Thank you Sheldon. I just went over this with a friend of mine and he pointed out the very obvious mistakes in this whole argument and warned me I’m sounding like a conspiracy theorist for any of the Fallacies I’ve committed I retract them. I only want to speculate about the narrative of Jesus’s life as a person and consider what it means for the Christian church that this was how jesus was born. If we could in some way confirm if anything he wasn’t born of god than that dismantles base lines for the church. But i recognize you are saying that theres no way to do that. I find it difficult to understand that there isn’t a way to do something or figure something out thats Unfalsifiable. We can literally come up with anything and create it. Newton created a whole new form of math to understand gravity when he was only 23. We can literally do anything with science and yet can’t come up with a formula that proves or disproves something. I presented this idea in the thread for a physical god where I explained thar like a rat resonds to stimulus when probed a similar experiment could be conducted to simply see if the universe is an organism with complex systems that we humans call god. Though i don’t want to go down that rabbit hole because i said i won’t comment on this again until i have evidence. Which experiments should be conducted in the next 4 years estimated.
If the claim is unfalsifiable then yes, and this one seems unfalsifiable to me. There simply is insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion, but more importantly, if it were possible to demonstrate his existence, it would not demonstrate he was anything but human.
As far as the opinions of scholars go, one should be careful that the opinion being offered is a scholastic one, and not a personal subjective belief of someone, who also happens to be a scholar. Tip here, there is no such thing as a scholar of the supernatural.
Indeed, and it’s also useful to follow the money. Much of the specialist interest in church history, historical determinations surrounding the life and times of Jesus and the early church, textual criticism of scripture, etc., are directly or indirectly bankrolled by church or para-church institutions. A scholar is not going to bite the hand that funds – er, feeds – it. In other words, there is a set of possible conclusions that one is allowed or at least encouraged to draw in these matters, and there are things outside that set that one best not seriously indulge.
One of my favorite authors in this space is Bart Ehrman, who started his education at Moody Bible Institute, the sister institution to the one I attended, and now, decades later, is an atheist with degrees from more intellectually rigorous places with a rather noticeable (and understandable) chip on his shoulder about Moody. Free now to write with relative impartiality about the early church, his books are a revelation (to me, anyway).
But much of the “scholarship” you can read about these matters is fairly “party line” in nature. Even Ehrman durst not go to some of the places I do. For example I am tentatively persuaded by arguments that exist but are considered “fringe” from the church’s point of view, that the dating of the gospels that’s been commonly accepted may be a bit on the early side, and in the extreme, could be early by decades. But “mainstream” scholarship is always trying to shave another year or two OFF the “accepted” estimates to support the fiction that the canonical gospels are NOT at the end of a long game of “Titanic” (when they aren’t outright lying about them being “eyewitness accounts”).
Anyway … I’m not saying 100% of scholarship is in the tank for orthodox Christianity, but a lot of funds flow from that source plus if it takes umbrage to something it doesn’t fund, it can be quite influential in pushing back – and so you require a somewhat jaundiced eye to evaluate various claims.
The source for this was simply a google search as the google ai responded with and its compiled information.
This is also sourced from a google search with the ai compiling the information.
What point are you making? Also why do you think those assertions are reliable evidence, rather than just claims that can’t be substantiated in any objective way?
I do think the fictional, biblical mythology character that was Mary got raped by a god, yea…sure
I was just making a correction to give credit as I was at risk of being banned for plagiarism and that is not my goal.
My previous question about the reliability of those claims, remains unanswered? You can’t offer biblical claims, as evidence for those claims.
Ah I see because we assume that the biblical text is a non reliable source and is only full of claims correct? I feel this and all other arguments all lead to the same answer and its become somewhat difficult to withhold this because I simply don’t think every argument ive made thus far is Unfalsifiable. Allow me to explain. Lets give example of the omnipresent argument I’d explained. You say it assumes god isn’t real because there’s no evidence but no evidence isn’t the same as no existence. Evidence must be present to support a claim either for the existence or not. But what evidence works for something omnipresent? You would say its simply Unfalsifiable therefore pinning the argument in the corner so to speak. Let me present this I’ve spoken about the discoveries of witchcraft book written in the 15 hundreds a book that is considered evidence against the supernatural in other words evidence that proves a negative. What do we call that? And how is that different from what I’m presenting? If so called psychics and witches and ghosts can be explained away with hard hitting evidence than whats different from what I’m presenting?
If the Bible makes a claim, it’s a claim. If you make a claim, it’s a claim.
Let’s say you claim the moon is made of cheese. That’s a claim. You can’t offer, as evidence, a book you wrote about the moon being made of cheese (unless the book presented evidence rather than more claims and arguments).
The Bible is no different. If it says God parted the Red Sea, that inherently cannot be evidence that God parted the Red Sea. That is not saying he couldn’t have, only that it’s an extraordinary / miraculous claim and so is unlikely to be true without considerable evidence that it happened. Also it assumes that Bible God even exists, which is another claim that needs even higher standards of evidence.
And I agree with this “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” but also " if you can’t explain something simply you don’t know it well enough" and i think that in terms of omnipresence it is easily argued against and isn’t a matter of being Unfalsifiable.
No assumption is needed, no book can be offered as evidence of itself.
No claimed every argument you’d made were.
Please don’t tell me what I am saying, use the quote function.
I never said this, this is why you must use the quote function.
Correct, all claims carry a burden of proof.
Why are you asking me?
Nope, I would ask that anyone making the claim, demonstrate sufficient, and sufficiently objective evidence for the claim, or else I’d withhold belief. If you think such a claim is falsifiable explain how you would falsify it, also why is unfalsifiable capitalised?
I’d call that a bare claim, and again I don’t need a claim to be disproved, or for any contrary evidence to presented, the burden of proof lies with the claim, and to argue anything is true, because it hasn’t been disproved, or because there is no contrary evidence is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, as I explained.
I don’t understand the question sorry, and they’re both your claims, so why would I need to explain them?
You keep making unevidenced claims, and asking me to explain something?
My previous question, about the reliability of those biblical claims you offered, still remains unanswered?
Exactly, it’s pretty simple.
Explain how such a claim might be falsified.
This appears quite paradoxical. I think this might be a result of me not fully understanding what you mean. I agree evidence must be provided and for the argument of omnipresence i explained simple base evidence is that there is no evidence. I know that it appears to be an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy but it’s also true. Its a statement of “seeing is believing” but I’m also saying it only works for omnipresence as that is a claim that whatever thing is omnipresent is everywhere. If it were everywhere you would see it all around you unless we’re all blind which not everyone is so the fact that we don’t see ot everywhere means it’s simply not everywhere. I would agree that wouldn’t mean it doesn’t exist but not if the thing in question is again omnipresent as that would be the original claim. I’m not sure why but this feels correct to me and I don’t understand why it isn’t.
Could you explain to me what you think a logical fallacy is, and what you think it means for an argument when it uses one?
Not necessarily, the thing is undefined, so how do we even know it is visible at all?
Instead of simply disbelieving an unevidenced and unfalsifiable claim, you’re trying to disprove it. If a claim is unfalsifiable, then the negation must also be unfalsifiable.
Withholding belief from a claim, is not the same as making a contrary claim, and atheism of course is defined as the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, it is not a claim about any deity or deities.
I asked a similar question about this in a christian forum but i decided NOT to mention god and jesus and any other connection to religion.
I asked a christian site what would they do if a PSYCHIC SQUID impregnates their 16-year-old DAUGHTER using its godpowers or a metaphysical penis,
they called the psychic squid a pedophile, and guess what? A RAPIST.
I bet they moved the goal posts for their god thing tho. I wouldn’t be surprised.
in the bible, quran, and torah, replace the word god with a psychic squid, and everyone would question why someone would worship a malignant narcissist rapist dictator.
I teach that the verse: “And so you shall do with every lost item of your brother” (Holy Squid Text 22:3), serves to include the apostate in one’s obligation to return a lost item to another SQUID BOY; and you say that one may lower him into a pit? Remove the term apostate from here!
For you shall worship no other squid, for the PSYCHIC SQUID, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous squid.
The PSYCHIC SQUID Most Merciful said, “Get out of Paradise! You are disgraced and rejected! I will certainly fill up Hell with you and your followers all together!