Every small child knows what faith is; they just have different terminology for it: “Let’s play make believe!”
I am not sure that one can utilize math or reason or probabilities when dealing with claims of miracle or magic. After all, any event that can be seen as statistically possible would then not be magic. Resurrection -and John flying to the moon through self propulsion- are impossible without magic, but would certainly be possible if magic was possible. Once someone shows definitively that magic is possible, THEN the statisticians can review their estimates!On Facebook Richard Carrier has been arguing that every claim, except a logically impossible one, has a non-zero probability to them. He said:
The only thing that has a zero probability is that which no amount of evidence (none whatsoever) would ever warrant believing; not a thing for which we don't have that evidence, but a thing for which no such evidence can even be conceived. The only thing that qualifies, is raw uninterpreted present experience. Everything else we can be wrong about, such that some amount of evidence, *if it were presented* would warrant believing it. But when it isn't presented, we aren't warranted in believing it.When it came to the resurrection Carrier said,
I literally actually believe the probability is nonzero, and not only because I can imagine evidence that could convince me, although that's the big point to note here. I don't think resurrection happened because no such evidence has appeared. Not because no such evidence can even be conceived.John W. Loftus: Nonzero as in
How can I believe that what they do is not important, but what they call it is important?To say the word "faith" is to say fideism or faithism, they have the same exact meaning. That's what we're saying, despite their claims to the contrary.
Let's look at a few examples: Don Camp says that if you pray a lot, and look for times when your prayers seem to be answered, then obviously "God" is answering them. That is a counting-the-hits fallacy.
Realist1234 seems to think babies being killed by "God" is ok, because "God" is perfectly moral and will even things out sometime in the future.
Vincent Torley often argues that philosophy answers empirical questions. Enough said.
When confronted with these fallacies, the rational approach would be to re-evaluate the evidence.
Then there's the Ken Hamm's of the world, and the Westboro Baptist Church, Evangelicals, Mormons, and so on. Not only do they experience difficulties -- as you suggest -- they cannot even convince each other their god is the right one, and the others are wrong. With so many different conceptions of god, how can we believe they are all taking a rational look at the evidence?
We know geographic coincidences, indoctrination, and emotional manipulation play important roles in their belief systems. How is the belief guaranteed to be rational when there's such heavy irrational influences?
When the behaviors differ so drastically from the definition, how can the definition be right?
Is there no word in the Christian lexicon that describes a belief not grounded on proof or empirical evidence? My question is directed to all Christians. My point is that the common Christian wouldn't know the word fideism. In fact, the lay Christian, who is coached by those who know the weak arguments, quotes Hebrew 11:1 to bat-down the "atheist" definition of faith. When cornered about the lack of proof or empirical evidence, Christians respond with faith as a reason; for if they had evidence, they would state so without relying on faith.I like these thoughts. How about the word "Faithism" the belief in belief itself? And then say it's equivalent to how "Faith" is used by believers. Or, that it's all faithism? "Fideism" seems to be a a good word as well, the view that knowledge depends on faith. We could say it's all fideism. The word "faith" is therefore equivalent to the words "faithism" and "fideism." Discuss.
As somebody with a degree in mathematics, I look in disgust at every apologist who tries to use Bayes theorem to "establish the likelihood of the resurrection." Bayes theorem requires that we have an established background probability, and as far as I know, the dead stay dead. The background probability of coming back from the dead (after more than a few minutes) is 0.
Ask any school child and they'll tell you that zero times anything is always zero. Just more apologists trying to pull the wool over the eyes of their math ignorant flock.
Establish that people come back from the dead, and we can start talking about Jesus coming back from the dead.
If Lourdes worked there would be no reason for any cancer patient to bother with treatment - just bop over to Lourdes for your miracle. But, believers know that conventional medicine offers real hope, whereas trekking off to Lourdes is what you do when you've abandoned hope. The miracle claims from Lourdes have been analyzed and the Christian church's own attested cure rate is less than the natural remission rate for cancer. Likelihood of dying en route to Lourdes is orders of magnitude higher than the cure rate.
I have an axe to grind with the way Craig, Torley, et al. used Bayes’ Theorem. It just seems like a diversionary tactic. During a debate, they break out an equation and say, “Our methods are objective! See, we’ve even got a math formula to prove it.” But when you look at the formula, you see that it’s stuffed with a bunch of unproven assumptions. They should know better. Maybe they do.GearHedEd:
They do. Craig's entire career has been an effort to become a "respected Christian Apologist". He was already committed before he went to college. And none of the "priors" that they stuff into their Bayes' Theorem Machine are reasonable. It all comes from poorly evidenced claims in the Bible, and gets a "pass" because of where it was found.JP415:
Yeah, it's like, "Given our prior background knowledge that Superman came from the planet Krypton, it's entirely likely that he could fly and shoot laser beams from his eyes." You could just put any old thing in there and get the results you want.I think this analysis is basically correct, and I wish to comment further.
I don't know much about Bayes' Theorem, but I know it's August 1, 2017 and Jesus hasn't come back yet.Here's another one highlighting the fact that faith is pretending to know what you don't know (think of the Sophists in Socrates's day):
Celsus repeatedly noted Christians boldly opine about all sorts of things they don't and can't know, and nothing has changed in the two millennia since. Jesusplaining Christians appear to think their convictions are some kind of "smart pill"--just witness the resident apologists who infest this site with their twaddle and who never cease to pontificate about everything from the ancient documents they read only in translation to particle physics to evolutionary biology.
In order to maintain a high quality of discussion in the comments box, I have made the executive decision to moderate all comments on all posts. This decision is effective immediately.Not having been a part of the discussions he refers to, it looks like he's feeling the heat from my book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End, which mirrors Dr. Hector Avalos's call to end biblical studies as we currently understand them.
The following policies are in effect....5) This blog has a philosophical focus; the editors and authors aren’t interested in debating with readers who think philosophy is worthless or cannot understand the value of clearly defined terms. Comments along those lines will be blocked. LINK
Miracle claims aren't interesting to me because they cannot be verified. The best we can do is establish that the "miracle" in question was a result of natural phenomena at work. The best the apologist can do is claim that since science can't explain an event, it could be supernatural.
Until the day that some apologist has a reliable method to investigate their "supernatural", miracle claims are nothing more than empty claims, and can be dismissed.
Brain-dead corpses do not come back to life and fly off into outer space. Once a brain cell is dead it stays dead. This is a scientific fact. The regeneration of dead human tissue is Christianity's core belief, therefore Christianity is false.
It's as simple as that.
There may be an intelligent Creator, but if he exists, he (she, they, or it) has decided that the universe will operate under certain inviolable "laws". One of those laws is that when human tissue dies it stays dead. Your Reanimation of a Dead First Century Jewish Preacher story is therefore false until overwhelming evidence indicates otherwise. Alleged eyewitness testimony of this science-defying claim is insufficient.
In this book Loftus provides some insightful criticisms of arguments by Christian thinkers, including those having to do with the problem of evil.Dr. Meister is a Professor of Philosophy at Bethel College and author of numerous apologetical works, including, Evil: A Guide for the Perplexed, where this recommendation can be found.
Theological. God decrees everything that happens, he can know the future of every human action, since humans don't have the freedom to do otherwise. "Such a theology creates atheists. It, more than anything else, is what motivates me to attempt to demolish the Christian faith." - Loftus
God is outside time. If God is outside of time he would have no problems predicting future human actions since human actions are not actually in the future. God would merely be seeing the present from his perspective. “We have on hand no acceptable concept of atemporal causation, i.e., of what it is for a timeless cause to produce a temporal effect.” - Davis. “If God is truly timeless,” Hasker says, “so that temporal determinations of ‘before’ and ‘after’ do not apply to him, then how can God act in time, as Scriptures say that he does? - Hasker
The Inferential View. On this view, God figures out from the range of options which choices we will make. "If the history of an empire or nation is already part of the divine plan, how can God hold the leaders, and indeed the peoples themselves, accountable for their actions?" then their thoughts and actions are so preordained as to render them devoid of free will. - Callahan. "How, for instance, can anyone living in the year 2000, God or otherwise, innately know what someone will do on January 1, 2050? So the bottom line for me is that if there is no known mechanism or reason given for how a God in time can foreknow future truly free human actions, then I have reasons to reject that God can foreknow such actions." - Loftus
The Innate View. On this view, God has innate comprehensive knowledge of the future. He just “sees it” because he is omniscient. But this isn't an explanation at all.
