Difflugia wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 9:45 am
Data wrote: ↑Sun Nov 26, 2023 1:14 amTell me you use the word evidence without knowing what the word evidence means.
Fine. "I'm a biblical apologist."
Then you should know the dictionary definition of the word evidence is: "the available body of facts or information indicating whether a
belief or proposition is true or valid" and the dictionary definition of the word truth is: "a
fact or belief that is accepted as true;" given that how is evidence supposed to mean anything other than faith? Here is evidence for, and here is evidence against. It means nothing.
Difflugia wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 9:45 am
You're using the same equivocation and slippery slope dodge behind most apologetic arguments. If you can argue that there's some sort of "interpretation" required, then yours, no matter how facile, is as good as anyone else's, no matter how robust. It's the other side of the same coin as "the Bible can be made to say anything."
No, far from it. I'm saying there are only two possible ways to interpret anything. Right or wrong. They both have variations but all either are right or wrong.
For example, Matthew was the only one to mention dead people emerging from their graves upon Jesus' death. It is assumed that these resurrected dead were walking around.
The omission of the dead people emerging from the graves by the other writers does not, of course, mean anything. Matthew was the first gospel to be written. In De viris inlustribus (Concerning Illustrious Men), chapter III, Jerome says: "Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language and characters for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed." So, this (Matthew having been the first gospel) might be a reason for the others having not included the dead people emerging from their graves.
Any serious scholar of the Bible could tell you that at Matthew 27:52-53 the Greek egeiro means simply raised up rather than resurrected back to life, and in addition to this "they" (meaning the bodies that were walking around) is a pronoun, and in Greek all pronouns have gender and "they" is masculine whereas bodies" (the bodies that were lifted up) is in the neuter. They are not the same.
Adam Clarke: "It is difficult to account for the transaction mentioned in verses 52 and 53. Some have thought that these two verses have been introduced into the text of Matthew from the gospel of the Nazarenes, others think the simple meaning is this: - by the earthquake several bodies that had been buried were thrown up and exposed to view, and continued above ground till after Christ's resurrection, and were seen by many persons in the city."
Theobald Daechsel's translation: "And tombs opened up, and many corpses of saints laying at rest were lifted up."
Johannes Greber's translation: "Tombs were laid open, and many bodies of those buried there were tossed upright. In this posture they projected from the graves and were seen by many who passed by the place on their way back to the city."
Difflugia wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 9:45 am
The patterns we see in phylogenetic relationships are just as accurately termed "evidence" as cladistic data derived from measurements of fossils or pictures of the fossils themselves. Defining a set of rules for the analysis doesn't somehow deny the evidentiary power of the results of that analysis.
In other words, infallible? You see a fossil, you say - what? "That looks like this other one so they are the same?" or "That looks like the other thing so it must have evolved from that?" Show me. Show me a fossil comparison that does the latter.
Define cladistic data, species and hypothesizing. Keeping in mind that this is a thread about how science allegedly debunks, not disagrees with, the Bible.
Difflugia wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 9:45 am
The power of the various types of phylogenetic analyses is that evolution is by far the most plausible explanation for the consistent patterns we see across multiple methods that should otherwise be unrelated. You can't accuarately claim that the results of that analysis (and presumably now molecular analyses) are "just bones." In comparison, "according to their kinds" doesn't accurately describe evolutionary relationships unless it's understood as the loosest sort of allegory. Is that your argument? That "according to their kinds" is such loose allegory that it's meaningless? Otherwise, it's still you that's simply dismissing the power of scientific evidence with nothing but your assertion that it's meaningless. Remember, it's your argument that we can't do better than "according to their kinds."
That's my argument? Who said that was my argument? What I'm saying is very simple. If it's true it can be observed. If it isn't it can't and has never been observed. Seeing tracks in the sand of a giant penguin doesn't mean that a giant penguin made the tracks. Show me where there is something that disagrees with the Biblical kind. Show me evidence that isn't speculative. That is based upon, not speculation but observation.
