Ha ha ha ha haha ha … Oh fuck… I laughed so hard, I knocked my crystal ball off the table. Now I will never know if what you have said is true or not. Wait a minute… wasn’t that the starting point?
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Regarding your last point. You’ll need to define “magic”, I have no idea what you mean. You ask “how” but that question presupposes mechanism, rules, steps etc. These terms though pertain to the material realm, physics, matter, laws and so on.
The cause of the universe cannot be the universe, cannot be things that are inside that universe, a thing cannot be the explanation for itself.
No, the explanation must be very different, cannot be expressed in terms of deterministic laws or material or fields for these are the things we’re striving to explain.
The explanation is “In the beginning God created…” there is no other way to write it. The existence of the universe is not a result of some mindless mechanistic agencies (because these agencies too must then be explained mechanistically) it is the result of will, intent, desire.
If you are unwilling (as I know you are) to consider that “will” and “intent” are fundamental to our universe then of course we’ll never agree.
- You claimed beliefs can only come from beliefs, it rationally follows that in order for you to form any you must have at one right at the start that you did not form?, so please explain where you think that came from if you didn’t form it yourself, which you assert would have been impossible.
2.) I asked for you criteria, one word is not a criteria, and you have demonstrate no such evidenced. Despite multiple demands to atheists they do so. - Magic in any dictionary, it is synonymous with the word supernatural, so explain in detail one of your “many good examples” that the origins of the gospels was supernatural.
- That’s a subjective claim not objective evidence, explain why you think the universe is “evidence” for any deity?
- Still waiting?
What do youo think caused your deity then?
I asked you to explain how, you’re positing this unevidenced claim as the only plausible explanation for the presence of the universe, then explain it, if you can’t it clearly isn’t an explanation at all.
I am willing to consider ideas that are rational and supported by sufficient objective evidence, but all you keep repeating is the same argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy you started with. Ruling those, or any things out, does not evidence any deity, that is an irrational argument, you don’t get to wave away the principles of logic, then use the word logic as rhetoric as if including it makes your claims rational.
We don’t need to agree, that’s not the purpose of debate. My criteria for belief and disbelief was offered from the very first post you offered. I make a habit of doing so when theists come here, for clarity and for open honest debate. I am still asking you to explain your criteria for disbelieving in any deities, and after relentlessly telling atheists there’s no point offering your “evidence” for a deity, as they can’t understand what is evidence, your one word answer of evidence, speaks for itself. I wonder do you even see how ridiculous an answer that was in light of your previous assertions? Or are you simply trolling?
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Yes indeed, though even I tire of pointing out the hypocrisy, but I’ll give it a jog at some point. Just as when he evaded questions and insisted no one is obliged to answer any questions, then lied that I hadn’t answered one of his and kept repeating it. he did the same to @Calilasseia as well. I’ve not forgotten.
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Again in your eagerness to dismiss something you do not comprehend, you completely miss the point.
The point is that we must be prepared to accept an explanation that is not mechanistic, not expressible in terms of laws and mathematics. If you confine yourself to only regarding mechanistic explanations as having merit then you are stuck because one cannot mechanistically explain the presence of mechanism.
Do you understand now? is none of this sinking in?
Bumping this…
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“For a host of reasons I won’t go into here,” is quite a handy turn of phrase to use when making an assertion. It sure demonstrates how adept one is at honest debate.
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Not unless I have some idea of what you look for in such evidence, I could present many things and we’d be here all day as you respond “Nah not evidence, Nah that’s not, Nope that ain’t evidence” all day long.
The only way to reasonably avoid that is for you define you’re criteria for interpreting some thing as evidence for God.
I am not convinced that have criteria and therefore I am not convinced that intend to reject whatever is presented.
If you truly believe nothing could possibly serve as evidence for God please say so, if you think some thing might conceivably serve as evidence then say so.
Then why in the wide, wide world of sports are you here arguing some assertions that you can / will not back up? Is it merely masturbatory? Or do you get some kick out of getting the atheists in the zoo to dance? Because, really, if you don’t get that what you’ve done here is to dangle about a piñata filled with your “profound ideas”, moving it away anytime someone swipes at it, you’re either purposefully ignorant or ignorant.
So go ahead and respond to this with yet another in a long line of your evasions. Stick a fork in me, I’m done. It was entertaining for a while but now it’s become tedious and boring.
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Well it’s not like he didn’t lay his evasive dishonest stall out right at the start, you have to at least acknowledge that as honesty of a type. Telling us up front, he was making a sweeping claim for supernatural causation and won’t ever attempt to offer a single word to justify it.
Oh I correct myself, he dod offer an appeal to authority fallacy and an argumentum ad populum fallacy pretending the collective subjective beliefs of “most biblical scholars” about the magical origins of the gospels, was somehow down to scholarly rigour. dear oh dear…
Any single one of the “good reasons” you claim there are “to regard the Biblical cannon… as being…supernaturally originated.”
That you have failed to offer even one good reason to convince all those neutral observers you think your spiel is convincing, is rather telling.
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If there was evidence for God how would you recognize it as such? Admit it, you have no criteria and can offer no assurance that you modus operandi is anything more than “Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah…”.
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Straw man, this was about your claim for supernatural causation of the gospel myths. Not about your relentless use of a no true scotsman fallacy about atheists, in order to create a poisoning of the well fallacy, that you think you can hide behind whenever anyone asks you to support your relentlessly bare assertions.
I have it, and have offered it several times, as anyone can attest for themselves, paradoxically when I asked you for yours you hilariously replied with one word “evidence”, would you like a quote as a reminder? Only I am about to put my dinner on, and this is starting to feel like I am kicking a puppy now.
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Hmm, well you seem to already actually believe them to be myths, so you are not open minded about it, how can I present evidence to a closed mind? what possible reason might there be?
What would convince you they were not myths? any ideas?
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Oh that is simple: it would need to make a measurable, repeatable change to a probability distribution. Exactly what the believers in magic (including religious people) seem incapable of providing.
As I pointed out earlier, it has been 6 months. I’m hoping to get the rest of that proof from you…You know, the one you said you had…the one you claimed you have sent several times?
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All scientific theories are expressed with reference to laws and material quantities.
There can be no scientific theory that does not make reference to laws and material quantities.
Therefore there can be no scientific theory that explains the presence of laws and material quantities.
It’s just a variant of already well understood arguments for God, like the argument from contingency. The universe can’t be contingent on the universe, the laws of physics can’t be contingent on the laws of physics - let me know if any of this seems contentious to you, no room for magic either.
That there exist testable natural processes isn’t an “assumption”, it’s been established conclusively in several million peer reviewed scientific papers. Are you really this obtuse?
Gravity? A testable natural process, that demonstrably exists.
Electricity? A testable natural process that demonstrably exists.
The forces generated by wind and water movement? Testable natural processes that demonstrably exist.
Scientists now postulate that all of the above are ultimately underpinned by the operation of quantum mechanics, whose postulates, wait for it, aren’t “assumptions”, but have been experimentally tested and verified. Such as the postulate that spin-½ particles have to be rotated through 720° in a magnetic field to resume their original orientation instead of 360°. Won’t take the diligent long to find documentation of the experiments that verify that example.
Just because you want magic to be responsible for all of this, wielded by an imaginary cartoon magic man, doesn’t alter any of this in the slightest.
Furthermore, when I covered Steinhardt and Turok’s braneworld collision cosmological model in a detailed post on the subject in the past, I explicitly stated therein that the relevant entities and interactions are postulated to have existed eternally. Indeed, the idea that well-defined entities and interactions have existed eternally, is part of the framework of other cosmological models as well.
Since we have evidence in abundance for material entities and interactions, postulating that a relevant set thereof have always existed isn’t problematic, except for mythology fanboys who want the world to operate on magic, for which we have ZERO evidence. Just as we have ZERO evidence for a cartoon magic man waving its magic todger about and poofing things into existence.
Heard of Occam’s Razor have you?
Do you accept this or not, I can’t get a straight answer from you:
A thing cannot serve as its own explanation.
Just tell me if you agree or not. Do you at least agree that all scientific explanations are exercises in reductionism?
No this is that old poisoning of the well fallacy we talked about you trotting out everytime facts don’t match your bias in favour of your chosen superstition. Best advice I can give you is that you Google the definition of the word myth, then carefully and slowly explain why the gospels are not “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” Only you have clearly made another idiotic claim that you could have avoided by understanding what words mean before you use them in a claim, assertion or argument.
After trying to engage you in honest discourse I definitely feel your pain, albeit misplaced by you here, but if I might make a suggestion, learning what myth and closed minded means first would definitely help you here, as it’s absurd to accuse someone of bias for describing the gospels as a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
Same as every time you’ve asked oddly enough, sufficient objective evidence to support the claims. You’re not a fast learner are you?
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