I do not consider it necessary that the gospels be written by their namesakes in order to consider them properly canonical and inspired by God. The major reason for looking at it this way is because the Gospels are not products of any one author. This is the way modern scholarship approaches the Gospels (see Luke Timonty Johnson--Ancient Christian Writtings). Due to the redaction process, and prior to redaction the fact that the Gospel material is extracted from an oral tradition which wound up in pre Markan saying sources, each Gospel is seen as the proaction of a community rather than an individual.
This communal authorship works both for and against an Evangelical position. Adjacent an Evangelical faith, it argues that the Gospel text is not inerrent, that it has mistakes and is transmitted by unknown persons whose identities cannot be pinned down. Indeed, to many atheists that's just the same as saying the authorship credentials are worthless and the Gospels cannot be verified. It works for an Evangelical faith commitment in that it grounds authorship not in specific personalities but in whole communities. The communal nature of early Christianity is well known, but often misunderstood. The transmission of the Gospel story is seen through the eyes of skeptics as the random transmission of wild rumors. Bautlmann's work on form criticism is understood as a condemnation to any eye witness appeal, and the Gospels are dismissed as a mass of unintelligible gibberish. But in reality, a lot of good work has been done on understanding early community as a controlled environment for the dissemination of information.
The best work for beginning this process of understanding is that of Oscar Cullman's The Johannine Circle(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976) that first proposed the Johoninne community as a control environment, and much has been done sense then on that theme (see also:Robinson, James M. "The Johannine Trajectory," in: idem and Helmut Koester, Trojectories Trhough Early Christinity, Fortress Press 1971).A Doctoral dissertation at University of Dallas in the 1980s, The Mattrnew School, analyzed Matthew as the product of a community. When I say community I mean a commune. We know from Acts that the early Jerusalem church pooled their belongings and lived together and broke bread daily to study the teachings of Jesus and the OT prophets. Most scholars today argue that it was out of this time and place that the understanding of Jesus as messiah and his death as atonement were worked up and applied to the tragic events that galvanized the community of his followers, and having discovered this happy spin, some scholars argue, the resurrections stories for were forged. Of course that assumes the resurrection even didn't happen. On the other hand, there is no particular reason why one can't reverse the process; out of the realization of a risen savior the church used this communal structure to being a process of transmission which safeguarded the testimony of the community.
Oral cultures do not create oral traditions Willie Nile. Oral traditions are both constructed and passed on out of a very careful process. The passing of oral tradition is highly contextualized. They don't just allow anybody to stand on a street corner and make up some new story. Only officially recognized bards or story tellers can pass on the information. In cultures where the oral tradition is more than bardic, the information is relied through Rabbinical or other teaching authority. It is highly likely that the early communities, as they fragmented around Jerusalem, Samaria, and Antioch the verus members of that original community split off and went to live with the verus Christian communities. They guarded the transmission of the events surrounding Jesus' life and death and resurrection and most likely corrected errors of misspellings. The main thing is, this only had to go on for 20 years. After that point the testimony became written and the safeguarding was all in the test.
Of course I can't prove that this is really the way it happened. But it is most likely because there was a whole community, if we believe that Gospel accounts which witnessed the risen Christ and that's probably where Paul's 500 come in. This was the community Bethany where Jesus and his disciples stroll in the last couple of chapters of Luke just before the assignation. We also have a community in the Galilee where much of Jesus ministry took place, and we have one in Jerusalem where the last part took place. In each of these locations whole groups of people would have been part of the events and witness to Jesus preaching and teaching, and miracle working. It is the whole community of the early faithful that produced the Gospels through this process of oral tradition and redaction, and they were working from a carefully controlled process through which real eye witnesses corrected the mistakes of transmission.
Evangelicals do not like this idea because it departs from the old familiar truth tree. The truth tree was asserted by Josh McDonnell and seemed to give a much needed credibility to the Gospels. That was a major factor in getting my attention as a young college atheist, way back when. But the truth tree was an old argument which McDowell resurrected. It was first established by second century Orthodoxy and was never as clear cut and dried as McDowell would have us believe. Be that as it may, there are indications that some authoritative eye witnesses stand behind each of the Gospels, yet they do not have to be the ones traditionally assigned. For example, I am convinced that the author of John was an eye witnesses to Jesus life and ministry but that he was not the Apostle John. Clearly he was someone to whom the original community attached a great deal of significance, someone who had seen the original events unfold. The Elders of the community make a big deal out of who he was, and material of John is so heavily redacted it seems clearly to be the production of a greatly debated body of teaching that had been circulating through its respective community for a long time. I think the most likely candidate for authorial of the fourth Gospel is the Elder John of whom Papas speaks. He was a disciple although not the Apostle. He may also be the author of the epistles of John, who does call himself "the Elder." The difference in style is accounted for by the redaction process. the Elders of the community at the end of the book make it clear that they are compiling the teachings of this amazing person, this beloved disciple. So they are not recycling his words like notes at a college lecture. They are unpacking the summary of a very long and intenseness berate process that has torn a community apart. I'll say more on that but one can read about it on my John Page.
Matthew was most likely a narrativeal structure placed over the oriental saying source constructed by the Apostle Matthew. That can't be proven, but it makes sense given the testimony of Papias concerning the "loggia." But it is not necessary for the actual Apostle Matthew to have had anything to do with the book for it to be inspired. Even if we can't defend the specific personalities involved, there is no reason to about the basic information based upon the idea of community as author.
Evangelical apologists are sometimes uncomfortable with this notion of communal authorship. Some of them site the notion that its' too "liberal" (the evil buzz word). It caters to the enlightenment notion that the Bible has to have verification of logic, reason, and historicity. But when we look at what Evangelical scholars are doing, they are more often than not using these same ideas to verify the autoharp. That's why Layman is doing, and I dot' think he would have a problem with doing that, to the extent that it can be done; as I have no problem with asserting one's faith in the authorship of the namesakes. It's all a matter of what we think will reach people. I have never seen obscurantism reach any skeptic. It's true because it's the word of God and that's you need to know, is not a useful apologetic ploy. Either defending traditional authorship or not, I have no problem either way. But I dot' find it necessary to do so.
a more detailed expalination from my stie "Doxa."
Community as Author
We do not have to know the exact identity of the authors, because the original material comes from the community itself
A.Eye Witness check in Community.
B.Oral tradition was not uncontroled.
Oral tradition in first-century Judaism was not uncontrolled as was/is often assumed, based on comparisons with non-Jewish models. From pg. 53-55 in B.D. Chilton and C.A. Evans (eds.), "Authenticating the Activities of Jesus" (NTTS, 28.2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998):
"...[T]he early form criticism tied the theory of oral transmission to the conjecture that Gospel traditions were mediated like folk traditions, being freely altered and even created ad hoc by various and sundry wandering charismatic jackleg preachers. This view, however, was rooted more in the eighteenth century romanticism of J. G. Herder than in an understanding of the handling of religious tradition in first-century Judaism. As O. Cullmann, B. Gerhardsson, H. Riesenfeld and R. Riesner have demonstrated, [22] the Judaism of the period treated such traditions very carefully, and the New Testament writers in numerous passages applied to apostolic traditions the same technical terminology found elsewhere in Judaism for 'delivering', 'receiving', 'learning', 'holding', 'keeping', and 'guarding', the traditioned 'teaching'. [23] In this way they both identified their traditions as 'holy word' and showed their concern for a careful and ordered transmission of it. The word and work of Jesus were an important albeit distinct part of these apostolic traditions.
"Luke used one of the same technical terms, speaking of eyewitnesses who 'delivered to us' the things contained in his Gospel and about which his patron Theophilus had been instructed. Similarly, the amanuenses or co-worker-secretaries who composed the Gospel of John speak of the Evangelist, the beloved disciple, 'who is witnessing concerning these things and who wrote these things', as an eyewitness and a member of the inner circle of Jesus' disciples.[24] In the same connection it is not insignificant that those to whom Jesus entrusted his teachings are not called 'preachers' but 'pupils' and 'apostles', semi-technical terms for those who represent and mediate the teachings and instructions of their mentor or principal.
[25]
------------------ 22. O. Cullmann, "The Tradition," in Cullmann, The Early Church (London: SCM Press; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956) 55-99; B. Gerhardsson The Origins of the Gospel Traditions (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979); H. Riesenfeld The Gospel Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970) 1-29; Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer.
23. Rom 6:17; 16:17; 1 Cor 11:2, 23; 15:3; Phil 4:9; Col 2:6-7; 2 Thess 2:15; 3:6; 2 Tim 3:14; Titus 1:9; 2 John 9-10; Jude 3: Rev 2:13, 24. Cf. Abot 1:1; Philo, The Worse Attacks the Better 65-68. 24. John 19:35; 21:24-25; cf. 13:23; 18:15-16; 19:26-27; 20:1-10; 21:7, 21-23. Cf. J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976) 298-311. 25. On parallels with other rabbis and their disciples and other Jewish usage cf. Mark 2:18 = Luke 5:33; K.H. Rengstorf TDNT 1 (1964) 412-43;.TDNT 4 (1967) 431-55.
Also, there wasn't an necessarily a long period of solely oral transmission as has been assumed:
"Under the influence of R. Bultmann and M. Dibelius the classical form criticism raised many doubts about the historicity of the Synoptic Gospels, but it was shaped by a number of literary and historical assumptions which themselves are increasingly seen to have a doubtful historical basis. It assumed, first of all, that the Gospel traditions were transmitted for decades exclusively in oral form and began to be fixed in writing only when the early Christian anticipation of a soon end of the world faded. This theory foundered with the discovery in 1947 of the library of the Qumran sect, a group contemporaneous with the ministry of Jesus and the early church which combined intense expectation of the End with prolific writing. Qumran shows that such expectations did not inhibit writing but actually were a spur to it. Also, the widespread literacy in first-century Palestinian Judaism [18], together with the different language backgrounds of Jesus' followers--some Greek, some Aramaic, some bilingual--would have facilitated the rapid written formulations and transmission of at least some of Jesus' teaching.[19]" (p. 53-54)
------------------ 18. Cf. Josephus, Against Apion 2.25 204: The Law "orders that (children) should be taught to read."; cf. idem, Ant. 12.4.9 209; Philo, Embassy to Gaius 115, 210, Further, see R. Riesner, Jesus als Lehrer (WUNT 2.7; Tubingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1981; 4th ed., 1998) 112-15. 19. Jesus had hearers and doubtless some converts from Syria (Matt 4:25), the Decapolis (Matt 4:25; Mark 3:8; 5:20; 7:31), Tyre and Sidon (Mark 3:8; 7:24, 31; Matt 15:21).
N. T. Wright, critiquing the Jesus Seminar's view of oral tradition as uncontrolled and informal based on some irrelevant research done in modern Western non-oral societies writes:
"Against this whole line of thought we must set the serious study of genuinely oral traditions that has gone on in various quarters recently. [65] (p. 112-113)
--------------- 65. For example, see H. Wansbrough (ed.), Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (JSNTSup 64; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), referring to a large amount of earlier work; Bailey, "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition," 34-54. The following discussion depends on these and similar studies, and builds on Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 418-43; and idem, Jesus and the Victory of God, 133-37.
"Communities that live in an oral culture tend to be story-telling communities. They sit around in long evenings telling and listening to stories--the same stories, over and over again. Such stories, especially when they are involved with memorable happenings that have determined in some way the existence and life of the particular group in question, acquire a fairly fixed form, down to precise phraseology (in narrative as well as in recorded speech), extremely early in their life--often within a day or so of the original incident taking place. They retain that form, and phraseology, as long as they are told. Each village and community has its recognized storytellers, the accredited bearers of its traditions; but the whole community knows the stories by heart, and if the teller varies them even slightly they will let him know in no uncertain terms. This matters quite a lot in cultures where, to this day, the desire to avoid 'shame' is a powerful motivation. "Such cultures do also repeat, and hence transmit, proverbs, and pithy sayings. Indeed, they tend to know far more proverbs than the orally starved modern Western world. But the circulation of such individual sayings is only the tip of the iceberg; the rest is narrative, narrative with embedded dialogue, heard, repeated again and again within minutes, hours and days of the original incident, and fixed in memories the like of which few in the modern Western world can imagine. The storyteller in such a culture has no license to invent or adapt at will. The less important the story, the more the entire community, in a process that is informal but very effective, will keep a close watch on the precise form and wording with which the story is told. "And the stories about Jesus were nothing if not important. Even the Jesus Seminar admits that Jesus was an itinerant wonder-worker. Very well. Supposing a woman in a village is suddenly healed after a lengthy illness. Even today, even in a non-oral culture, the story of such an event would quickly spread among friends, neighbors and relatives, acquiring a fixed form within the first two or three retellings and retaining it, other things being equal, thereafter. In a culture where storytelling was and is an art-form, a memorable event such as this, especially if it were also seen as a sign that Israel's God was now at last at work to do what he had always promised, would be told at once in specific ways, told so as to be not just a celebration of a healing but also a celebration of the Kingdom of God. Events and stories of this order are community-forming, and the stories which form communities do not get freely or loosely adapted. One does not disturb the foundations of the house in which one is living."[B.D. Chilton and C.A. Evans (eds.), Authenticating the Activities of Jesus (NTTS, 28.2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1998) p. 113-115.]
Summary:
In addition to all of this we have corss referencing with the Pauline Corpus and with extra cononical sources. What all of this tells us is that the transmission process kept a stable and reiable body of inforiation in circulation to the time of writitng the texts. This time of texts Kosters places at AD 50 and Corsson and others back him on this. See Helmutt Koster's Ancient Christian Gospels for a brilliant exposition on these sources. What all of this amounts to is the unfolding of a complete defense of the historicity of the Gospels without the truth tree of torch passing from teacher to student. Becasue the studnets are the community tiself, and the community then becomes the teacher. But all of thse had to be kept in place only 20 years, and to that point eye witnesses would still have been alive. There is validation in the historical sources of the Pauline Cropus. IN other words we know there was a Peter, and Peter was a major player in the original events, he lived in Paul's time, met Paul and was able to relate his information to Paul. Thus the total body of sources backing the histoircity of Godples includes:
(1) Texts themselves
(2) community as author
(3) Pauline corpus
(4) extra cononical works themselves
(5) Pre Markan redaction refleted in readings of the Diatesseron
(6) works of Apostlic fathers.
If all of this seems far too empirically bassed for the pure of heart, it is the bread and butter of modern apologetics. In short, liberal textual ciriticism is useful. Stop throughing stones and start making use of it.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
God Cannot Be Emprical
It used to be when I started doing the internet apologetics thing certain atheist certain conventions were in place. Although atheists did seem truly shocked by the prospect that God was not empirical, most of them seemed to accept it. Now they seem universally to be diametrically opposed to even the most veg suggestion that anything could be beyond the empirical, especially god.
The reason is transparent. If God is empirical then the lack of empirical proof counts against belief. So they are willing to give up logically obvious positions in order to get this child's advantage of being able to insist that our little limited view point on this dust mote in a vast sea we have yet to plumb is somehow indicative of real empirical proof of the nature of the universe.
Recently an atheist argued on my message board that parsimony rules out God. This is so ignorant it hurts to think how totally ignorant it is. For one thing, I have an argument that proves the existence of God by parsimony. If God is empirical, and my argument succeeds at proving that he's parsimonious then logically this should prove the existence of God, at least to the extent that that atheist thinks Parsimony would disprove it. But I'm sure he would never admit that. It might interest someone to know that parsimony is not a rule of logic. Its not something that logicians will absolutely endorse. So It's not necessarily a standard of truth. Moreover there are different kinds of parsimony. An idea can be parsimonious in one way and not in a another.
By that term most atheists just "scientific." So to them God is contrary to the rules of science because he's the product of soemthing called "supernatural." They don't have the slightest idea where the concept comes from or what it really says, but they are sure it's stupid and don't' want anything do to with it. So God can't be parsimonious because he's supernatural. I have about eight pages on what the supernatural really is.To get the drift properly please be sure and read them.
God could only be the subject of parsimony if he is the object of empirical investigation. I can see why atheists want this to be true, because they could pretend that they've ruled out God, with their penchant for ignoring God arguments, and their glass half empty outlook which always finds the negative, the dark, the bad, refuses proof, refuses the benefit of a doubt only the cutting edge of doubt. But God is not the object of empriical investigation, nor can he be by definition. thus he cannot be judged by parsimony. The whole idea contradicts phenomenology in the first place. So typical of atheists to cherry pick reality so they accept the schools of philosophy that help them and consign as hog wash any kind of thinking that they can't understand (which is most of it).
God cannot be empirical. There are three reasons. These reasons are deductive. The reasons themselves do not require empirical proof because they are deductive. In fact they could not be empirical and claim to to prove that God is beyond the empirical because they would have to have empirical evdience of God to say that, which would be a contradiction.
The three reasons are absolute:
(1) To be empirical something must be contingent. This is explained by Karl Popper:
empirical facts are facts which might not have been. Everything that belongs to space time is a contingent truth because it could have been otherwise, it is dependent upon the existence of something else for its' existence going all the way back to the Big Bang, which is itself contingent upon something.(Antony Flew, Philosophical Dictionary New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979, 242.)
for a basic explanation of necessity and contingency go here.
God, by definition, cannot be contingent. This same atheist on my board who argued the parsimony thing also tried to content that God doesn't have to be necessary. He also said "just because you think a being is necessary..." Of course he makes several mistakes:
(a) thinking my reasons for this are simply that whatever one believes must be true, so the lie campaign always works eventually to sucker some people.
(b) that god is "a being" he even said "If you think god is an abstract concept then I would actually believe in him. (duh).
these are simple basic axiomatic things that anyone should know before going into a philosophical discussion about God. This just highlights the fact that atheists spend so much of their time dreaming up stupid loopholes in the bible and trying to deny major philosophers that they don't know the basics of God talk.
God is necessary, by definition. That's what the word "God" means as it is used in modern theology. In literal Anglo Saxon of the dark ages it meant something like "superior chief" but that is etymology. That was a long time ago. as the word has come to be used in modern theological parlance it refers to the thing at the top of the metaphysical hierarchy: that which nothing greater than can be conceived; necessary being.
Thus because God is necessary and not contingent, he cannot be the subject of empirical proof.
(2) God is not a thing along side other things in creation, but is the basis of reality: God is being itself.
If we could say the universe contains trees and oranges, and mutt dogs and swizzel sticks and mud pies and jelly and fish and comic books and flt tires and roofs and taxes and stupid people, and God, then they would have a point. What's wrong with this list? God is not just another thing. God created all that stuff and everything else. Nothing would exist without God. So God is not along side jelly and swizzle sticks in creation. As St. John of Damascus said "God exists on the order of Being itself." God is not a product of things in creation, god is the basis of all reality. Thus, God may not be treated as things in creation. God is not contingent because he' snot produced by a prior thing. He's not part of creation, the basis of it, so obviously he can't be given in sense data he can't be understood in a empirical way.
(3) God is eternal.
Because God always was, never came to be, is not dependent upon anything else for his existence, we can say that God, if there is a God, then God had to be. there is maybe. It's not a matter of maybe God might not have existed. God must be either necessary or impossible. this is what Harsthorne proved in this modal argument.
This is the kind of stuff that atheist can't handle because it proves their view is totally wrong a priori. So they are going vomit all over and deny that it means anything and say it's all hog wash. but they are so lazy none of them will ever go look it up. If they would bother too they would see immediately that serious thinker considers the possibly that God might be continent. Even atheists serious thinkers know better than this (but of course not the know nothings on CARM or other atheist dens of stupidity).
Because the concept of God is that of eternal necessary being, God cannot be contingent and since empirical things can only be contingent, God cannot be the object of empirical study.
they never answer any of this. the only think they ever do with it say it's its hog wash, vomit their illiteracy on it and run away.
These arguments prove conclusively and beyond question that God cannot be empirical. Since God cannot be empirical it makes prefect since that there is obvious evidence for god in the starts lining to spell out his name or any of that nonsense. it might just be that God is parsimonious in some sense, but not in the sense of being more scientific, which is I think the way most atheists use it (because they don't know any better).
All of these things require a whole education. These guys are usually too lazy to click on a single link. They would rather ridicule and insult intelligence than to actuality study the products of it.
One final note: it is not a contradiction on my part to say that my Parsimony argument might offer rational warrant to believe, but that God is not a subject of parsimony. I said there is a distinction in types. What atheists mean by it and what I mean by the term are two different things. My argument turns upon being an elegant idea, so God need not be empirical to be judged elegant; all one need know is a concept.
God: The Co-determinate and Atheist Deniel
The "co-determinate" is a term used in connection with Schleiermacher's notion of the feeling of utter dependence. Roy Williams in his great book Schleiermacher The Theologian, uses this term, which I think is an antiquated term for "correlate." The concept here being that we can't demonstrate God's existence directly because God is not given in sense data. We can point to and discuss the feeling of utter dependence (which is actually a form of mystical experince) of which Schleiermacher spoke. In in this context Williams states that God is the co-determinate of the feeling. What he is saying is that God correlates with the feeling of utter dependence, which in content is actually a feeling of ontologically contingency, or dependence upon God ontologically speaking. This is really a simple concept. It is not wonder, then, that atheists have had a great deal of trouble understanding it. I say that because they always try to approach it as some big hairy radical deal that's a fallacy in an do of itself. I expect the skeptic to question the argument, but to actually question it in a way that implies that there's some big logical problem with correlations is quite amazing. That they try to twist the argument totally out of proportion is just, as Dylan said, "sleepy time down south."
Before going into specifics let me draw a couple of analogies. First the idea of smoking as a cause of cancer. In 1963 (or so) the Surgeon General made the ruling that smoking might be the cause of cancer and thus a warning was printed in cigarette packs. That ruling was made not because they had direct scientific proof. In fact when the tobacco companies responded that science could not find a mechanism in tobacco smoke that causes cancer, they were right about that. They remained right about it until this century. For almost a quarter of a century the whole campaign and war against smoking rested totally upon statistical correlation. I used this fact to indicate that science takes correlational proof seriously as proof. It's not illogical to assume that if a correlation is tight enough causality is a logical inference. The atheist response has been "but the link has been proved." Now that is true, but only within this decade, and quite recently. That is typical. The fact that the link was proved and a mechanism found over 25 years latter doesn't in the least blunt the fact that for a quarter of a century science was willing to assume that is a fact based upon statistical correlation. This is all common knowledge. I remember when the Surgeon General made the announcement, even though I was a small child. I remember when cigarette adds were banned. A multi million dollar industry, probably a billion dollar industry was destroyed and taken down all on the basis of statistical correlation.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to conclude that science respects a good correlation; we may treat correlations as causality if (and only if) the correlation is tight enough. Another analogy, is that of the neutrino. Before I go into that let me point out that I am not arguing from analogy. I understand that the similarity to cases in these analogies is not proof of the existence of God. I am not saying that. The function of an analogy is to illustrate an idea, that exactly what I'm about here, nothing more. My argument does not proceed from arguing from analogy. But the fact is atheists treat the correlation of God to religious experinces as though there is no implication of God's reality in the experiences because, they think, there is no proof of causality in a correlation. But I am here illustrating the fact that their beloved priesthood of knowledge, the scientist, is willing to assume a strong correlation as rational warrant for a causal relationship.
The second example is that of the neutrino.
DONUT homeFermi National Acceleration Laboratory*:
6/29/01
Nutrinos
Pauli descibes his reasoning in asserting an unproven hypotheis (the nutrino)
Now I'm sure atheists are saying "that's just the way science works. State a hypothesis and test it." Of course it is, and that's fine. But the problem is that's pretty much what has been done in regard to mystical experince. Religious believers have been a mot more definite about their hypothesis than Pauli was about his, but it's the same thing really, and with very similar results. The only real difference is the scientist can eventually get "absolute" proof (in a scientific sense) when the question is a an empirical one, but we can't get this kind of certainty of God. Nevertheless, we can be as certain, thanks to the M scale, as physicists were of Neutrinos at the time that Mel Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger did their works. Of course I'm not advocating understanding religious belief as scientific hypothesis, but the basic logic of the co-determinate is the same. One can clearly see that the logic of the co-determinate of which is speak is not a fallacy, formal or informal, it si not the same saying "I believe it so that proves it." It is not a radical move that I invented. It's the normal way correlations have been used to assume causality since modern science began. It's the use of the term "co-determinate" that gives atheist the idea that this is some new brand of logic I invented. If I called it "the correlate" they would probably not say that, and that's all it is. In that case they would turn around and say "correlations are not proof of causality." No, they are not, but on the hand I did not claim to prove it. I only claimed that it's reasonable to draw a conclusion from the assocaition!
Here's an even more interesting twist: Since the work in 1962 science assumed that Nutrinos were proved, but they didn't have direct proof until much latter:
Fermi lab: Phyiscs at Fermilab
Discoveries at Femrilab: The Tau nutrition
7/09/2000
The "detection" of muon was in 1962 and yet it says the first direct evdience of the subatomic particles called tau neutrinos wasn't until 2000. I know these are different particles that are coming out of a different stage in the process. But the fact remains,t he original hypothesis was merely an attempt to explain the actions of certain particles in a certain context, theory was manufactured to fit the apparent case. The theory was latter born out with empirical proof.
Much the same thing has happened with respect to the scientific study of religious experience. First people has such experinces for thousands of years. They developed an explanation for them (God, the divine, the supernatural). With that explication there evolved a complicated economics of metaphor that emerged as a means of understanding that which is beyond understanding. Then after all that fuss the hypothesis is partially corroborated with empirical scientific techniques (such as the M scale). What has been corroborated is that the process works as we would expect it to in living up the exceptions derived form our teachings on the divine. Real experinces that are truly effecting the brain, produce real measurable concrete change in life and a valuable way of life that revolutionizes the lives of those having these experinces, and dramatic and positive way. Thus the scientific findings corroborate that the experiences conform to what the divine is suppossed to do. But we should be surprised since that understanding is derived from the experinces themselves, but now that process is proved valid through science.
While atheists reading this are trowing things at the screen and shouting "It doesn't prove the origin of it!" Remember, I never claimed "proof!" But why is it not reasonable to assume that the origin is the divine, since it conforms to our ideas of what it suppossed to be? After all that is literally exactly what the supernatural actually was in its original conception. Thus it is a reasonable construel. I never said it was "proof" (except in the practical sense, close enough to proof to place confidence in the hypothesis). In response to this some atheists have lunched an old familiar tactic from message boards, ridicule of a hypothesis by use of reduction to absurdity. So they will say there's a high correlation between global warming and pirates, therefore, global warming causes piracy. This is suppossed to prove the fallacy and stupidity of asserting a "co-determinate." Reductio Ad Absurdum is not necessarily the the best advised course for an argument. It is totally fallacious to think that just becasue one can construct a false assocaition based upon absurdities doesn't mean a logically valid assocaition is illogical. The logic of the argument within the argument is what must determine weather or not an association is logical. This relates back to the soundness of an argument. All they are saying at this point is "that's not sound," but their only reason for thinking so is that they don't like the conclusion I'm drawing. They cannot tell me why the argument is unsound without jacking my claims to the level of proof. But I don't claim proof.
Here's how the exchange recently went on my message boards, discussin the argument with several atheist friend's whose imput I value highly: Qunatum Troll, Fleet Mouse and La Canuck, this is La Canuck.
The source used on the fermilab website:
**sources on religious experience among neanderthals scroll toward bottom of that page. More and better sources will be in my book.
fifty years with the cult site at Rosaring
British Archaeology: When Burial begins. The issue with burial is that sites such as that of Shandadar show early burial with medicinal herbs and mushrooms. Where there are mushrooms among ancient man (or prehistorical pre homo spieans) we can be sure there was mystical experience. The healing powers of mushroom are not that obvious. they have always been used for the effects of the sylosycibin. These are gestures toward the afterlife, and belief in afterlife marks religious experince.
Gods of pre historic man
Before going into specifics let me draw a couple of analogies. First the idea of smoking as a cause of cancer. In 1963 (or so) the Surgeon General made the ruling that smoking might be the cause of cancer and thus a warning was printed in cigarette packs. That ruling was made not because they had direct scientific proof. In fact when the tobacco companies responded that science could not find a mechanism in tobacco smoke that causes cancer, they were right about that. They remained right about it until this century. For almost a quarter of a century the whole campaign and war against smoking rested totally upon statistical correlation. I used this fact to indicate that science takes correlational proof seriously as proof. It's not illogical to assume that if a correlation is tight enough causality is a logical inference. The atheist response has been "but the link has been proved." Now that is true, but only within this decade, and quite recently. That is typical. The fact that the link was proved and a mechanism found over 25 years latter doesn't in the least blunt the fact that for a quarter of a century science was willing to assume that is a fact based upon statistical correlation. This is all common knowledge. I remember when the Surgeon General made the announcement, even though I was a small child. I remember when cigarette adds were banned. A multi million dollar industry, probably a billion dollar industry was destroyed and taken down all on the basis of statistical correlation.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to conclude that science respects a good correlation; we may treat correlations as causality if (and only if) the correlation is tight enough. Another analogy, is that of the neutrino. Before I go into that let me point out that I am not arguing from analogy. I understand that the similarity to cases in these analogies is not proof of the existence of God. I am not saying that. The function of an analogy is to illustrate an idea, that exactly what I'm about here, nothing more. My argument does not proceed from arguing from analogy. But the fact is atheists treat the correlation of God to religious experinces as though there is no implication of God's reality in the experiences because, they think, there is no proof of causality in a correlation. But I am here illustrating the fact that their beloved priesthood of knowledge, the scientist, is willing to assume a strong correlation as rational warrant for a causal relationship.
The second example is that of the neutrino.
DONUT homeFermi National Acceleration Laboratory*:
6/29/01
Nutrinos
Neutrinos didn't emerge onto the particle physics scene until 1930, when Wolfgang Pauli invented the neutrino to "save" conservation of energy, which was under threat from observations of beta decay in radioactive materials. Scientists such as Henri Bequerel and Marie and Pierre Curie performed the first studies into radiation starting in 1898. In the years that followed radiation was classified into 3 categories: alpha, beta and gamma. In studying beta radiation, scientists discovered a disturbing phenomenon. It seemed that when a nucleus underwent beta decay, which consisted of the emission by a neutron of an electron to create a proton, conservation of energy was violated. There was a missing amount of energy that could not be accounted for by their measurements or calculations. In 1930 Pauli made his hypothesis....
It was not until 1933 that Pauli admitted the possibility of a zero mass neutrino (the discovery of the neutron in 1932 by James Chadwick forced him to change the hypothesized particle's name to neutrino). Today we know that neutrinos have some unknown mass and that they move close to the speed of light. The first detection of neutrinos occurred in 1956 by Clyde Cowan and Fredrick Reines who found a convenient source of neutrinos--nuclear power plants. Power is created in nuclear plants when atoms undergo nuclear fission, a process of which the neutrino is a byproduct. Cowan and Reines employed a 400-L tank of cadmium chloride as their target. The neutrinos struck a proton inside the target, producing a positron and a neutron. That positron encountered an electron; the two annihilated each other, producing two gamma rays (or photons). The neutron was absorbed by a cadmium chloride atom, producing a photon at a 15-microsecond delay from the emission from the positron. Using this knowledge of the photon emission, Cowan and Reines were able to detect the electron neutrino.
Leon Lederman, Mel Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger followed with the detection of the muon neutrino in 1962. They fired a GeV beam of protons through a target creating pions, which decayed into muons and muon neutrinos. Thick shielding halted the muons but the neutrinos continued until they entered a detector where they produced muons, decaying into electrons and a photon that were observed in the spark chambers.
Pauli descibes his reasoning in asserting an unproven hypotheis (the nutrino)
I have hit upon a desperate remedy to save the "exchange theorem" of statistics and the law of conservation of energy. Namely, the possibility that there could exist in the nuclei electrically neutral particles, that I wish to call neutrons, which have spin 1/2 and obey the exclusion principle and which further differ from light quanta in that they do not travel with the velocity of light. The mass of the neutrons should be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass and in any event not larger than 0.01 proton masses. The continuous beta spectrum would then become understandable by the assumption that in beta decay a neutron is emitted in addition to the electron such that the sum of the energies of the neutron and the electron is constant...
Now I'm sure atheists are saying "that's just the way science works. State a hypothesis and test it." Of course it is, and that's fine. But the problem is that's pretty much what has been done in regard to mystical experince. Religious believers have been a mot more definite about their hypothesis than Pauli was about his, but it's the same thing really, and with very similar results. The only real difference is the scientist can eventually get "absolute" proof (in a scientific sense) when the question is a an empirical one, but we can't get this kind of certainty of God. Nevertheless, we can be as certain, thanks to the M scale, as physicists were of Neutrinos at the time that Mel Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger did their works. Of course I'm not advocating understanding religious belief as scientific hypothesis, but the basic logic of the co-determinate is the same. One can clearly see that the logic of the co-determinate of which is speak is not a fallacy, formal or informal, it si not the same saying "I believe it so that proves it." It is not a radical move that I invented. It's the normal way correlations have been used to assume causality since modern science began. It's the use of the term "co-determinate" that gives atheist the idea that this is some new brand of logic I invented. If I called it "the correlate" they would probably not say that, and that's all it is. In that case they would turn around and say "correlations are not proof of causality." No, they are not, but on the hand I did not claim to prove it. I only claimed that it's reasonable to draw a conclusion from the assocaition!
Here's an even more interesting twist: Since the work in 1962 science assumed that Nutrinos were proved, but they didn't have direct proof until much latter:
Fermi lab: Phyiscs at Fermilab
Discoveries at Femrilab: The Tau nutrition
7/09/2000
An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced on July 21, 2000 the first direct evidence for the subatomic particle called the tau neutrino, the third kind of neutrino known to particle physicists. They reported four instances of a neutrino interacting with an atomic nucleus to produce a charged particle called a tau lepton, the signature of a tau neutrino.
The "detection" of muon was in 1962 and yet it says the first direct evdience of the subatomic particles called tau neutrinos wasn't until 2000. I know these are different particles that are coming out of a different stage in the process. But the fact remains,t he original hypothesis was merely an attempt to explain the actions of certain particles in a certain context, theory was manufactured to fit the apparent case. The theory was latter born out with empirical proof.
Much the same thing has happened with respect to the scientific study of religious experience. First people has such experinces for thousands of years. They developed an explanation for them (God, the divine, the supernatural). With that explication there evolved a complicated economics of metaphor that emerged as a means of understanding that which is beyond understanding. Then after all that fuss the hypothesis is partially corroborated with empirical scientific techniques (such as the M scale). What has been corroborated is that the process works as we would expect it to in living up the exceptions derived form our teachings on the divine. Real experinces that are truly effecting the brain, produce real measurable concrete change in life and a valuable way of life that revolutionizes the lives of those having these experinces, and dramatic and positive way. Thus the scientific findings corroborate that the experiences conform to what the divine is suppossed to do. But we should be surprised since that understanding is derived from the experinces themselves, but now that process is proved valid through science.
While atheists reading this are trowing things at the screen and shouting "It doesn't prove the origin of it!" Remember, I never claimed "proof!" But why is it not reasonable to assume that the origin is the divine, since it conforms to our ideas of what it suppossed to be? After all that is literally exactly what the supernatural actually was in its original conception. Thus it is a reasonable construel. I never said it was "proof" (except in the practical sense, close enough to proof to place confidence in the hypothesis). In response to this some atheists have lunched an old familiar tactic from message boards, ridicule of a hypothesis by use of reduction to absurdity. So they will say there's a high correlation between global warming and pirates, therefore, global warming causes piracy. This is suppossed to prove the fallacy and stupidity of asserting a "co-determinate." Reductio Ad Absurdum is not necessarily the the best advised course for an argument. It is totally fallacious to think that just becasue one can construct a false assocaition based upon absurdities doesn't mean a logically valid assocaition is illogical. The logic of the argument within the argument is what must determine weather or not an association is logical. This relates back to the soundness of an argument. All they are saying at this point is "that's not sound," but their only reason for thinking so is that they don't like the conclusion I'm drawing. They cannot tell me why the argument is unsound without jacking my claims to the level of proof. But I don't claim proof.
Here's how the exchange recently went on my message boards, discussin the argument with several atheist friend's whose imput I value highly: Qunatum Troll, Fleet Mouse and La Canuck, this is La Canuck.
Re: argument from sign
Post by Metacrock on Wed Jan 28, 2009 7:21 pm
LACanuck wrote:
Metacrock wrote:that feeling and its association is the reason why we have religion, that's the basis for belief that's been around for 65,000 years. Its' always been taken so, it's the basis of what we talk about religion at all. it's the underlying bottom reason for belief.
there's absolutely not reason to construe it as God given its history and associations.
La Canuck:Do you have a citation for the 65,000 year claim? More out of interest than anything nefarious. :)
Metacrock:yes, several. but i have to get into my book file to see it. QT could probably get up faster. He has copies my ms.**
(note: here I will give some sources below)**
La CanuckBut having a sense of something bigger than we are causing us to feel warm and fuzzy can be explained using evolutionary arguments.
Metacrock: no so far
La Canuck: And the conversion of 'something bigger' to religion and god is not a challenging path to walk either. So making a claim that the 'something bigger' has no other reasonable explanation that the existance of god does not stand up to detailed examination.
Metacrock: No that's fares. All you are doing is applying standard reductionism to lose the phenomena. O this is important to me, so I'll just pretend it's not there and then make the argument based upon reducing what really happens to soemthing I want to deal with. That's the basis of the strategy you are using.
that's one of the things that makes me so angry. the dishonest nature of atheism, you can't accept that other people have their own experiences. you are trying to control what other people feel and to expalin it away so that what is important to them becomes just bull shit only what's important to you can remain as "fact."
I get more and more angry ever time I think about it.
Metacrock wrote:It has always been sufficient since long before the bible. it's the basis of why religion exists. its' is the supernatural. this is litterateur what the supernatural originally was.
the correlation is 350 studies. it's as strong as smoking and cancer.
La Canuck: How many of the 350 studies consider the possibility that a high concentration of seratonin receptors is strongly correlated to a high score on the M-scale? I've asked this question in the past and haven't seen an answer. Unless the studies do account for this, the conclusions of the studies are put into question.
Metacrock: serotonin argument is crap. I know you are proud because it's your baby, but I have disprove it several times. you did not answer any of the 5 tie breakers I argued. you totally sloughed the very concept without answering any of them.
Griphiths who did the study you first first sited, is a friend of Hood's. He accept mystical experince, he is not one of these reductionists who reduces everything to chemicals. Hood reacts to that argument with a yawn. No offense.
On the one hand I do admire your brightness for spotting that. It may not be a bad argument it may be something to follow up. But it hardly some big deal breaker. no not in any way. you have to at least comment on the tie breakers before I will even consider it has having deal breaking potential.
La Canuck: So no, the correlation is not nearly as strong as smoking and cancer.
Metacrock:you don't know what a correlation is then. Because that has nothing to do with disproving the causality. The correlation is as tight because it's there. you want to interject an unproved counter causality that's nothing unique and is taken out by my previous responses other arguments about chemical determinism.
(addendum:I also want to point out--this was not part of that post--why does it have to be as strong as cancer and smoking to be a valid hypothesis in which to place confidence? The correlation of smoking and cancer is extremely tight).
but no! you have the magic bean. you have the big deal atheist excuse not to believe just like with all God argument, any possibility however remote and ridiculous becomes an iron clad disproof because it is remotely possible!
The cigarettes in the rat studies had cork in the tabaco, so I could make the American Spirit argument and say the corrolation on smoking and cancer is gone. Because it' could be that natural tabaco doesn't cause cancer.
Metacrock continues:It' the notion that we cant' make a logical construable whereas you make them all the time. the discussion you had on evolution the other day, here in the other thread, thats' all you did was construe. but when you guys do it it's science and that's ok.
when we do it its some little made up fallacy like "reason for belief" "fallacy of believing in something."
La Canuck:Actually, the problem I've always had is that you move from one correlation (thinking of god = warm and fuzzy) to another (thinking of god = god exists) as if they were one and the same. As I said, there are other explanations for the first correlation besides the conclusion that you draw.
Metacrock: this is another thing that makes me angry. you are a smart guy, but in God argument you just throw that away and say a lot things that are just not smart. like this. I have never said. I said it's a rational construe. get it?
rational construe that means it's rational to construe that way. I did not say it proves it i said it's rational to construe that way. now may times/
The source used on the fermilab website:
*An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced on July 21, 2000 the first direct evidence for the subatomic particle called the tau neutrino, the third kind of neutrino known to particle physicists. They reported four instances of a neutrino interacting with an atomic nucleus to* produce a charged particle called a tau lepton, the signature of a tau neutrino.
**sources on religious experience among neanderthals scroll toward bottom of that page. More and better sources will be in my book.
fifty years with the cult site at Rosaring
British Archaeology: When Burial begins. The issue with burial is that sites such as that of Shandadar show early burial with medicinal herbs and mushrooms. Where there are mushrooms among ancient man (or prehistorical pre homo spieans) we can be sure there was mystical experience. The healing powers of mushroom are not that obvious. they have always been used for the effects of the sylosycibin. These are gestures toward the afterlife, and belief in afterlife marks religious experince.
Gods of pre historic man
Saturday, January 03, 2009
God; the framework through which all that is not God coheres
I have a theory that God is the basis of reality, the framework through which all that can be distinguished from God exists. In explicating that framework I think of it as a mind, and what we know as reality is a thought in that mind. In this essay I would like to briefly explore the results of holding this theory, viz God and time.
The problem of God and time is a thorny one in two respects. First, because the idea that God is outside of time is the most popular Christian view, probably influenced by C.S. Lewis. This causes problems in areas such as foreknowledge. How can we change our minds, and thus have free will, if God knows the result. Any mind changing would prove God wrong. Secondly, its a problem for our understanding of creation. This is in two respects. (a) with God outside of time there can be no change, no motion, no becoming. so how could God think to create, let alone act to create? (b) The problem of the creation as an event. With no time the Big bang is no longer an event with a beginning, middle and end, but an "event horizon" which has no beginning.
This view I'm discussing, which I call the "Berkeley influenced view," offers answers for all of these. Now I have answers for them anyway, but they don't seem to make an impression. So let's try this:
This is the conventional view: Imagine a great big room. In that room is a big beach ball and a guy (with a white beard who loves dearly for reasons unknown qua qua qua). God is the guy, the big room is outside of time and beach ball is space/time and on the surface of the ball is time. That doesn't solve the problem but it shows us with what we are dealing. In my view, however, the big room is God's mind. There is no guy and the beach ball, still space/time is a thought in that mind. The difference is the conventional view places God in some strange unknown space called "outside time" the relationship to God is unknown. Now in my "almost Berkeleian" idea there is also ambiguity. What is beyond this mind? In what other reality does this mind exist? I have to assume that there is no "beyond" event horizon where God is concerned. The mind is all there is.
The problems are solved in the following way:
(1) The problem of foreknowledge
there isn't any. The future has not happened yet, so God can't know it as a "done deal." That sounds heretical and I'm sure it will strike many as "something wrong,deeply wrong." Nowhere in scripture is God's relationship to time spelled. out. It may not be possible to be outside time and this has been pointed out by more than one physicist. But the idea of God sitting beyond it all looking at time spread before him as a tapistry seemed to solve so many problems and became so popular it was stamped with the approval of true doctrine. It is not true doctrine. Before relativity theory no one knew that idea. The Church fathers never thought of God being outside of time in the sense of transcending space/time. Augustine did actually think God was beyond time but that was because he had the concept of the Platonic forms to tell him that, but it still wasn't in that sense of "the laws of physics and the big bang."
This will bother people because they will say "we can't trust God to save us or protect us if he doesn't know the future, How can he know the end of the world?" I didn't say God doesn't know, I said he doesn't know the future as a done deal, as this tapestry of time laid out before him as he sits in his transcendent location beyond event horizon. God knows two things: (1) he can estimate via probabilities better than any super computer or anyone or anything else; (2) he knows what he can do. He knows that if is his purpose to bring about an end, he can bring it about even if the circumstances aren't precisely known. So we can't say "God doesn't know the future" but he may not know it as "done deal." Of course that also means in God's figuring he would naturally leave room for mind changing and thus, free will.
(2) Problem of Creation
In a timeless state, no change thus no creation. But God is not in a timeless state. Time could run eternally, but an even better answer is that time is just a conventionality in the mental construct of our reality. Moreover, the consequences of non time are as well. The reality in which God dwells is not governed by the laws of physics, those are part of the mental construct that holds this reality in the mind of God. God's true reality is controlled by imagination, God's imagination not physics.
(3) The problem of creation
This could get very complex and I don't want it to be so I will deal with this problem tomarrow night.
to be continued....
Thursday, January 01, 2009
anncoucnement about Doxa Forums
there is a software corruption. It is telling everyone they are banned. It even tells me I'm banned. I do not know how to fix it. I need some computer person to come help me.
but try to register or log in anyway other have found it doesn't really stop them.
but try to register or log in anyway other have found it doesn't really stop them.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Causality in Miracle Hunting
In the discussions of miracles several atheists have made some big misconceptions.
(1) mistaken assumptions about my knowledge of correlation and cause.
some assume that since they are clever enough to know the very basic information, the difference in correlation and causality, that I must not know that because I'm a Christian and Christians are stupid, and they are so very clever to know some basic fact that all high school kids should get, correlation is not causality.
But what they don't get is that just i argue inductively that correlation is indicative of a cause if certain conditions obtain, that doesn't mean I don't know the difference.
Quote:
(2) What these very clever atheist don't get is that correlation is indicative of cause.
part of the problem is that certain people don't seem know what indicative means. Be that as it may, there is an epistemological gap in our knowledge it a problem at the most fundamental philosophical level. We can only establish causality in one way, buy making very correlations and eliminating alternate causes. This is the only way there is, and that's what Hume really proved with the billiard balls.
science can't prove causes. We can only prove correlations. When I assume causes on miracles, it's the only way we ever establish cause. Hans says "only if we eliminate the alternate causes." Yes, that's true, but it also leads to recursion of the original problem. Because if we can't observe causality and it must be inferred from correlation, then you can't say "I have eliminated an alternate cause by showing causality and eliminating it." That's just a repeat of the same problem. The alternate causes are only possibilities, they are not proven either. What is boils down to is in the final analysis a really tight correlation is the only way to determine cause. Although it is important to eliminate the alternative possible causes, essential in fact. What this means is I am right to assume causes from correlations, given that I can eliminate alternatives, and I usually can.
All of this means that medical evidence showing the disease went away, when examined by scientific medicos is good evidence for miracles. It's not absolute, there is no absolute. There will always be a gap in our epistemology. We will always have to make epistemic judgment.
(2) Don't need to show hit rate
The argument is made we must show the percentage of those healed vs not healed.
That's ridiculous. The reason is because we do not know the reason when someone is not healed. We cannot assume "O not bein healed means there's no ;god, because some are healed." Knowing the hit rate is important in many cases. such as prophesy, "so and so is a true prophet he predicted x," but how many predictions did the make that did not come true?
Knowing the hist rate is not true in terms of empirical evidence of healing because:
......(a) We don't know if the not healing is the result of no god, or God just didn't want to heal. Because a will is on the other end of the prayer we cannot treat it like a natural process and expect it to behave like a drug in a field trial.
......(b) Miracles are supposed to be impossible. they violate natural law. that's the whole theory of naturalism in a nut shell; nothing happens apart form natural law.
Thus if one miracle happens that proves miracles and all it takes is one. proving that x% are not healed doesn't prove anything. miracles are supposed to be impossible and can't happen, if one of them happens, or we can assume it happened, then that proves they do happen. We don't know the rate because God is not a drug. Divine healing is a matter of God's will.
(3) God's action in healing is not indicative of God's feelings about those healed or not healed.
This is the whole fallacy of the God hates amputees thing. You might as well say God hates breakfast because not once in my Christian walk has God ever made me scrambled eggs in the morning.
St. Augustine proved that there is no correlation between worldly prosperity or success and God's love. Rome was sacked by the vandals and everyone was saying "this disproves Christianity." but Augie said "no it doesn't, divine favor is not based worldly success. Stuff happens to Christians too, God causes it rain on the just and unjust."
(4) No double blind
Lourdes evidence does not need to be double blind First of all these are not "studies." They are not set up as a longitudinal study to see if healing works. These are real people and their journey to Lourdes is part of their journey in life in a search to be healed, they are not white lab mice plotting world conquest.
Secondly, double blind is used as a means of control so we know data is not contaminated by the subjects knowledge of the test. People suffering from an incurable disease cannot cure themselves. So it doesn't matter if they know. If the data shows the condition went away immediately and it can be documented that all traces are gone, the of course can assume healing, provided there is no counter cause such as he took a wonder drug before he left for Lourdes; they do certainly screen for that.
Of course there are still epistemological problems. There will always be such problems. That's why you can't prove you exist. But just as the answer to that problem is "Make epistemic judgment based upon regularity and inconsistency of data," so it goes with miracles, proving smoking causes cancer or anything else.
Thomas Reid got it right, we are justified in assuming empirical evidence provided it's strong evidence.
One more problem. When I say "correlation" this invites the question "how can you find a correlation if you don't know the hit rate? A correlation implies X and Y are seen together a lot, not just in one instance. But we can't go around giving people cancer and praying for them over and over to see if they ar always healed. We have to let multiple cases stand for correlation. But since we can't say why healing didn't take place we have to use empirical means to assert on a case by case basis.
__________________
come discuss this with me:
at Sense of the Numinous
Sunday, December 28, 2008
A Moment of Silence for the Dallas Cowboys
thank God their season is over. It's almost a mercy killing just get them into the off season.
Maybe next year they can play the Detroit lions everytime, then they get the wild card.
Maybe next year they can play the Detroit lions everytime, then they get the wild card.
ATheist Watch is back!
Atheist Watch Is my new Blog where I will chart the progress of the New Atheism in critical terms. Part of the mission of Atheist Watch is to keep track of the New Atheism as it transits from a lose collection of angry misfits to an actual hate group. I will also present arguments about major atheist ideas and others things pertaining to events connected with the atheist movement. I will use this blog for positive things. Here is where I will put God arguments and analyze ideas and constructs. But Atheist Watch will be used much as old Blog Fundie Watch was used. I hope Atheist Watch gets more traffic. Almost no one ever looked at Fundie Watch. I'm not sure why. but both groups need to be keep kept in view. Both New Atheism and fundies are a threat to society.
Hopefully this new incarnation of the site will be a more serious analysis of developments in the atheist community.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Atheist Incredulity: Historical Accuracy and Eyewitnesses
Loren the skeptic makes comments on the previous post (below) and they have gotten me thinking. The comments revolve around the skeptical ideas about the Gospels as exercises in realistic fiction in the first century, and the refusal to atheists to deal honestly with evidence. To the statment Kristen makes that C.S. Lewis points that one can tell if an eye witness account is realistic or not, Loren asks:
How did CS Lewis figure that out? It does not seem very apparent to me.That comes with the experience of reading. One clue to look for is the unreliability of the witnesses. Eye Witnesses also contradict in little ways; one says the bandit wore a green shirt, the other says he wore a black shirt. If all of witnesses say exactly the same thing one must suspect collusion. If witnesses are quoted they talk like real people. I am sure that doubting Thomas profession of faith: "my Lord and my God," is poetic license. A real guy would probably say "O wow man, I guess you are real." But then the use of poetic license doesn't mean the incident didn't happen or he didn't say anything. But the fact of it is did not have the kind of litterary mentality that would allow them to write a realistic novel for the purpose of spreading some cultish ideas that didn't really happen. The idea that would think "I'll write soemthing that rvery realistic and seems to be froma roving camera persective and includes of historically accuate material" would never occur to them. that assumes the persective of a documentary on film, it assumes travel and it assumes knowledge of maps, and the ability to understand a wide veriety of local custums all of which were unavaible to anyone in late antiqutiy.
Loren has heard the argument that they did not have modern novels in that day and in response she says:
Furthermore, some people had written more-or-less realistic novels in the Greco-Roman world -- consider Chariton of Aphrodisias's novel Chaereas and Callirhoe and Apuleius's The Golden Ass.The problem here is these are not novels in the modern sense and their sense of "realism" is not comprable to modern realism. But the assumptions skeptics make about this sort of realism as reflected in the Gospels (by that they mean the use of historical places and historical people) is based upon assumptions that come from being modern readers and would not occur to anceint people. For example there's more to realism than just not having miracles, or having things happen in the way they usually happen in life. The idea of realism as a modern writing style in novles came about in the ninteeth century it was very much related to scientfici view ponits. It was a reflection science and scientifci understanindg. It includes a lot more than just not having miracles or more than having real place names. It's a world view, it's a way of looking at the world. In it's latter developments it inculdes psychological insights such as stream of conscousness.
Arguments have been made such that Stephen Neil observes that all the details of Acts are accurate right down to the titles of local office holders. He remarks that this is something that is extremely hard to get right. The first thing people get wrong is the local title of an office holder. The fact that Luke always gets them right shows that he was there. He did travel in that area. No one in late Antiquity would think to go traveling in the area and absorbing local color just to get the titles right in a story. No one did that, no one would do it. No one would think to question it because most people did not travel boradly, they did not have modern conveience and theyd di not have reference books to look it up in, and you can see this in mideval paintings where all the basic facts about middle east are wrong; people often wear mideval hair stles and colothing in such paintings even though they are suppossed to be in the middle east in the first century, becasue they didn't have any way to know how far off they were.
They did not have a scientific undestading of nature, so they did have a realistic wrting style that reflected pscychological insight or any real eason to reflect realistically the way nauturalistic process work. The assumptions the atheists are making are partly wrapped up in assuing that the realism is to make the miracle believeable. But no one would think that way at the time. No one one question miracles on the gorunds that they didn't happen, or that they were improbable. They did actualy qustion miracles. The idea I'v seen atheists state that ancient people were stupid and supersticious and would never question miracles, is not only false but a contradiction to the previous assumption about reailsm. But it is not true that they never questioned miracles. They did concern themselves with "did this really happen? Is it a trick." Many wonder workers were expossed. Tacistus has a hobby of exposing false resurrections. But they diud not doubt themon scientific grounds or upon the grounds that "we never see this happen." They were just sharp enough to know that there are tricks and to wondef "is it real."
On the other hand they did not have a cocnept of modern scietnfic proof. The basic question "are miracles possible becaues they are unscientific" would never occur to them. Thus there is no point in writting reailstically for that reason. It's not an attempt to make miracles seem plausible because they didn't frame the qeution of miracles in that way. They did not have a concept of modern scientific proof. Now Largen makes a statement that tells me this her way of thinking, that she equates realism with naturalism (which is a modern tendency and they would not think of it in the firrst century):
I will, however, concede some less-than-realistic features of the latter one. In it, the central character gets turned into a donkey after meddling with some sorcery, and after several misadventures, he has a vision of Isis who reveals to him how to become human again. But is that any more unrealistic than all those miracles that Jesus Christ had allegedly worked?She's talking about the "novel" the Godlen Ass. This tells me she is equating natuarlism wiht realism because he calls miracles "unrealistic" so she is thinking that things that violate scientific probablity are less realistic than the norm of our perceptions that such things don't happen. That was not the norm of perception for the ancinet world, they did not think in terms of mathemtical probablity. They woudl not reule out miracles on the grounds that "this doesn't happen enough." so they would not equate miracles as unrealistic nor realistic writting with a lack of miracles.
In making this assumption about naturlism = realism, miracles = unrealistic, they are missing the point of miracles. The atheists want to deal with them in a framework of modern scientific thinking,a and they project that back onto the atittude of the ancients. But this would not occur to the ancients. They would think of miracles in terms of the meaning of the event. Its' an omen, a sign, a portent. It has it's own meaning, it's as though nature itself is a book and we read it in a literrary sense. So Jesus heals the sick, they would not ask "do we ever diseases remitting naturalistically?" They would say "he did this to show us that God can heal our problem, so he can heal sin too." They would not say "this is unrealistic because it doesn't happen enough." so the bita bout the swin run over the cliff and die, they would say "this is a sign that thsoe who reject the law of God will come to a bad end of their own blindness and her instrict of sin." Something like that. They would realte the meaning of the event itself to some grand desing of meaning in a larger sense and in a litterary sense (because the use of symoblism in literature is a hold over form that kind of thinking). They would not think about it in terms of naturlism.
She closes her comments by stating:
And as to Q, it was a collection of sayings, and such a collection need not imply a single originator. I've seen similar sort of skepticism about Aesop, the supposed teller of Aesop's Fables.As far as that point is related to incredultiy concerning Jesus' statements it's basically coming from Dourghty and the Jesus mythers. When all you have is incredulity you don't think ctirically. Now there is a huge difference in Aesop (and Homer and all such cases) and the Q source as sayings of Jesus. The difference is that Aesop's fables reverberated around the ancient world for some time. Homer was about a thousand years old even in Christ's time. I'm sure there were many Homers becuase the Illiad travaled through many countires over many centuries, and it reflected two sides, the Hitite's who backed Troy and the Greeks, who destoryed Troy. The Q source circulated for a brief time, about twenty years by the time it was written and began to be incorportated into the early versions of the Gospel writtings. This is not enouh time for multiple authors. The assertion is based upon Jesus myther assumptions anyway which are totally destoryed in my critique of Doherty's Evolution of Jesus. One of the major assumptions is that the alledged stoic nature of these sayings marks them as Greek origin and ties them to an older history. But as several scholars point out (again in the same prevously linked essay) there is nothing particularly stoic per se about them. These sayings could be stoic they could be said by almost anyone.
Atheists have no real ability to confront the evidence. They contradict themselves on eye witnesses, first taunting that the Gospels are not eye witness testimony, then when one proves that they are, stating that eye witnesses get it wrong and don't matter. They can't confront the fact of historical accuracy in the Gospels, trying to dismiss eye witness testimony with modern assumptions about ancient writers. Historical accuracy and eye witness testimony is not absoulte proof. You can call it "weak" but it has to be taken as part of a cumuliative case. But when all you have is arguemnt form incredulity (I refuse to believe no matter what) then proof and evidence don't matter. We should stop caring about the taunts of evidence and eye witnesses because atheists don't really care about them anyway. They will always fail to undestand the evidence becuase one cannot think critically when one has nothing but blanket incredulity. But the Christian whose faith is floundering needs to grow past the need for "absolute" proof and seek God on the existential level. The real issues of faith are not about proof, we are not as a species capable of real objectivity. We really need to understand the direct phenomenological (first hand experince) of God's relaity, not merely theoretical evidence.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Atheists, Incredulity and Evidence.
eye witness testimony in Gospels
I responded to atheist taunts on a message board, taunts saying "there's no eye witness evdience in the Gospels." So I said there is an proceeded to show how we know that. This elicited two general sort of response. The first is a philosophical denial of the possibility of miracles, plus an assortment of other incredulous statements. All but one responded in this manner. That one, who i call "mr. knowledge" (his real screen name is "Grog") ties the "factual" approach. I place this in scare quotes he's a Jesus myther so what is fact to Jesus mythers? It's as though they leave the knitting gritty to one guy who likes it, and the other just assert their philosophical position is Superior in and of itself without evidence or argument.
I think it's pretty clear that they expect their ideology alone to banish evidence. To make the claim "there's no evdience one would expect that evdience would be important. But time and time again they refuse to argue evdience falling back instead upon their ideological statements.
Here are the arguments I made which are just a summary of things on my website.
summary of evidence for eye witness content in Gospels.
I've given this stuff many many many many times, no one has ever disprove it to any degree.
scholarly cautions:
*I can grant that there are embellishments,
*that we don't know much,
*that we need to know more to have a real historical picture.
But the assert that they are just made up bs and we don't know anything is foolish.
(1) Not written 40 years or more latter: written 18 years latter.
This is arrived at through textaul criticism, but it's a fact. its' a known fact.
there are several sourcesthat predate the Gospels in their current form.
(a) Q
(b) G.Thomas
(c) G. Peter
(d) L
(e) M
(f) PMR (pre Mark readaction)
(g) Passion narrative of the PMR
(h) Paul's saying source
(i) Egerton 2
(j) Gospel of the savior
(k) may others (we have 54 lost Gospels in all)
the point here is that they the material was circulating in written form as early as mid century when lots of eye witnesses were still alive to challenge any major mistakes or lies.
(2) Extra Biblical Eye witness claims
(a) Papias says he learned the story from Aristion and the Elder John and others who knew the Apostles.
(b) Polycap claimed to have learned from the Apostle John
even if he was wrong and he meant the Elder John, he was an eye witness (according to Papias) and probably the last redactor of the Gospel of John and author of the Epistles. at least second and third John. The writing style i think is different between 1st J and 2/3 J.
(3) eye witness claims in the Bible
(a) 1st John claims to have been a eye witness
(b) 1 Peter calims to have been an eye witness.
(4) Gospel of John clearly contains eye witness materiel
John identifies Lazarus as the BD because he calls "the beloved disciple." The fact that only in John do we see intimate portraits of Jesus' life, his emotions, his private circle of freinds who don't pop up anywhere else, this indicates that they had not only eye witnesses but people who knew him closely.
(5) dates pushed back
(a) Mark
Version used by Luke is not the same as that used by Matt. So the fact that there were multiple versions (and the idea of the UR Mracus as been around for over 100 years) lead some scholars to see Marks evolving out of a process that began as eralry as the late 30s.
(b) Matt has been found quoted in the Talmud from a section historically understood to be first century. Thus this pushes back the date of mark (given the assumptions made about copying) to before AD 70.
(6) Probability favors eye witness input given community authorship
(a) oral tradition guaranteed accurate passage of info
Now the assumption that the early story were just wild rumors is totally wrong. The Jews had an oral culture, they had oral traditions. They were supposedly passing down the material in the Talmud since the time of Moses.
In an oral culture they understood how to keep factual knowledge straight and they had good memories because they understood memory techniques and could memorize huge amounts of stuff. Even today we still see in Turkey where bards can memorize the whole Iliad and spit it back word for word. The Jews did this. they memorized the words of their teacher.
(b) Gospels were not written by individuals. but by communities.
this is the consensus now in scholarly circles. See Luke Timothy Johnson
(c) Acts shows us the early church living together in communal situation and it says they studied the scriptures every day. They were looking for verses about Jesus int he : find prophesy and connect it all up to what happened.
(d) Thus they were passing on the story in the community and telling them under controlled conditions and each community probalby had it's own eye witnesses.
that's why John focuses just on MM and Matt has Mary the mother and a whole set of about four women because the John community got MM (which is according to church legend) and the other communities probably had the other women.
There are a couple who actaully do try to aruge with the conept of eye witnesses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iceage View Post
I have to ask where are the eye witness accounts of disinterested parties? It would be like showing up at a crime scene and only have eye witness accounts from one biased side.
you are confused about the nature of writing in late antiquity. they did not have a concept of "first person objective testimony." they did not have a concept of modern courts, science, or proof.
what we have proves that Jesus existed, that the taught that was Messiah and that he was at least believed to have worked miracles and risen from the dead. that's all we need becasue the rest is supplied in our own lives as individuals.
Quote:
Why no letters home from Roman soldiers talking about the mysterious events. There are original letters from Roman soldiers from the same time period telling mom thanks for the socks. (which is interesting in itself that we have original letters from soldiers but not the Gospels).
most Roman soldiers were illiterate. Cumont proved that Roman solider were impressed enough with Christianity to take it back and make it part of their mithric cult. But any writing form a roman solider is very rare.
Quote:
http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/paplet1.htm
Or some "eye witness" accounts from the enemy camp such as a Jewish Pharisee documenting the strange account of resurrection of the Saints.
Jewish writing from the first century that surface in the talmud prove that Jesus existed, and that it was claimed that he worked magic
Quote:Ice age:
Second why would God go though all the trouble of being resurrected and appear only to those of the inside group? Why not appear to Pilate and have a "You want the truth" moment, or Caesar, or the Greeks or the Chinese who could have and would have documented such a strange appearance.
Again I did not bring it up. It was their argument to begin wtih "no eye witnesses."
my answer:
Meta:you are confused about the nature of God. you are thinking as a big man in the sky. That's not it. that's not the nature of God.
My theory of soterological drama accounts for Why God doesn't just hold a press conference.
Quote: Ice Age:
Third "eye witness" of religious events are notoriously unreliable. Consider the "eye witness" account of the Golden Plates of the Mormon affair? Or the 'eye witness" accounts of the appearances of Mother Mary in Europe? Or the accounts of Roman rulers such a Vespasian healing people at the same time period.
Meta:Joe Smith was one guy. the Gospel communities were hundreds or thousands of people. Whole communities putting their testimony in.
Again he's not arguing against the evidence for eye witnesses. He's challenging the idea of thier value a priori once having made the assertion that we don't have any. I should have also pointed out that non religous modern day witnesses are unreliable.
The standard ideologcial argument says miracles don't happen enough. They avoid a strict circular argument by leaving it open ended in a technical sesne (becasue it is a probablity arguent) but in reality that they just assume odds are so totally overwhealming that no miracle will actually happen even though they don't say they can't.
This exchange is from a friend called "Emuse" and he is a freind. He's posted on CARM for a long time:
Quote:
| Quote:Metacrock before you tell me. you guys are always saying we don't have it. so here it is now you tell me what it proves. what does it prove if we don't have it? Non Christians present many arguments to counter or challenge the claims of Christianity. Some of those arguments are stronger than others for obvious reasons.With respect to documentation, I don't think that such arguments are very strong. Proximity to events does not seems to validate or negate the claim of a document. |
Meta: Not so much in and of itself. But it's a necessary first step if you follow a certain train of argument. You are also overlooking the eye witness factor. The living eye witnesses; more of them the closer to the event.
Quote:
| The main issue is with respect to claims of the miraculous ... and I have covered this before. I have pointed this out before in relation to passages such as this ... |
Meta: But that's just an ideological decision. Is' a philosophical objection, not an evidential one. The claim I'm addressing is the one that says "no evidence." you make that claim why get involved?
Quote:
13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
14They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Matthew 16:13-16
Even whilst Jesus was alive it was being claimed by others that he was a previously deceased prophet returned from death. Some even claimed that he was John the Baptist who had only recently been killed. The latter claim was popular enough for the disciples to be aware of it and Mark even suggests that it was popular enough for Herod to become aware of ... and embrace!!
Quote:
14King Herod heard about this, for Jesus' name had become well known. Some were saying, "John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him."
15Others said, "He is Elijah."
And still others claimed, "He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago."
16But when Herod heard this, he said, "John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!"
Mark 6:14-16
In a culture where people had a propensity for inventing miraculous claims, we must proceed with caution, especially when those individuals didn't have the benefits of modern knowledge.
I take the same stance to the apostles claims as I do to the claims of Joseph Smith et al. I assume that a miracle didn't actually take place unless there is good evidence (and it has to be very good) to think otherwise because miracles are statistically unlikely events by definition.
Meta:but to you "bad evdience" is evidence for miracles. period. any evdience for miracles is a priori bad evdience because there can't be miracles. So it's just circular reasoning driven by ideology. That's all you've got!
Quote:
| Quote:Meta (before) sorry that is circular reasoning. that is not a counter to eye witness evdience. you are assuming that miracles can't happen False. I said no such thing. |
Meta:o come on, you did too! you say it ever time.
Quote:
| I have never said that miracles are impossible .. I have merely said that they are statistically unlikely events so that even where a miracle is claimed it is still more likely that it isn't an actual miracle. |
Meta:that's just a ruse. It is a meaningless come back. for any time anyone says anything about miracle out it comes. defacto that is exactly what you are saying. so improbable they will never happen, just to cover yourself you don't say they can't just happen just that hey wont ever.
but there is no evidence you would ever get that you would admit is good. The Xray of the guy's lungs, didn't you say that it's no good unless I actually have the xrays with me?
you don't want to believer, don't worry you never have to
Quote:
| Quote:Meta (before) accounts of miracles are proof that the account is wrong. But that assume incorrectly. miracles happen. so you are wrong. so you assumption wrong. Did you miss the part where I said that a miracle was a statistically unlikely event as opposed to an impossibility? |
Meta:nothing more than a meaningless way out of the circular reasoning argument. Youuse the probability to dismiss all miracles a priori on the grounds that they are so improbable that this can't be one, but then it's not circular because you left this technicality to get out of it.
But you will never accept even the theoretical possibility of a miracle claim
the proff is your attitude toward evidence above.
Quote:
| Quote: Its' just that and nothing more, an ideological assumption! Which is something we all possess. |
Meta:yes but we don't all use it to legitimate circular reasoning.
Quote:
| Quote: you can't use that to rule out miracles from an account such as the Gospels. Because the claim prmia faice is that it's an account of the divine so we should expect miracles. Most, if not all miracle claims have a divine element. |
Meta:so? what's the problem?
Quote:
| Quote: so what if they are? I'm not mistaken about how fixed up my life.I am not mistaken about how god put me back together after I lost everything. no way I can ever deny the experinces of God that I have had. I can't deny, forget or be mistaken about that. When I was a Christian I had what I would call some very strong spiritual experiences that resulted in changes to my personality. Those changes (such as the fact that I stopped using vulgar language overnight) were at a deep level and convinced me of my faith for some time. Neither did I force those changes because I felt I had to ... it didn't come out of any sense of obligation. |
Meta:I bet nothing invalidated it either. Perhaps that was a degree of change. But I don't know your life or your story. But I"m willing to bet your reasons for chucking it have to do with discovering the Provencal nature of the kind of faith you had and not really having an alternative becasue you were either warned against or didn't know about liberal theology.
am I warm?
Quote:
| In the end I had to face up to the obvious. Those events didn't appear to relate to anything going on outside of my mind and the fact that they had a positive impact did not in and of itself entail that they were real. Telling children that Santa exists has very positive effects on their behaviour and makes the whole experience of Christmas so much more exciting ... but he still doesn't exist! |
Meta:that's a totally ridiculous assertion! First of all a positive impact is an indication that it's real and I think its absurd not to see that. In any other case you would say it is. it's the whole theory of trouble shooting.
you never hear "o it works it must be a lie." But the fact is that's exactly what religion is suppossed to do for you (only a milder version). So the fundie element really misled you in that they did not fully expalin what it was all aou were getting the goods.
Secondly, that is exactly what I said. you realized the Provencal nature of it and you just didn't know how to go forward.
Quote:
nothing more than rationalizing doubt. you are merely gainsaying the evidence for ideological reasons and rationalizing your doubt.
Quote:
| In the same way that we rationalize those things that we believe as well. Are you saying that it is wrong to rationalize things? |
Meta:I think you can figure out what's wrong with rationalization. I think you are sharp enough to have heard that term used in that way.
In the end it all just boils down to incredulity. They make the taunts and demand certain kinds of evidence and in the end they can't defend, don't really care, have other reasons for rejecting it and it just doesn't matter.
Metacrock
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