Define truth.
There is a broad scholarly consensus that the earliest Christians sincerely believed Jesus was risen; there is not a scholarly consensus either that he was resurrected or that he was not. On the central miracle claim, experts are divided, not unanimous.
If I am not mistaken, you consistently argue against the resurrection being historical, suggest that Christians are mistaken about the central miracle of their faith; and apply evidential standards that, if accepted, would lead Christians to abandon belief in a literal resurrection.
You often speak as if your conclusions were simply the verdict of ‘the experts,’ but that’s not the case. On the resurrection, your theology has no confirmed scholarly consensus behind it; and on your scientific claims, the same is true. What you present as consensus is really conviction.
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70% is remarkably high for philosophy. Try again.
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you brought up the philosophy consensus and this issue the other day. Your objection was “why don’t most expert philosophers believe in God” and when shown that a great majority of the expert philosophers who specialize in this specific field do, you dismissed philosophy out of hand. Try again.
Vinnie
It is still the Black & White mentality. All or nothing. Ether accpet the “experts” or reject them. Why? Why can’t people reject one, or two parts of the whole? Why can’t the “experts” be wrong on one or two parts rather than all or nothing!
It always seems to come down to this. Reject one, you reject the lot! No!
Imagine a world where everybody thinks the sane! No horse racing, no discussion, no new ideas, no rejection of old ideas. No advancement. Stagnation,
Most of the problems on this forum are caused by Black & white thinking, (and stubborn, blind & deaf dogmatism)
Richard
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Truth is the property of being in accord with reality.
The consensus of experts (historians) regarding Jesus of Nazareth is:
-he existed in the first century CE.
-he had a reputation as a healer and miracle worker
-he was baptized by John the Baptist
-he was crucified by the Romans
-soon after his death, some of his followers believed he appeared to them in some fashion
I accept these claims as historical facts for the simple reason that it is the consensus of historians, the experts in this field of study (history). I accept consensus *expert opinion on all issues.
*expert: a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area; is recognized by his peers in his field as an expert; who uses either the scientific method or the historical method to study the evidence and form his hypotheses.
Someone who calls himself an expert but uses other means to “divine” the truth is not someone to be trusted, in my opinion. Therefore, I do not trust the “expertise” of Book of Mormon scholars, Koran scholars, or Bible scholars unless their work demonstrates that they are capable of separating their faith-based beliefs from their research using the historical method.
*I respect the scholarship of Roman Catholic Raymond Brown because his work clearly indicates that he was capable of separating his faith based beliefs and his research using the historical method.
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That’s the classic correspondence definition of truth. Truth = the property of being in accord with reality. Philosophers call that the correspondence theory of truth:
a statement is true iff it matches the way things actually are.
That’s not controversial by itself; lots of Christians, atheists, and agnostics all happily agree with that sentence. The real action is in the follow-ups:
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What is “reality”?
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Is it just the physical universe?
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Does it include God, souls, moral facts, etc.?
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What are the truth-bearers?
- Propositions? Sentences? Beliefs?
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How do we know reality?
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Only through science?
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Also through history, testimony, moral intuition, religious experience?
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What do you count as “reality” and by what methods do you say we are allowed to find out what reality contains? For example, are historical events, moral facts, or God’s existence part of ‘reality’ in your sense, and if so, how do we investigate them?
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AI: The fact that the majority of philosophers of religion are theists does not mean that the existence of God should be accepted as a fact**
. Philosophical questions are not settled by majority rule; they are debated through arguments and evidence, and while theism is dominant in that specific field, it doesn’t automatically prove God’s existence. The existence of God remains a matter of ongoing philosophical debate, not a settled fact.
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Philosophy of religion vs. science: Unlike science, which can provide empirical proof for its claims, philosophy relies on logic and argument, which do not always lead to a single, universally accepted conclusion. Arguments for and against the existence of God are still debated.
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A matter of belief and evidence: Whether one believes in God depends on a variety of factors, including personal experience, faith, and philosophical arguments. Those who do not believe often point to a lack of empirical evidence, noting that the universe appears the same whether God is supposed to exist or not.
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Specialized field: The high percentage of theists in philosophy of religion is due to the field focusing on theistic arguments and theistic traditions, not necessarily reflecting a consensus among all philosophers. Some philosophers argue the existence of God can be a “basic belief,” accepted without proof, much like an axiom in mathematics.
Gary: Philosophy, like theology, is a matter of personal opinion. Philosophical debates never lead to conclusions. It is essentially a pissing contest, each contestant trying to demonstrate how clever he is. That is why you love it, Vinnie. No one can hold you accountable. You are free to go off into the tall weeds of philosophical theory any time someone asks you for objective evidence for your beliefs.
You present very good questions, Terry. These are questions philosophers have debated for millennia. I believe that a basic formula for determining reality is this:
- Empirical evidence: if you can observe something with your five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell), it is likely real.
- Apply logic and good critical thinking skills to the above empirical evidence experienced through your five senses. We should use our brains to evaluate this sensory data, applying the principles of logic to interpret it.
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Consistency: Does the experience follow the established laws of nature and physics? Illusions or hallucinations often defy logic and physical principles.
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Questioning: Ask yourself critical questions: What evidence supports this idea? What evidence is against it? What are alternative explanations?
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Coherence: Does the information fit into a consistent and overarching explanation of all available facts, rather than being an isolated or contradictory event?
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- Seek external verification: Since individual perception can be subjective and unreliable, comparing notes with others is crucial.
Do these three principles cover all issues? Maybe not, but it is a good starting point.
Consensus is good consensus is bad. We should listen to consensus. Consensus is meaningless. You are all over the place. If you want to do more than quote AI and make meta-arguments about consensus let me know. Otherwise I’m not giving you any more sound bites for you to just repost on your blog aimed at discrediting Christianity. The @moderators have granted you far too long of a leash here. In fact, I’m just going to block you. It’s unfortunate that they allow you to persist and people coming here looking to have their faith strengthened or looking to reconcile science and Christian belief have to wade through your atheist drivel and constant and dismissing attacks on Christian thinking.
Vinnie
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They ignore the value of faith
That has always been an issue with scientism.
We cannot sense everything in conscious or verifiable form. Faith has a blind first step that is beyond all sense, reason and proof.
That appears to be one step beyond some people.
Richard
Faith in what? I have faith in gratitude and kindness, in invoking it where possible. Where do I need to step beyond? To what? For what? My beloved loving son was with me for the weekend, just dropped him at the station. I miss him already. I must be grateful. I am, but I feel his absence too much already. Nothing can fill it. I must get busy. For which I’m grateful.
This sentence shows how personal worldviews affect interpretations of stories including claims of unusual miracles.
If your starting point is that everything follows the basic laws of nature and physics (no deviations), then you are likely to reject claims of extraordinary miracles, simply because you assume a priori that such are not possible. Even many witnesses would not be accepted as believable evidence because they claim something that ‘cannot be real’.
One alternative worldview is that God is real and sometimes may interfere in ways that seem to deviate from the ‘normal’. In that worldview, miracles are possible and the basic attitude to claims of miracles is different.
Both worldviews are subjective and probably cannot prove that they are the ‘correct’ one.
Although historians, theologians and others sometimes claim to make ‘objective’ conclusions about what happened a long time ago, the claims are rather subjective educated guesses based on the assumptions dependent on their worldview.
Claims with ‘hard’ evidence are a different matter but there is rarely such evidence of ancient events that all parties would accept as ‘hard’ evidence.
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To whom? Your son? Your wife?
Yes, and for them in their absence. I’m very grateful for just having spent two and half hours with my first humanist group meeting. Lovely people.
God of course
They are both tangible and identifyable.
God is less so.
God is around 24/7
I am never alone and miserable. I can still be miserable, but there is always someone to share it with and be comforted by. The peace of God, truly is beyond understanding but basking in it is Heaven on Earth.
Richard
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I miss it. More than anything.
I do not exclude supernatural events and causes, I simply relegate them to the lowest level of possibility. I will bet that you do this too for all other issues in your life not involving your religion. The last time you couldn’t find your car keys, how far up on your list of possible explanations was a supernatural cause? The moment you realized your keys were missing, why didn’t you suspect that demons (or angels) had taken them?
In regards to eyewitness testimony my response is: it depends. If 500 villagers in rural India claimed that they witnessed their prophet disappear into the clouds without any mechanical assistance, I would chalk it up to religious hysteria and ignore it. If all fifty members of the United States Senate testified that the majority leader suddenly elevated into and through the ceiling of the Senate chamber, I would not immediately dismiss it. I would be baffled. I would want more information. I would be forced to face the fact that a laws-of-physics event may have just occurred.
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Yes, that is a realistic expectation - miracles are rare events, no matter what is causing the miracle.
What seems to differ between people is whether they think that a miraculous act of God is a possibility. The principle that ‘extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence’ may work with scientific hypotheses that are expected to operate based on the ordinary laws of nature and physics. In the case of rare miraculous events that do not happen in controlled research labs, there will not be extraordinary evidence, except possibly some information about the state before vs. after the event. What caused the switch from one state to another will remain a debated question.
I take as an example what I heard from a man (Mark Erickson) a couple of days ago: he told he had a cancer between the lungs and the heart. When the diagnosis was made, the cancer had already grown so large that it surrounded the heart. The doctor told that he is sorry, there is not much they can do anymore.
Many prayed for the man. There was a meeting of the pastors of many churches (in the parliament building IIRC) and the pastors prayed for the man. Something happened. When he went the next time to the hospital, a new picture was taken from the area where the cancer was. The cancer had disappeared totally and it did not return - the man has served God since that day.
When I heard what he told, I did not check the medical documents to confirm if he was speaking truth. Because of my basic assumptions and knowing that he had witnessed about the miraculous healing in many contexts, I believed what he told. There is no evidence of why a relatively large cancer suddenly disappeared, so it is not a 100% proof that God healed him. The likelihood of such a miraculous healing is very low, so I interpret the case as a miracle done by God. If I would not believe in God, I would have to invent another explanation that does not include God, a person that does not supposedly exist or at least, does not act anymore in our world.
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If I still believed in God I still could not believe in miraculous healing as there is no evidence for it whatsoever within the noise of the statistical surface.