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You, momentus, have arrived where everyone does who debates with Mystic - realizing that he refuses to accept the logical default position (re 'god') as non- belief pending some sound evidence FOR (1). Mystic is intelligent enough to know that his theory is just a theory, but he regards it as valid because it only explains what is taken as a 'Given' - the existence of 'god', which is proven in three ways.
Philosophical First cause arguments dressed up as science,
Labelling everything 'god', from evolution, through consciousness, Dark matter and myth (which he calls a spiritual fossil record, except than men did not fabricate fossils)
Personal experience, which is in fact the only evidence that Mystic really has for his beliefs.
Handy crib, reference and tip - off for anyone else who is thinking of trying to reason with our Mystical pal.
(1) Which is in fact the universally common debating position of theists. God - belief taken as a given which needs to be disproved, rather than the correct logical position of a god - claim which needs to be proven.
But if you intend to rebut . . . you need to do more than assert without supporting rationale for your position.
Why? That which is asserted without evidence can be rejected in the same way.
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If my critics would focus on presenting substantive rebuttal to the science
Already done, and when we do you've retreated to claiming that the science was actually an analogy not to be taken literally and that those objecting are too interested in concrete discussions instead of abstract ones.
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I would not get as frustrated or need to be so defensive.
Blaming the victim doesn't make your abusive posts seem any more reasonable.
(1) Which is in fact the universally common debating position of theists. God - belief taken as a given which needs to be disproved, rather than the correct logical position of a god - claim which needs to be proven.
That's actually a very perceptive article. In fact, the burden of proof is a key point of the debate since whoever has not the burden of proof can sit back and blandly refuse to accept any evidence whatsoever and can thus maintain their position. This is why theists struggle to shift the burden of proof demanding that atheism disprove a god taken for granted.
The theists do of course have some very telling arguments why 'god' (a god of some kind) must exist or Life, the Universe and everything is inexplicable. Atheists point out that we have limited knowledge and can't make any such assumptions which infuriates the Theists who see it as stubborn atheist refusal to accept the obvious.
Mystic in fact calls 'god' 'obvious' and does make creditable efforts to give a rational basis for first cause and to discern the 'spoor of god' in everything. While i respect the best effort I have ever seen in this regard, it is still philosophic speculation re first cause and what I have to say looks like ID arguments in finding signs of God in what we call nature.
The 'Leap pf Faith' must be mentioned as this is the leap from the First cause 'god' for which a case can be made to 'God' (aka Biblegod) usually by the surreptitious replacing of the lower case with upper and it mysteriously becoming 'Him', in mid debate.
Again Theists try to accuse atheism of a 'Leap of Faith' of assuming that the universe poofed into existence for no reason. The logic of saying 'We don't know, either way' escapes them.
In respect of that article I would like to say that rationalism (if not atheism as such) does try to evaluate the evidence fairly as we want the truth rather than propping up our views. CARM of course sees this as refusing to accept any unwelcome evidence and I regard this as 'projection' of their own stubborn closed - mindedness onto atheism.
As regards the Bible, of course, this does (I feel) dump the burden of proof onto atheism. The Bible exists and while one could say it just makes God - claims which have to be proven, isn't the Bible proof enough?
I do regard it as 'evidence' which needs to be evaluated and I am of the view that it can be shown to be a highly flawed document, the Gospels being as flawed as any other part. Those who have seen the debates on Genesis, the flood, the prophecies of Babylon, Tyre, Daniel, the east Gate, the Gospels, Acts and Paul will know why I think the case is made and refusal to accept that the Bible does not prove any of the God- claims is just what CARM regards as refusal to accept any evidence.
As regards the Bible, of course, this does (I feel) dump the burden of proof onto atheism.
Why? I can not see a single reason why this might be. If a claim is baseless then the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Putting the claim into a book and selling many copies of it does not suddenly change that in any way.
The CARM approach seems to be that all arguments for a god are valid and make sense if you start off on the presupposition that there is a god. The bible says something similar when it says "Seek and you will find".
Of course you will. It is called confirmation bias. In fact in several contexts I actually define "faith" as "The willingness to assume to be true from the outset that which you are trying to prove is true".
The issue is it works for nearly everything. If you presuppose something to be true and then try and fit the evidence to it retrospectively it almost always works. My favorite example of this are the 23ists. A cult of people wide enough to have a Jim Carey film based on them.
These people think the whole of life and civilization is being controlled by some elite hidden mind and that this mind leaves the number 23 everywhere. If you presuppose this to be true it turns out it is. You can find the number 23 everywhere, and they do. Either directly, or backwards as 32. Or in numbers like 5684 who's digits add up to 23. The list goes on, but with the application of human inventiveness and ingenuity it is nigh impossible NOT to find 23 everywhere.
What they fail to notice is that the same thing works for ANY number, especially prime numbers. Which disproves their theory, but because they have presupposed the theory to be true, retrospectively fitting the evidence is childs play.
This is what CARM wants of you. They want you to listen to all their arguments from the presupposition those arguments are right and there is a god. It is an "Onus of proof" shifting trick of the most shady and insidious kind. Calling it a canard is too good for it and calling him a Charlatan is too good for Matt Slick who perpetuates it.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
Mystic in fact calls 'god' 'obvious' and does make creditable efforts to give a rational basis
You will have to show me where sometime because I sure have seen nothing of the sort. All I have ever seen is "I call everything god, therefore god".
Why? I can not see a single reason why this might be. If a claim is baseless then the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Putting the claim into a book and selling many copies of it does not suddenly change that in any way.
The CARM approach seems to be that all arguments for a god are valid and make sense if you start off on the presupposition that there is a god. The bible says something similar when it says "Seek and you will find".
Of course you will. It is called confirmation bias. In fact in several contexts I actually define "faith" as "The willingness to assume to be true from the outset that which you are trying to prove is true".
The issue is it works for nearly everything. If you presuppose something to be true and then try and fit the evidence to it retrospectively it almost always works. My favorite example of this are the 23ists. A cult of people wide enough to have a Jim Carey film based on them.
These people think the whole of life and civilization is being controlled by some elite hidden mind and that this mind leaves the number 23 everywhere. If you presuppose this to be true it turns out it is. You can find the number 23 everywhere, and they do. Either directly, or backwards as 32. Or in numbers like 5684 who's digits add up to 23. The list goes on, but with the application of human inventiveness and ingenuity it is nigh impossible NOT to find 23 everywhere.
What they fail to notice is that the same thing works for ANY number, especially prime numbers. Which disproves their theory, but because they have presupposed the theory to be true, retrospectively fitting the evidence is childs play.
This is what CARM wants of you. They want you to listen to all their arguments from the presupposition those arguments are right and there is a god. It is an "Onus of proof" shifting trick of the most shady and insidious kind. Calling it a canard is too good for it and calling him a Charlatan is too good for Matt Slick who perpetuates it.
It is something of a personal decision (or viewpoint), but it seemed to me that you had a book which purports to contain a historical record of the intervention of God with men. The argument 'if you reject the bible, you must reject every other book' has some mileage. I do not want to be in the position of rejecting the claims of a book simply because they contain miracles, ghosts or UFOs. I prefer to consider the claims and whether they stand up. That means taking it seriously (or quasi - seriously) some pretty whacky claims - as has been noted with the Flood -thread.
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You will have to show me where sometime because I sure have seen nothing of the sort. All I have ever seen is "I call everything god, therefore god".
Well, I confess that it was in my first bout of debating with Mystic and he did use the term. He may since then have preferred to explain why God's existence should be taken as a valid presupposition rather than just assume that it was 'obvious' as when we first became acquainted.
I note with amusement the '23' trick. Good old logic - I saw it immediately as Biased sample' fallacy. I notice odd coincidence all the time - a remark made on the Television (1) just after I had read it in a book. Count the hits and ignore the misses. That is why I see that teaching a bit of logical and rational thought will prevent MILLIONS of potential dupes not being taken in by these simple tricks. Which is probably why nobody in authority has suggested it.
(1) No, I do NOT watch the bloody thing all the time.
The argument 'if you reject the bible, you must reject every other book' has some mileage.
In a sense yes. Every claim and proposition that comes before you must be substantiated. I treat all books in this way, not just the bible. If you pick up a book that is making claims then you have to evaluate what the substantiation for those claims actually are.
If there are none at all, then you reject the claims. Simple as that.
It has nothing to do with whether the book claims miracles, or UFOs or Homeopathy or ghosts or any of that. It can be a book about anything from whether OJ Simpson is guilty or not, to Ghosts, to whether the invasion of Iraq was a good thing or not, to the efficacy of homeopathy, to how best sow seeds to germinate and grow cabbages. You still pick the book up... consider the claims of the book... and consider what substantiation is being offered for those claims.
In a weird way when you say "I do not want to be in the position of rejecting the claims of a book simply because they contain miracles and...." you are almost coming dangerously close to saying "I actually lend books MORE credence during my evaluation BECAUSE they contain miracles and....". Almost as if your keenness not to be too dismissive of woo and nonsense out of hand could lead you to go too far in the other direction and actually lend such things MORE credibility BECAUSE they are weird. It puts one in the mind of "Credo quia absurdum".
Not saying, of course, that that is what you ARE doing or saying, but certainly the way you wrote the last post puts one in the mind of this and it is at least worth noting as a warning to anyone who might be heading down that path.
As such I simply see nothing within the bible that substantiates the claims that there is a god or that Jesus was it's off spring. If anyone else is aware of substantiation I missed then by all means point it out to me.
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
He may since then have preferred to explain why God's existence should be taken as a valid presupposition rather than just assume that it was 'obvious' as when we first became acquainted.
Not to my knowledge no. His posts still essentially boil down to pretty much that.
In a sense yes. Every claim and proposition that comes before you must be substantiated. I treat all books in this way, not just the bible. If you pick up a book that is making claims then you have to evaluate what the substantiation for those claims actually are.
If there are none at all, then you reject the claims. Simple as that.
It has nothing to do with whether the book claims miracles, or UFOs or Homeopathy or ghosts or any of that. It can be a book about anything from whether OJ Simpson is guilty or not, to Ghosts, to whether the invasion of Iraq was a good thing or not, to the efficacy of homeopathy, to how best sow seeds to germinate and grow cabbages. You still pick the book up... consider the claims of the book... and consider what substantiation is being offered for those claims.
In a weird way when you say "I do not want to be in the position of rejecting the claims of a book simply because they contain miracles and...." you are almost coming dangerously close to saying "I actually lend books MORE credence during my evaluation BECAUSE they contain miracles and....". Almost as if your keenness not to be too dismissive of woo and nonsense out of hand could lead you to go too far in the other direction and actually lend such things MORE credibility BECAUSE they are weird. It puts one in the mind of "Credo quia absurdum".
Not saying, of course, that that is what you ARE doing or saying, but certainly the way you wrote the last post puts one in the mind of this and it is at least worth noting as a warning to anyone who might be heading down that path.
As such I simply see nothing within the bible that substantiates the claims that there is a god or that Jesus was it's off spring. If anyone else is aware of substantiation I missed then by all means point it out to me.
In fact it is because I am more inclined to give credence to scientific text -books than to the books dealing with the fringe sciences, not to mention religion, supernatural and cult -stuff, that I try (in the interests of not allowing bias to take over and sway me unduly) to give more attention to the contents of a book on (for example) predelivian civilizations than to validating the claims of a book on Egyptian archaeology. The fact is that we all do trust the products of scientific method, greatly. Which is why fringe -science, cults and religions would dearly love to have such credibility - which is why they alternate between trying to make their claims look as though they have scientific basis which at the same time trying to make science look like some kind of denialist conspiracy.
While I am aware that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, I do not see it as valid (for instance) to reject the gospels just because they contain miracles because it is a reasonable point that if Jesus was divine, then he could do miracles. I reject the gospels because they lack internal coherence, not because they contain supernatural events. Just as I do not believe in Flying saucers because the evidence is too contradictory, incoherent and anecdotal, not because it seems impossible to travel from other stars.
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Not to my knowledge no. His posts still essentially boil down to pretty much that.
Pretty much, yes.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 05-10-2012 at 05:48 AM..
While I am aware that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, I do not see it as valid (for instance) to reject the gospels just because they contain miracles
Nor did I suggest you reject it for this reason. I suggested rejecting it for the sole reason it is not just slightly, but entirely, unsubstantiated.
My main mantra in life remains that if someone comes before you with a claim and that claim is entirely unsubstantiated then you simply reject the claim.
That does not mean the claim is false of course, one can not prove an unfalsifiable negative, it might well be true for all we know, but given there is no reason to think so that is how one must act.
Nozz: 'If you pick up a book that is making claims then you have to evaluate what the substantiation for those claims actually are.'
I have to P.s a bit about this point. While the theist argument that the Bible is a not a History, a biography or whatever is just evasion designed to get around objections to it as relating the events of a life or historical occurrences, it has to be said that we should first establish the book on a basis of factual credibility before we can be expected to consider the supernatural or theological claims. Though theists would often prefer us to only consider the latter and those not too critically
But it occurs to me at least that many of the old history books are just as open to doubt and indeed contain many supernatural events. I particularly think of the Jugurthine war by Sallust as a touchstone case. While it reads as perfectly good history, there is an event of a roman army dying of thirst in the Numidian desert and some native slinger or archer said: 'General, why don't you pray to father Bobo?' or some such name which they do and it rains, saving the army.
Now, whilst all my rational instincts rebel against believing this, should I reject the whole book on that basis? Should I pick which bits I believe on the basis of my rationalist prejudices? There is no way that I could justify doing that. I can only say that it is an anecdotal account of a miracle which requires extraordinary proof and so I have to suspend belief, while not having a problem with the Romans slaughtering Jugurtha's army since those things are a matter of everyday experience - regrettably.
The Bible deserves at least the same consideration as the Jugurthine war, Ramesses' battle inscriptions or the records of the conquests of Jayavarman - miraculous or at least far -fetched claims and all.
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