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Mystics point was in part valid. People, whether they existed or not, are embellished. Even fictional characters. Just think of the anonymous gospel characters who were later given names. But Tzaphkiel's point was that the embellishments such as Jesus walking on water are more unbelievable than George Washington chopping down a tree. Real people chop down trees. Fictional people do magic.
Mystic then claimed "Such absurd illogic is driven by an almost pathological defense of magical thinking, traditions, and superstitions". There are sound reasons for completely rejecting the Jesus story.
The idea that such early writings were fiction during a time when writing was such a rare and difficult task is preposterous. Writing was a serious business reserved for serious things.
Isn't that the truth!!!
I could try but doubt it could be said any clearer in a way that would satisfy Tzaph.
We goddless bastards have at least gotten used to particular posters simply dismissing what it clearly a validated point, and are content that others will see that it stacks up and makes sense.
Mystics point was in part valid. People, whether they existed or not, are embellished. Even fictional characters. Just think of the anonymous gospel characters who were later given names. But Tzaphkiel's point was that the embellishments such as Jesus walking on water are more unbelievable than George Washington chopping down a tree. Real people chop down trees. Fictional people do magic.
Mystic then claimed "Such absurd illogic is driven by an almost pathological defense of magical thinking, traditions, and superstitions". There are sound reasons for completely rejecting the Jesus story.
That's all true. The miraculous embellishments do not of themselves prove that the believable parts of the story cannot be true.
This has always been a Bible apologetic argument. For example, if you can't "*"Interpret"*" the parting of the Red Sea as a land bridge revealed by tides (The perfectly Natural Explanation ploy (1) then at least Exodus could still be true, absent the miraculous stuff. It's odd that Bible apologists are willing to debunk the doings of God, just so the Bible remains believable.
But it's even harder than that. Because it seems to me that dismissing the miraculous claims on the grounds that miracles don't happen is a false position. If Jesus was a divine one -off, then he could of course do stuff that others couldn't.
it was clear from the start that list of contradictions did not debunk the Bible. Nor do miracles debunk the Bible. Nor do even false claims debunk the Bible. That Jesus talked of evil spirits causing illness when he must have known what the true cause was even as he did some magic means no more than saving himself an explanation that nobody would understand anyway.
No. The best debunk of this stuff is evidence of fabrication, like David and The Shewbread. A grotesquely bad apologetic that Jesus would have known could not have worked against the teachers of the Law. Only a Christian writer with a not too clever bunch of readers would try to get away with that. Evidence of Fabrication is the way to understand the gospels, not rejection of miracles.
But I guess that nether Mystic nor Tzaph would have a problem with that. Mystic sees the crucifixion as an object lesson in unrestricted love rather than an object lesson in not doing any more messianic disruptions, thanks. I suspect that Tzaph. will see it as such, if she is willing to accept (as I do) that such an execution actually took place.
(1) you may laugh, but my religious class teacher tried to persuade me that blindness could be cured instantly because mud had antiseptic properties.
for anyone / bonus questions / for extra credit
in your own personal view-belief-opinion
for each of these statements, do you agree or disagree, why or why not
"magic" "superstition" "supernatural" are all the same
"magic" "superstition" "supernatural" are all primitive and ignorant thinking
none of these are backed by science: "magic" "superstition" "supernatural"
if it is not backed by science it is an unsubstantiated claim
if it is not backed by science it is "supernatural" "magic" "superstition" and it is primitive ignorant thinking
there is no such thing as "supernatural" "magic" "superstition." Those are just "science that has not yet been discovered"
In the context of this thread, I think the word 'magic' is best understood in the "Harry Potter"/fairy tale sense of the term. The core idea is that a conscious being can accomplish goals more or less directly via sheer willing and/or ritual, in violation of known natural laws. If God created the world by sheer force of divine will, then God created the world by "magic" - although, in my experience, I rarely hear theists say it quite that way (I think because the word 'magic' is, in fact, so closely associated with fairy tales in which "witches and wizards" use magic that applying the word 'magic' to what God seems embarrassing or, perhaps, somewhat disrespectful to God).
By the standards of historical scholarship or linguistic analysis, the Bible is overflowing with stories that are technically indistinguishable from fairy tales so, from an atheist perspective it is literally accurate to say that a lot of what is described in the Bible is magic in the fairy-tales sense of the term (which is taken as (and often intended as) derogatory insofar as it compares Bible stories directly to fairy tales). From an atheist perspective, the only real difference between some Bible stories and fairy tales is simply the fact that some people genuinely believe that these "magical" Bible stories are historically true.
Of course "fairy tale", "myth", and "superstition" tend to get mixed up and conflated in everyday conversations. Myths and superstitions are generally thought to have their roots in things that people actually believed at one point (or still believe) whereas fairy tales are generally thought to be pure fiction for the purposes of entertainment and/or teaching moral lessons. The lines get blurred, however, because some fairy tales have the kernel of a "true story" at their core, and some myths might have never been fully believed by the people who created them. One could also argue that some myths tend to have some metaphorically-referenced "deeper" truth that is shrouded by the literal narrative of the story, so whether the "magical" stories in the Bible are best described as "fairy tales" or "myths" is debatable.
For all I know, some "magic" could be "real" in the sense of "technology we just don't understand yet" or natural laws that are, for the moment, beyond our understanding. And, like, myths and fairy tales, there could be some "grain of truth" in some events that are considered to be "magical" - but this grain of truth is buried beneath mountains of embellishment. One place where the "truth of magic" could be very close to the surface is in the "healing powers of the mind." Personally, I don't doubt that the "laying on of hands" or the application of prayer could literally heal certain ailments "as if by magic" - although I'd say that, in these cases, we are dealing with aspects of consciousness or the immune system, etc., that we simply do not yet fully understand (but partially understand in terms of well-documented "placebo effects") - but can eventually be understood in naturalistic terms. Certain other types of psi research (telekinesis, precognition, clairvoyance,, etc.) could also be hinting at some seemingly "magical" capabilities that are really natural phenomena that we do not yet understand.
For the most part, I make somewhat of an effort to stay agnostic and/or open-mindedly-skeptical about "magical" (or "psychic") claims unless logical arguments or strong evidence pushes me over the line into flat-out "belief that X" or "belief that not-X" is true. And, even then, I rank "belief" on a scale of confidence. E.g., I believe with certainty that I don't know everything; I believe with high confidence that God, as described in the OT, is not an actual being; I believe with a lower level of confidence that the world is not the product of Divine Intelligent Design; I believe with a modest level of confidence that beneath the contingent, particular properties of "ego self" there is a necessary, universal "Subjectivity" such that, ultimately, every experience is the experience of the one-and-same "Reality" (ontologically speaking) even though, epistemologically, ego-selves may (upon certain types of existential reflection) seem to be utterly isolated "islands" of subjectivity (i.e., ontologically individual souls - sorta like, if I had "Multiple Personalities" I might be convinced that my "alters" are not "me" and thus believe that "reintegration" = "death" as opposed to simply re-gaining lost memories from the perspective of the single self who was really "always already there" all along).
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 11-14-2018 at 08:17 AM..
That sets it out very well. Whether a supernatural claim or 'magic' is tall story, a trick, imagination, misunderstanding, mythology (as a potential claim of some fact) delusion, mirage or some fact that is not yet vertified and explained or indeed isn't even postulated yet (Unknowns), it all seems to come down to the same thing - until validated and understood, it is not yet 'Natural/science and known/believable..
Until then, they are claims, even if based on known phenomena, that do not yet deserve Belief.
The sliding scale of probability also comes into it. We don't know how abiogenesis happened or even for sure that it did happen. But the indirect evidence sure makes it look likely.
It's like the Higgs -Boson. They thought that it should be there. They were looking for it. The didn't KNOW- they didn't believe it yet and were prepared to go back to the drawing -board if it didn't show up. But it did, as expected.
It's that was with Abiogenesis. We (or they I have nothing to do but watch) have to be prepared for a rethink. But the probability is that something abiogenetical happened, even if we never find out what.
Goddunnit can't be ruled out (not even out of what we know through validated evidence - like the Big Bang) but that was never the argument. It was that, when a valid explanation is to hand that does not need a god, there is no reason to propose one. I don't believe that anyone other than the most deluded or primitive person would propose that lightning was directed by a god or that comets were sent as warnings ... no hold that one - apparently people who drive cars, have children and vote DO believe that comets are signs of some significant event or other.
It can't be logically totally ruled out, but such superstition has no logical validity. To call it a supernatural claim is surely valid and everyone knows what is meant.
By the standards of historical scholarship or linguistic analysis, the Bible is overflowing with stories that are technically indistinguishable from fairy tales so, from an atheist perspective it is literally accurate to say that a lot of what is described in the Bible is magic in the fairy-tales sense of the term (which is taken as (and often intended as) derogatory insofar as it compares Bible stories directly to fairy tales). From an atheist perspective, the only real difference between some Bible stories and fairy tales is simply the fact that some people genuinely believe that these "magical" Bible stories are historically true.
In anticipation of an objection: I don't mean to say that Bible stories were written by people in the mindset of "making up a fairy tale". I suspect that their origins were more like the origins of myths - probably originally intended to convey events thought to be at least roughly true, although some of the super-ancient stories (e.g., the "virgin birth" adapted from older pagan beliefs for the purposes of the Christ narrative, or the OT creation myth, or Moses parting the sea, etc.) are so old that it's hard to even guess at what was really going in the minds of the people who initially created them. The main difference seems to be that magic performed by a supposed all-powerful God seems more plausibly true to some people than magic performed by witches, wizards, leprechauns, enchanted items, etc. But, ultimately, if you showed a collection of fairly tales and magic-focused Bible stories to people who had no cultural background predisposing them to believe in Bible stories, these people would probably have no more reason to rate the Bible stories as any truer than the fairy tales.
Yes. I wouldn't like to guess at the mindset of people who borrowed Mesopotamian myths and recast them to
make it seem as though all humanity was descended from themselves - the ones with the birthright and the others little more than slaves.
But I can guess at the mindset of those writing the Nativities and the resurrection.
There was nothing about a Bethlehem birth. There was nothing about a risen Jesus other than an empty tomb and a dude in a white sheet making a claim. There should be more than that. So they wrote it. All different.
But of course, this is Mystic's thread, and he wouldn't disagree, or so I gather. The OT doesn't matter as an old tribal tale that needn't concern us other than, perhaps a basic code of ethics on which to build some more sophisticated (or not) social models. And the only thing that matters is that Dude got nailed. Object lesson. I doubt whether he believes that Dude got up and flew away.
In anticipation of an objection: I don't mean to say that Bible stories were written by people in the mindset of "making up a fairy tale". I suspect that their origins were more like the origins of myths - probably originally intended to convey events thought to be at least roughly true, although some of the super-ancient stories (e.g., the "virgin birth" adapted from older pagan beliefs for the purposes of the Christ narrative, or the OT creation myth, or Moses parting the sea, etc.) are so old that it's hard to even guess at what was really going in the minds of the people who initially created them. The main difference seems to be that magic performed by a supposed all-powerful God seems more plausibly true to some people than magic performed by witches, wizards, leprechauns, enchanted items, etc. But, ultimately, if you showed a collection of fairly tales and magic-focused Bible stories to people who had no cultural background predisposing them to believe in Bible stories, these people would probably have no more reason to rate the Bible stories as any truer than the fairy tales.
yeah, jesus was crucified and died under pilot is fine to accept as fact. Only a literalist needs it to be true or false at this point. But its more probable that his buddies took the body and hid it. Or that the writers, after the fact, just embellished the story.
to your point: I didn't realize my dad and the airborne troopers didn't win WW2 all by themselves until I was like 10. He didn't say anything intentionally to me, I just totally misunderstood.
Construction Zone!
If you are reading this, right now, then beware that I am not done yet, and this whole post could turn out be a complete flop. I'm just saving periodically so that I don't lose everything, given my glitchy computer and clumsy fingers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
which of these are "magical thinking and superstition"
…
there is an unseen energy that flows through everything in the universe
Yesterday I was listening to NPR and there was a discussion about free will. At one point a neuroscientist admitted that he can't help but believe in free will, even though he also believes that there cannot actually be free will. In other words, he is torn. On some level he feels that is irrational to reject the possibility of free will, even though science seems to have logically shut down any real possibility of free will. I have the rough sketch of a possible solution to this conundrum, and I want to mention it here because I think that my solution is full-fledge, straight-up magical in a way that Tza might appreciate, and I think my solution also goes to the core of MPhD's efforts to outline a non-magical approach to theism. (I'm going to ignore the specifically "Christian" aspect of the thread because, in my view, it adds unnecessary mud to what I find to be the truly interesting core issue.)
The neuroscientist's key point was simple: Every choice is a decision that ultimately rests on neural firings, and every neural firing is a physical process exhibiting the laws of physics. There is simply no room for free will to have any relevance. Indeterminism - yes, quantum mechanics leaves room for indeterminism, but this takes the form of pure randomness within a spread of probabilities, and this sort of randomness is not what most of us mean by free will. I believe that, at one point, the neuroscientist literally used the word 'magic' in saying that if free will exists, then it would have to be a magical process in the brain. And my proposal is to bite the bullet and say that, yes, literal actual magic does indeed happen in the brain. But, oddly enough, I'm also going to insist that, although this speculation about magic goes beyond science, it does not actually conflict with known science. Indeed, my hypothesis is scientific in the sense that it can, in principle, be tested and falsified (although, at the moment, I can't conceive of any real-world practical experimental protocol that could actually test it).
First, I need to be as clear as I can be about two key terms:
Magic = a fundamental ("brute fact") causal role for the subjective/qualitative aspects of consciousness (aka "qualia") over and above any algorithmic mathematical models meant to capture the dynamics of material Reality.
Free will = If free will exists, then, for some given conscious choice, C, it is possible that the subjective qualitative feel of the choice-making process serves as the initiation of a physical causal chain that is, to a significant extent, "independent" of the mathematically characterizable algorithmic processes occurring in the brain just prior to C. (Metaphorically, you could compare this to the quantum mechanical "collapse of the waveform" which serves as a fundamentally unpredictable discontinuity in the otherwise causally smooth unfolding of Schrodinger's wave equation. But in the case of free will, this discontinuity is not rooted in pure randomness.)
My hypothesis goes beyond known science but does not contradict known science because, as of now, the hypothesis has not been tested. To test my hypothesis we would somehow have to map the collective behaviors of neurons in vitro during sentient experience. If I'm right about free will, then there will be macro-scale patterns of neural firing triggered at the quantum level that defy any reduction to the known principles and forces of physics. We would be witnessing, in effect, a type of "psychokinesis" that might be metaphorically comparable to, say, "winning the lottery" multiple times per day.
Two concepts would need to be considered in this regard: The principles of self-organization and the holism that is implicit in quantum entanglement. As a physical system, the brain is clearly a self-organizing system. The nature of neural connectivity is exactly right for self-organization to occur and there is good evidence that it does occur. As for entanglement, it is debatable whether or not any significant degree of quantum entanglement is sustained in the warm, macro-scale environment of the brain, but at the moment I'm thinking that entanglement - or some as yet unknown other mechanism for holism? - will be found in the brain if free choice happens. Neural self-organization might, in principle, be able to explain complex human behavior and learning, but it cannot, in itself, explain the qualitative feel of experience (aka, "the hard problem"). If I am right about qualitative feelings playing a causal role, then mathematical models of self-organizing neurons will not, all by themselves, capture the full dynamics of brain processes. There will still be a left-over level of holism that is unaccounted for. My desire for chocolate cake would be a brain-wide (actually a body-wide, and probably even Reality-wide)type of phenomenon.
And just to be clear: "Free will" does not imply freedom "all the way down." Logic allows that, in principle, it is possible that I chose to be physically born (reincarnation and substance dualism are not logical impossibilities), but it is logically impossible for any being to consciously choose to exist. Even God could not have consciously chosen to exist. The same goes for our initial nature as conscious beings. A being cannot conscious choose to be conscious; it can only "awaken" to sentience and then, presumably, awaken to consciousness and then, in the case of human beings, awaken to conscious self-awareness. So "free will" has to start with our already given existence and our already given nature. We can't choose our initially "given" nature, but given our nature, free will implies that we can consciously choose behaviors that violate the otherwise smooth unfolding of natural laws insofar as we are, so to speak, causally "independent" (to some extent) initiators of causal chains.
I keep putting "independent" in scare quotes because I have a basically Buddhist-style believe in the ultimate holistic interdependence of all things - but that's a different story. In philosophy lingo, I'm talking about functional independence, not ontological independence or ontological isolation.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 11-18-2018 at 10:21 AM..
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I have nothing to do but watch) have to be prepared for a rethink. But the probability is that something abiogenetical happened, even if we never find out what. 