Historical Evidence for the Resurrection (Again)

[liamconnor]

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 336 by For_The_Kingdom]

Google "card house". Do you think that either of those card houses were created via the randomness of air, gravity, and the cards...or were the cards "placed" there...or "set" there by intelligent design?

Of course, you're probably not aware of the problem of the Intelligent Design argument - namely, that if the universe WERE intelligently designed, it would be literally impossible for a human to show that it is such, and without being able to show one's work, any claim of an ID'd universe falls by the wayside.
Your argument for this 'card house' (oh and by the way, do not tell us to google anything, if you want your debate opponents to look at something, supply a link) works because we are able to compare and contrast the cards with something not intelligently designed.
If the universe and everything in it were intelligently designed, how is this to be accomplished? If you hold up a rock that you claim is a part of an intelligently designed universe, do you have a rock formed purely from natural forces (i.e., not from your god) that I can use to compare and contrast?

Oh and as an added challenge - the Intelligent Design argument analogy, if followed "correctly" leads to there being multiple intelligent designers, and never just the one.
Your challenge is to think about this and tell me why. I already know the answer. I want to see if you can figure it out.

[marco]

I appeal to the "best explanation"...I have two options...

1. God did it
2. Nature did it

I have reasons to believe that it isn't possible for nature to have done it. Therefore, #1 is the only game left in town.

There are other options. When you don't know who committed a crime it is not acceptable to invent a culprit.

You assume something was "done". You assume there was a "doer". You assume what you see is what reality IS. You may be wrong about what constitutes reality. You assume that your brain, having hit on two possibilities, is therefore correct in limiting the possibilities to only two. When you ask what other ones there are, you assume that because we do not know, you must be right with your choice of only two. Thus you create God from naivety and ignorance. That is why the biblical God sometimes appears to be absurd.

[Kenisaw]

For_The_Kingdom writes:

Now, that's one of the things now isn't it. You can't present objective, tangible evidence that any deity exists, nor can you provide a model on how this deity would be able to interact with reality if it did.

All of that is in the process of being done.

A promise of future evidence is not evidence. But lets run with the assumption that all of that is in the process of being done, just for giggles.

In order for that process to happen, the people engaged in that "process" have to show that it is possible for the laws of the universe to not apply to something. I'm sure you see the logical hole is this, but I will spell it out so that we are sure everyone sees the problem. If they show that it is possible for the laws of the universe to not apply to something, then they aren't laws of the universe, are they. Which means that, literally, the entire body of work in every scientific field ever done is completely invalid. Which means that materials used for anything should fail at random times for no apparent reason. Bridges should collapse, water should suddenly fly apart and turn into hydrogen and oxygen, gravity should switch on and off. Literally everything in existence should at some point act outside the expected parameters than the millions of man hours of research and experimentation state they should.

Yet no one has ever found that. Even one tiny violation of one part of one law would pull the rug out from under all of it. So if these exceptions exist, where are they?

Since you seem to have intimate knowledge of some work going on that is going to provide us with this model, I'd love to hear about the details of it. Who's doing it?

As such, the null hypothesis takes over. Until such can be done, what you have is the logical fallacy known as 'Appeal to ignorance', also known as 'Appeal to personal belief'.

I appeal to the "best explanation"...I have two options...

1. God did it
2. Nature did it

I have reasons to believe that it isn't possible for nature to have done it. Therefore, #1 is the only game left in town.

If you are appealing to the best explanation, then why are you claiming the one devoid of even one scrap of empirical data supporting it is the "best"? I'd also love to hear how you know which god creature did it, or are you just saying that is A god but you don't know which one?

Since others have already asked you for your reasons why it is isn't possible for nature, I'll read that in your replies to those folks.

[For_The_Kingdom]

But an imaginary complex infinitely intelligent God could exist independent of anything? Sorry but that's not even remotely logical or rational.

What is illogical about it?

Imagining them to have been "set" by an invisible magician does nothing to explain them. In our world a magician explains "magic" because in our world a magician is actually an "illusionist" and the reason a magician explain his magic is because he can then explain how he actually created the illusion using natural processes.

I guess "imagining them to have been set" by nature is alllll good, huh?

Pretending that a magical "God" explains how a universe could come to be is no explanation at all

Why not?

, unless this God is also an "illusionist" who can explain how he does everything in rational natural processes.

I can imagine an immaterial person acting within the realm of nature, and if I can perceive it, it isn't impossible.

But if that's the case, then the rational natural processes could perform the "magic" without any need for any magician. So to hypothesize the existence of a God who performs the magic is simply unnecessary.

So if a magician causes a rabbit to appear out of a hat, at least we can say that the magician caused the rabbit to appear, even if we don't know why he did it.

But let you tell it; the rabbit just naturally popped in to being, uncaused, out of nothing, with no magician involved??

Hahahahahaha.

Saying that they are "mathematically precise" is meaningless because we invented our mathematics by observing how the universe behaves. Our mathematics is nothing more than our best attempt to try to describe the behavior of the physical world. Mathematics is not without its own problems.

Ever heard of the cosmological constants (or physical constants)?...they all have values. If any one of them were off by just the tiniest degree, life would not be permissible in the universe.

The odds of these constants getting their values by mere chance is so astronomical, that to believe it happened by mere chance is to believe in miracles.

The low entropy needed for life had to be placed there as an initial condition.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 343 by For_The_Kingdom]

If any one of them were off by just the tiniest degree, life would not be permissible in the universe.

To correct you (again) on that - life as we recognise it would not be possible (I don't think the word permissible fits in there). For all we know, a universe with different constants could have life but it could be something completely alien to our minds.
It is the height of arrogance to think that life as it exists on our planet is the
only way for life to occur, period, and therefore if the conditions for life are not as they are observed to be now, there therefore cannot be any life period.

[For_The_Kingdom]

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 345 by For_The_Kingdom]

Matthew has almost twice as many chapters in his book than Mark does. And besides, they are both giving autobiographies of Jesus, and there are only so many ways you can tell the same story as someone else without hitting the same details that was previously touched on by the other person..that is why we have both similarities, AND differences.

Um, the book ends with the young man telling the woman "He has risen" (v. 6). What the hell do you think he was talking about?

For someone who argues so strongly that there was a resurrection of Jesus, and who argues that this is because it is mentioned in the Gospels, you sure seem to know very little about them.

Gospel Mark originally had very little 'magic' in it - by 'magic', I mean 'magical' details such as a virgin birth. As far as Mark was concerned, Jesus had normal human parents like the rest of humanity. Nor does the author even attempt to trace Jesus's lineage back to King David.

Also, have a read of this

The two oldest manuscripts of Mark 16 (from the 300s) then conclude with verse 8,[1] which ends with the women fleeing from the empty tomb, and saying "nothing to anyone, because they were afraid." Many scholars take 16:8 as the original ending and believe the longer ending (16:9-20) was a later addition.

from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16#P ... _Scenarios

Now think about that for a moment. Mark is considered by scholars to be the OLDEST or earliest of the gospels. And yet, the oldest manuscripts that we do have for Mark have NO resurrection of Jesus - just a man in white who announces it, but no actual appearance from Jesus himself.

The majority of scholars believe that verses 9-20 were not part of the original text, and were an addition by later Christians.

So now the claim 'Jesus rose from the dead' is on extremely shoddy grounds (not that it wasn't before!). You also clearly do not understand what an autobiography is. An autobiography is someone writing their OWN life story, which the Gospels most decidedly are not. We have no writings in Jesus's own hand.

Second, the fact that we don't have any post mortem appearances in the earliest Gospel (Mark) is fine...considering the fact that we have Paul's letter to the Corinthians, at which he is preaching "Resurrection", and post mortem "appearances" of Jesus....and again, 1 Corinthians PREDATES all of the Gospels.

So for you, a resurrection happens when person A merely says that Person B has risen, there's no need for Person B to actually show up. For you, it's enough that Person A makes the claim.
Since you have just conceded that Mark doesn't contain any appearances from a risen Jesus, this then means that ALL we have to go on is the original claim by Paul.
That's it.
And claims CANNOT be used as evidence to justify a belief in the claims.
So now, at this point in the discussion, the claim "Jesus rose from the dead" comes SOLELY from Paul's mention of it in 1 Corinthians and isn't backed up by ANYTHING else. There is no independent mention of this resurrection. The other Gospels (Matthew, Luke and John) do not count, since there is no way to verify that their authors made the claims without any knowledge of what Paul had said.

Face it, Kingdom. You have nothing left to stand on. You have just acknowledged that Mark was edited and added onto, thus meaning that ANY claims found in Mark of a magical nature (such as a resurrection) are suspect and cannot be trusted. I can't trust what Gospel Mark reports about a resurrection when I learn that the mention of a post resurrection Jesus was originally NOT in Mark, but was added in later.

[marco]

That's not to say that Calculus in particular is "wrong". But it's certainly not a description of "how" the universe behaves. It's merely our way of getting numerical approximations that match up really well with the quantitative behavior of the universe.

And that is all we need to do just now, DI. I don't know who claims that calculus is a description of how the universe works; it is an instrument for obtaining solutions, and
very often theoretical solutions are not needed, but numerical approximations are far more valuable. If it works, why kick it?

I can't see why the Queen of Sciences should be maligned. She reigns well.

But we have strayed from the resurrected Christ. If error you seek search not in mathematics but in theology.

[WinePusher]

I'm quite serious. Of course I don't mean to imply that none of our mathematics is any good at all. Obviously much of it does work quite well. But often times as mere approximations.

Wrong. You see Divine Insight, your claims and ideas concerning mathematics are just dead wrong. Here you claim that most of mathematics boils down to 'mere approximations.'

Sorry, but you're wrong. Did you know that there's actually an entire field in mathematics devoted to approximating solutions? It's called numerical analysis, and even high school calculus students are taught basic numerical methods, ie: Newton's method for approximating roots, along with Euler's method (the tangent line method), and the Trapezoidal rule and Simpson's approximation.

Are you familiar with any of these elementary numerical methods? Also, did you know that numerical methods are usually only employed when an explicit analytical solution is impossible to obtain? Also, did you know that numerically approximated solutions are acceptable if and only if the error of approximation is relatively small?

And yes we stand on the shoulder's of giants in many instances, but we also stand on the shoulders of men who have made grave mistakes and have turned mathematics in very bad directions.

Name three.

In fact, that's precisely what needs to be examined. Exactly who's shoulders are we standing on, and why do we trust their shoulders to be the correct place to stand?

We stand on the shoulders of people like Gauss, Euler, Jordan, Galois, Fourier, Laplace, Lagrange, Riemann, Fermat, Cauchy, Dirichlet, Cayley, Kolmogorov, Banach, Poyla, and (in my humble opinion) von Neumann.

Please feel free to explain in great detail how these great mathematicians got it wrong.

Our current mathematical formalism is not anywhere near as sound as many people think.

Your opinion is noted. Your opinion is also meaningless and appears to have no facts to back it up.

In fact, engineers actually don't use pure mathematical formalism anyway. They actually ignore the pure mathematical formalism and do what actually works, which requires ignoring the actual formalism.

This is a gross oversimplification. Yes, engineers only use basic calculus, linear algebra and differential equations. The mathematical theory behind calculus, linear algebra and differential equations is generally only studied by mathematicians because engineers have no use for it. Engineers take the results and the theorems apply them accordingly, while mathematicians prove the results and formalize the theory behind the results.

Engineers study calculus, mathematicians study analysis.

Richard Feynman put it very nicely once when he said something along the lines that the universe doesn't "do" Calculus.

Obviously. Calculus is a language used to describe natural processes, namely change.

Calculus is merely our way of approximating what the universe is actually doing as best we can.

Wrong, already refuted above.

That's not to say that Calculus in particular is "wrong". But it's certainly not a description of "how" the universe behaves. It's merely our way of getting numerical approximations that match up really well with the quantitative behavior of the universe.

Wrong, already refuted above.

[Inigo Montoya]

[Replying to post 348 by WinePusher]

Were you even involved in the first 34 pages of this thread, or did you really just now storm in in an outrage about a math disagreement in a resurrection thread pointing out what's elementary, what should have been learned in high school, and proceeded to name drop mathematicians and applied theory?

Totally curious. Seriously, maybe you were here already. I didn't look. But damn. That's oddly combative, even for here.