:55 AM
I was citing Wiki because on this issue it strikes me as accurate; everything I've ever looked at on the question "Did Jesus exist?" supports something like the view that Wiki takes, and Wiki is an easy way of summarising all that.
That the Jesus-never-existed view is utterly untenable isn't, so far as I can see, just my opinion: by and large, it's the scholarly consensus, and always has been.
However, recall that my point was not to debate the evidence. It was a step back from that: I was arguing that *whatever you may think of the evidence*, it's just wrong to say that *there is no* evidence. Even if the Jesus-never-existed hypothesis was more widely accepted than it is, it would still be wrong to say that there's no evidence that he existed-- it would just be that this evidence is controversial. So I can have the conclusion I'm after without getting into that issue.
I'm glad you don't like militant atheism, Al. As a near-pacifist, I don't really like militant anything.
Posted by: Tim Chappell | February 16, 2007 at 07:15 AM
Skeptico replies to Tim Chappell
Re: Christian religious belief isn't based on no evidence; it's based on all sorts of different kinds of evidence. To name three:
Rising from the dead (etc) is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. But you don’t have extraordinary evidence – you have books written by people who never met Jesus, written at least 40 years after he died. And written by primitive people with an agenda. That’s not evidence. Not good enough – not even close.
Re: People all over the world and all throughout history, nearly all of them perfectly sane and some of them among the greatest geniuses who have ever lived….
Argument from authority logical fallacy.
Re: … experience the divine in ways which certainly differ from one religion to another, but also show a great deal of overlap and convergence.
Which is also explained by common evolution. We evolved to believe in similar things – the different religions arose and evolved to try to explain and reinforce these beliefs that man already had.
Re: The existence of X is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of X. So the existence of the universe is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of the universe.
So the existence of God is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of God. So the existence of a cause of God is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of the cause of God. So the existence of… you get the idea.
Posted by: Skeptico | February 16, 2007 at 08:14 AM
OK, then Tim, there may be evidence in the form of Christian literature. However, all evidence is not created equal.
If it comes to a choice between believing that stories of a man was:
a) Absolutely true or,
b) made up,
Occams's Razor demands that I accept b). There are many, many verifiable cases of literary fabrication (the Hitler Diaries and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion spring to mind). However, there are no verifiable records of such miracles occurring.
So Jesus turned water into wine. What was wrong with the water? Sounds like a pretty trivial use of miraculous powers, put in to impress and amaze the credulous reader.
In any case, I thought the whole idea was that Jesus was God in a man's body, since He couldn't save Himself on the cross. So what's with all these flashy miracles? It's not the sort of thing given to the gift of your ordinary John Smith.
I don't need any evidence not to believe in something: I need evidence to believe in something. As has been said many times, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
A book written lifetimes after the purported events is not sufficient to make me believe that the laws of nature can be subverted and ignored at will by some superbeing.
I am afraid the evidence that Jesus existed is on just as firm a footing as the Scientologists' belief in the evil alien overlord, Xenu, and his DC-9 spaceships: a book.
Just because something is written by its exponents does not make it true.
Posted by: Big Al | February 16, 2007 at 08:29 AM
Re: So Jesus turned water into wine. What was wrong with the water? Sounds like a pretty trivial use of miraculous powers
Al, check this out. (May not be suitable for work.)
Posted by: Skeptico | February 16, 2007 at 08:36 AM
Oh, is this supposed to be the Man With The Big Stick coming after me? Forgive me for not being impressed :).
Well, Man With The BS, you're still not seeing the distinction I've been making between arguing that there's no evidence at all for a position, and arguing that there's no good or decisive evidence for a position.
Or if you do see that distinction, you're misusing it. Saying that there's *no* evidence for the existence of Jesus or the resurrection is patently ridiculous; a whole community of people, some of them highly sophisticated, quickly emerged who believed that he had been raised from the dead, and wrote down their memories of these events. (Some of them possibly *were* eye witnesses, incidentally, or at least claimed to be (1 John 1.1.), while others were quite frank in admitting they weren't eye witnesses: Luke 1.2.) In any court of law, that would be evidence. So saying that it isn't *good* evidence is mistaken, I think, but a different sort of mistake.
You make the same mistake in responding to the point I made about religious experience. To say that lots of otherwise sane people, some of them very gifted, report experiences of the divine, is not actually, I think, an argument from authority: it's an argument from experience. But in any case arguments from authority are *evidence*: if doctors say that someone's got chicken pox, that's evidence he's got chicken pox. Not a proof, but evidence. The same is true of arguments from experience: saying that I believe something's blue because I experience it is blue is giving evidence for my belief-- not a proof, but evidence.
Likewise, reaching for an evolutionary just-so story about how religious experience arose is always possible (you can tell an evolutionary just-so story about absolutely anything, if you want to; proving such stories is rather more difficult). It doesn't stop anyone from saying that the existence of experience purporting to be of God is evidence-- not proof, but evidence-- of the existence of God.
Finally, you seem to concede my point about the cosmological argument-- evidently we agree that the existence of the universe is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of the universe. (We also agree that the existence of God is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of God; but I would point out, *only prima facie*.)
Remember, my agenda all along has been only this: to refute the widespread falsehood that religious belief is not rational, because not based on evidence. I haven't been arguing that the evidence for Christianity is conclusive; I've merely been arguing that it's evidence. And I think I've proved that point, actually. You chaps certainly haven't disproved this claim. So I hope that, as professedly rational people, you'll now stop making it.
Posted by: Tim Chappell | February 16, 2007 at 08:47 AM
Skeptico replies to Tim Chappell
Re: Well, Man With The BS, you're still not seeing the distinction I've been making between arguing that there's no evidence at all for a position, and arguing that there's no good or decisive evidence for a position.
Assuming this was aimed at me – texts written 40 plus years after the event, by primitive people, do not even begin to be extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim. Whether it is “evidence” at all or just really poor evidence, is just semantics.
Re: To say that lots of otherwise sane people, some of them very gifted, report experiences of the divine, is not actually, I think, an argument from authority
Naming famous people as believers is argument from authority. Saying “lots of” people is an appeal to popularity.
Re: if doctors say that someone's got chicken pox, that's evidence he's got chicken pox
False analogy. A doctor is known to have expertise in this area, and diagnosing illness correctly (more often than not) is a skill that is tested – doctors have to be able to do it to get qualified.
Re: Likewise, reaching for an evolutionary just-so story about how religious experience arose is always possible
As opposed to your “just so” story about religions. But your story required us to believe in an additional entity otherwise not known to exist – God. Evolution explains it without making up God. Adding “God” to the explanation is not required, so common beliefs on God throughout humanity is not a reason to believe in God.
Re: Finally, you seem to concede my point about the cosmological argument-- evidently we agree that the existence of the universe is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of the universe.
Not necessarily. I was pointing out the fallacy in your argument. Adding “God” to the explanation is not an explanation.
Posted by: Skeptico | February 16, 2007 at 09:15 AM
Skep said:
Adding “God” to the explanation is not an explanation.
No kidding. It adds one more thing that has to be explained.
And to any fundie who says "god/gods can't be explained by science", I usually have 2 questions:
1) How do you know this?
2) Does god/gods produce observable effects? Then they can be tested scientifically. If not, then god/gods are scientifically the same as nothing.
Posted by: Rockstar Ryan | February 16, 2007 at 10:01 AM
Talking about causality:
1. The universe could be acausal: Without a cause. It's not terribly satisfying answer, but it's a possibility, and it doesn't add thus-far unnecessary entities like God between the first acausal effect and the observable universe. (Just for reference, last time I checked, pair production in a vacuum was apparently acausal, though I suspect it's logically impossible to determine if an acausal effect is actually acausal.)
2. The universe could be here as the result of what Star Trek calls a "predestination paradox": The universe caused itself. The causality chain is one really big loop.
3. There could be an infinite regression of non-God causes and effects.
As for doctors: Doctors have demonstrable, verifiable skills. Theologians haven't been able to prove that the subject of their "profession" exists, just like paranormal researchers have yet to find any good, verifiable evidence of psychic power.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | February 16, 2007 at 12:19 PM
This is going to get long, so I apologise.
Tim Chappell wrote:
Christian religious belief isn't based on no evidence; it's based on all sorts of different kinds of evidence. To name three:
(1) There's a world. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
So what you are saying is: if something exists, and it is used as the basis or focus of an argument, it is evidence for that argument? You seem to be saying that the fact that the world exists is evidence for the theistic explanation for the world's existence? Is this correct?
Let us put this idea into action, shall we?
My Ford Explorer exists. My belief is that this Ford Explorer was built by a giant inflatable sentient Haddock. The existence of my Ford Explorer is evidence of this. Therefore, my belief is evidence based.
Brilliant. My head is already spinning from the seemingly circle shaped nature of this logic. Since my head is spinning, that is also apparently evidence that the logic is circular.
Point 1 does not show evidence, it shows an argument. Atheism makes no claim to explain anything anyway, it is not a belief, it is a lack of belief. How many times must this be pointed out?
That the world exists is merely evidence for the fact that the world exists. The existence of the world is not evidence for the theistic argument for the origins of the world, it is one of the premises of the argument not the evidence for it.
(2) Jesus, who looks as much like God becoming human as it is possible to look, rose from the dead. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
This is a claim, not evidence. Again, it is circular. The evidence that Jesus allegedly rose from the dead is that Jesus allegedly rose from the dead. Theism claims to explain an event whose existence is not proven and which is extraordinarily improbable. Not only is it an argument though, its a bad one. The only source for Jesus being god made human and rising from the dead is an old book. If this is what you class as evidence, presumably this means that you would agree there is evidence to show that Sherlock Holmes actually lived at 221b Baker Street and was a great detective. Or that Hobbits actually live in the Shire. Or that Elvis actually lives and uses a sprout called Barry to travel through time (kudos to anyone who gets that reference.) Since appearance in a book appears to be evidence of truth and fact for you, one would assume you cannot dispute the actuality of the three incidences quoted above.
(3) People all over the world and all throughout history, nearly all of them perfectly sane and some of them among the greatest geniuses who have ever lived (Pascal, St Augustine, Milton, Gandhi,
Mohammed, Newton, Constantine...), have claimed to experience the divine in ways which certainly differ from one religion to another, but also show a great deal of overlap and convergence. Theism explains this rather salient fact. Atheism doesn't.
This is not evidence for the basis of religion, but evidence that people believe in religion and the divine. Why is it even remotely of interest or surprising that human cultures developed similar seeming beliefs about similar psychological phenomenon? Do you somehow suppose that every religion and culture grew completely in isolation from every other one? How does theism explain that belief? That's like saying that since my experience of chocolate cake is similar to everyone else's experience of chocolate cake, it's evidence that there is something going on that's bigger than choclate cake.
Of course it is appropriate, ironic and highly amusing that you bring this up just as the cargo cults celebrate their religon and worship of John Frum. Proving just exactly how religions and belief in the supernatural can develop from the absurdly daily and plain, with no evidence for divinity involved other than projection of divinity on to the non-divine by humans willing to do so. How does theism explain that?
Where has Dawkins donated all the money he's made out of criticising theism?
How is that even relevant?
Very interesting, but you haven't addressed my main point, which is not, for the moment, to establish that the evidence for Christian theism is incontrovertible, but simply that it is evidence.
You haven't shown there to be any evidence for religious belief yet.
You like to think you have, but all you did was post 3 arguments for the existence of religion, you did not post three examples of the evidence for religion. The fact that theism attempts to explain something does not show that there is evidence for theism. It is a little disconcerting that you are so certain what you say is correct but can't see this distinction.
Sorry, but you're still not making the distinction I began with, between "Christian belief is evidence-based" and "Christian belief is based on good/ decisive evidence".
Because you failed to make that distinction satisfactorily.
The existence of X is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of X.
No it is isn't. The existence of X is only evidence for the existence of X. Causality can only be inferred from the existence of X, and that inference must be based on evidence which is not provided by the mere existence of X.
So the existence of the universe is prima facie evidence that there is a cause of the universe.
No it isn't. It is only evidence for the existence of the Universe.As pointed out before the Universe may not have a cause, it may just have been. But regardless of this, the existence of the Universe is not evidence for one particular belief in the cause of the Universe
"And this", to quote Aquinas, "we call God".
Oh, well if he says it. Of course, it's total bollocks. It's without any evidential basis and totally arbitrary. He may as well have said 'And this we call Archibald Clarence Jememiah Bartholomew Chase
Brooklyn Spunkhammer III.' Because it has equal validity and weight, and supporting evidence. Or maybe he could have said "And this we call the big bang.' For which there is evidence.
I'm not saying that this is a decisive argument; I'm saying that it is an argument. So it's wrong to say that theists don't base their belief on argument and evidence.
Hang on. No-one is saying that theism isn't based on arguments so don't try that bait and switch. Theism is based solely on arguments. Athiests say theism is not based on evidence, and it isn't. At best so far you can say you've proven it's based on the existence of a few things with alternative and often more valid explanations.
Likewise with Jesus. I'm not saying that the evidence for his life and resurrection, in the gospels and in contemporary and subsequent history, is decisive. I'm saying only that it is evidence; so again, it's wrong to say that theists don't base their belief on argument and evidence.
Again, no one says theism is not based upon argument. And not all theists believe in the divinity of Jesus. That's an interesting display of conceit you make there.
Likewise too with religious experience. I'm not saying that the fact that people throughout the ages have claimed to experience the divine *proves* that there is a divine. I'm saying that it is evidence for the divine. So, once more, it's a mistake to say that religious belief is not based on evidence
No it is not. People claiming experience of the divine is evidence only of the fact that people claim to have spiritual experiences. Including over cargo. It is evidence solely for the fact that there is a psychological phenomenon people associate with religion. And because of the existence of religion, people claim experiencing religion is evidence of religion. Of course without religion people would attribute the experience to something else. So whatever evidence these experiences give, it is not evidence of the divine.
Got it now? :)
Oh, I get that you think the simple existence of something that is used in an argument is evidence for that argument. But you're wrong.
Oh, is this supposed to be the Man With The Big Stick coming after me? Forgive me for not being impressed :).
Oh touche.
Saying that there's *no* evidence for the existence of Jesus or the resurrection is patently ridiculous; a whole community of people, some of them highly sophisticated, quickly emerged who believed that he had been raised from the dead, and wrote down their memories of these events.
What evidence is there for the resurrection? What is written in a book. And we know what other stuff is written in books don't we?
People believed that he had risen from the dead. Does believing and writing about something now constitute evidence for you?
(Some of them possibly *were* eye witnesses, incidentally, or at least claimed to be (1 John 1.1.), while others were quite frank in admitting they weren't eye witnesses: Luke 1.2.) In any court of law, that would be evidence. So saying that it isn't *good* evidence is mistaken, I think, but a different sort of mistake.
Oh, citing books is evidence. Ok:
"The Shire was divided into four quarters, the Farthings aleady referred to, North, South, East and West" The Lord of The Rings, Prologue, 3. Of the Ordering of the Shire.
See, the Shire exists. Would that be evidence in a court of law? Or in fact, does the eyewitness have to be present, impartial and reliable in order for it to be considered evidence? Would an eyewitness account be considered evidence in your court if it was written down 2000 years ago by people with a vested interest in it, translated multiple times from multiple languages, and then printed and copied many more times? The truth is, no judge in the land could legally allow such testimony as evidence.
To say that lots of otherwise sane people, some of them very gifted, report experiences of the divine, is not actually, I think, an argument from authority
What makes it an argument from authority is that you make a point of citing certain people considered intelligent as having experienced the divine. The point being to imply that if they experienced it, then there must be something to it. Which is a logical fallacy called the argument from authority.
But in any case arguments from authority are *evidence*: if doctors say that someone's got chicken pox, that's evidence he's got chicken pox. Not a proof, but evidence.
However, we know chicken pox exists. Therefore an expert in the field of human illnesses citing the symptoms of chicken pox is evidence that chicken poxs is the illness. The obvious distinction is we do not know the divine exists.
The only evidence that the divine exists is that people experience the divine. And we know the divine exists because people experience the divine. And the evidence for the divine, is that people experience the divine. Get the picture yet? I feel dizzy. I'm going to sit down.
The same is true of arguments from experience: saying that I believe something's blue because I experience it is blue is giving evidence for my belief-- not a proof, but evidence.
Exactly. Thanks for agreeing with me. It gives evidence that you believe something. It does not however give evidence that your belief is evidence based. Why the change of heart?
So believing you experience the divine is evidence you believe you are experiencing the divine, it is not evidence of the divine or even the possibility of the divine. Whether it's just you, whether it's Isaac Newton, or whether it's 6 billion other people.
It doesn't stop anyone from saying that the existence of experience purporting to be of God is evidence-- not proof, but evidence-- of the existence of God.
No. It is evidence only that people experience something they believe comes from god, it is not evidence for god.
Every year millions of people (including me) believe Liverpool can win the English Premier League, but that is not evidence that they will or that they did. It is evidence only that those people believe that.
Remember, my agenda all along has been only this: to refute the widespread falsehood that religious belief is not rational, because not based on evidence. I haven't been arguing that the evidence for Christianity is conclusive; I've merely been arguing that it's evidence. And I think I've proved that point, actually. You chaps certainly haven't disproved this claim.
You've proven nothing other than that you shouldn't be a trial judge with your standard of what constitutes evidence. Religious belief is not rational because it invokes invisible, unprovable, unknowable sky fairies, not because there is also no evidence for it.
Until you prove something, there is nothing for us chaps to disprove. Why does that sound familiar....?
So to recap:
1. Citing the existence of something in an argument is not evidence for that argument when that argument is about the exitence of that something.
2. Citing something that has no evidence for it is not evidence for an argument.
3. Citing people who believe something is not evidence for an argument.
Forgive me for not being impressed.
Posted by: Jimmy_Blue | February 17, 2007 at 09:10 PM
Or that Elvis actually lives and uses a sprout called Barry to travel through time (kudos to anyone who gets that reference.)
Oh, I love Rankin ;-) Don't diss the sprout, man.
Posted by: null | February 26, 2007 at 04:47 PM
Another argument I heard on the car radio today went along the following lines:
You can't even prove the world exists. If you were an isolated brain in a test lab being fed suitable stimuli, in a Matrix-style situation, you would not be able to tell the difference between that and the real world.
Yet science is based on these unprovable tenets - so science is flawed. Just because you can't prove something exists doesn't mean it doesn't. (Yes, that old saw).
Then the bleever switched tack, pretty much allowing that the world does exist, but that the complexity of the universe means it must have had an ultimate creator (yawn), and that the creator has to be greater than the thing created.
His atheist opponent was a little lacking in fire, I'm afraid, and they crammed this segment in the five minutes before the 9 o'clock news. The bleever said he had lots of arguments for the existence of God, so these were just tasters. Still, you think he'd come out with his two best ones, wouldn't you? If these are examples of knock-down arguments, I wonder why I'm still standing?
Posted by: Big Al | February 27, 2007 at 03:28 AM
That the New Testament writers were believers does not diminish their testimony. They were believers BECAUSE of what they saw, not in spite of it. If they did not believe Jesus was God, they would not have written that he was - the punishment for proclaiming a false Messiah was stoning (I think, please don't interrogate me on my exact knowledge of the Pentateuch)
Whether or not you accept their testimony as TRUE, it is supremely arrogant to say that they were liars.
Posted by: Chris | May 02, 2007 at 12:04 PM
Skeptico replies to Chris
Re: That the New Testament writers were believers does not diminish their testimony. They were believers BECAUSE of what they saw…
The earliest gospel was written around 70 CE, 30 to 35 years after Jesus died, by people who never even met Jesus. Consequently, they did not believe because of anything they saw, since they didn’t see any of the events they were describing.
Re: Whether or not you accept their testimony as TRUE, it is supremely arrogant to say that they were liars.
Could you perhaps point to where anyone on this thread called anyone a liar?
Posted by: Skeptico | May 02, 2007 at 12:39 PM
Whether or not you accept their testimony as TRUE, it is supremely arrogant to say that they were liars.
I don't think they were liars any more than someone at the end of the telephone game, a position I feel most of the skeptics commenting on this post hold. I do think it foolish to say that whatever the original author wrote is what is still commonly quoted by Xians today.
So unless you would like to debate a position someone here actually holds please take your straw man home with you and beat on it there.
Posted by: Rockstar Ryan | May 02, 2007 at 03:46 PM
Chris:
If they did not believe Jesus was God, they would not have written that he was
And sometimes when believers have assumed these writers did write that, it turns out they didn't.
I suggest reading the book 'Misquoting Jesus' by Bart Ehrman and investigating the field of biblical textual criticism before you start asserting what writers of the New Testament wrote based on the bibles we have available to the public at large today.
Here's just one example I have quoted here before, but it gives me a chuckle whenever people start talking about what the New Testament authors wrote and meant based on modern texts of the New Testament.
Johan Wettstein discovered that in one manuscript, the Codex Alexandrinus, the verse 1 Tim 3:16 (often used to show the new testament speaks of Jesus as god) which has been said to speak of Christ as 'God made manifest in the flesh' actually reads as Christ 'who was made manifest in the flesh'. The Greek letters that spell the word 'who' had been misread as an abbreviation for the Greek word for god, because a line had bled through from the other side of the page in the manuscript.
There are many many more textual, conceptual and doctrinal errors, additions and ommissions between modern biblical texts and the earliest manuscripts we possess of them.
Unless you yourself have copies of the first texts of the new testament, citing the authors intentions and words is a precarious position at best.
Posted by: Jimmy_Blue | May 02, 2007 at 05:06 PM
Further, pointing out that the NT writers were believers is not calling them liars, it's calling attention to a potential source of bias. Any time a historical account is written, you must give some attention to the climate of the writing and the intent of the scribe, because those will have a large effect on how the narrative is framed. This is why we seek independent corroboration for historical accounts, especially when they come from a time before there were standards for writing histories. The bias of the writers is difficult to pin down, and may result in mistakes, spin, or outright fabrications.
The reason we can't trust the stories of believers with regard to history is the same reason that we wouldn't trust a Harriet Miers history book on how George W. Bush was the greatest president ever. Fervent belief is a source of bias and presents a potential conflict of interest. Because of this, the New Testament's historical value is quite suspect.
Posted by: Tom Foss | May 03, 2007 at 08:48 AM