No big deal; we can still continue as I can deal with their predictable canards easily, as you can.

Why don't you let Richard Carrier's relevant scholarship tell you about the place and time in which those stories spread and much more...

http://infidels.org/library/modern/...

<optimalplay's."...trying to explain the Bible...", "... proper understanding of the Bible...">

Sure, the omnipotent creator of the cosmos couldn't manage to make his message perfectly clear in the first place so he has inspired followers like <optimalplay> to give the rest of us the "proper understanding" of his word. Sounds perfectly logical to me. Facepalm.

<BigPawn>,

Where do you get the history?

On both counts you are wrong.

1. Verificationism was the basis for <tga's> objection, so it does matter. Verificationism does not hold, as I explained.

<Necessarily true> - First of all, absolute certainty isn't the criterion for knowledge. We need to appeal to rationality, which is justification for believe. As long as the premises are more plausible than their negations, naturally, it follows that the rational choice is to go with the more plausible premises. In doing that, we are choosing to be more rational than irrational.

Everything that begins to exist has a cause is a metaphysical fundamental. This assumption is used as fundamental tool of inference in science. Where we see effects (say, cosmic background radiation) science looks for a cause. To abandon this when we get to the universe it the old Taxi Cab Fallacy, where you use the cause and effect reasoning in every instance until it brushes up against a premise that supports a conclusion you don't like.

2. If the premises of the Kalam are true, then it most definitely tells us about the attributes of the Cause. This can easily be deduced.

The Big Bang (I'm sticking with main stream science here. If your worldview forces you to the fringes then so be it) gives us an absolute beginning where time, space and material came into existence. Therefore, the cause is timeless, spaceless and immaterial, not to mention all powerful, seeing that it brought everything that exists into existence.

If the universe were a necessary consequent of the Cause, then the universe would have always existed, but it didn't. It began to exist out of nothing 14.7 billion years ago according to mainstream science. This implies a personal creator, that is, a creator that is a person and has the ability to decide to make things happen. If the Cause was not personal then the effect would have been eternal with the Cause, but that's not what science tells us.

<To establish a bridge between that unknown cause and the God of classical theism is impossible.>

Well, it doesn't give us the Christian God, but it does give us the classical theistic God in that the cause is timeless, spaceless, immaterial and a personal creator. Most people would call this entity God.

<Any philosopher who insist in doing so ( W.L.Craig comes to mind) is guilty of dishonesty.>

Don't you see how they go together... Only if you believe in biblical inerrancy you can try to convince yourself of something so extraordinary as a resurrection.>

Not at all and I reject this view out of hand.

I gave several historical facts (things that most historians believe happened, theistic, agnostic and atheist alike) and we are now (you, me, mort, optimal) positing historical hypothesis that would best explain those 4 facts. The hypothesis needs explanatory scope and power.

<CS>, given Jesus' personal radical claims about forgiving sins and speaking as though he is God, and claiming to be God (which is why the Jews wanted to kill him - for blasphemy), we can see the resurrection as divine vindication of his claims.

The only assumption one has to make for the resurrection to be plausible is theism, and if you already are a theist of some kind then you need not make any assumptions.

The resurrection best explains these four historical facts.

1. Jesus' burial in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea
2. The discovery of the empty tomb by a group of female followers. 3. Postmortem appearance of the risen Jesus by the disciples, unbelievers and other large groups of people (even agnostic historians believe that *they* believe they saw Jesus) 4. The origin of the disciples belief that Jesus rose from the dead.

"The Bible">

The gospel texts weren't written as "the bible" in the first century. These were biographical documents that were written by various authors detailing the events that occurred around Jesus of Nazareth. Jews today still don't think of the NT as "the bible".

The mistake you are making <mort> is that you are still trying to shoehorn this into a biblical inerrancy issue. It's *not* the fact that they are included in the bible that makes these texts true. It's the historical veracity that makes them true and *that's* why they are included in the bible in the first place.

Understand this: there are world class atheist and agnostic historians that agree with the four facts presented (they don't agree with the resurrection hypothesis though).

See <mort>, even back in the year 325 there were historians. They saw the rise of Christianity all around them and new that it was relatively recent. In an effort to get to the bottom of this whole Jesus thing, they gathered together all of the documents and written testimony that they could find about this man, his followers, the events that took place and so on.

These exegetes compared texts, studied the oral traditions that they came from (the early sources that were from either eye witnesses or people that knew them) and carefully figured out which ones were genuine and which were legend or exaggerated in some way. Once this was done, they put all the documents into one book and that's what we call the NT today.

These four facts aren't considered true by atheists and agnostics because they are in the bible!

This is an entirely historical approach. It seems to me that you are very unfamiliar with how the NT came to be in the first place, otherwise you wouldn't even think of using this angle of "it's in the bible so it's true, therefore it's circular".

The people that wrote the gospels were not eye witnesses. They wrote these documents based on the oral traditions that were handed down to them at the time. This means that the narratives date back to within months to 5 years of the crucifixion. The earliest one being Paul in his letter to the church at Corinth where he recites the Passion story in 4 lines in the style of oral tradition (not his regular writing style).

Where are the claims of the resurrection historically?>

Mort, you could have told <ohio> about your first negative response you tried here. You said that the idea of the resurrection was not a rational or intelligent idea.

But you had to retract that because as a person who is not an atheist, you are open to God's existence, and, given God's possible existence you said you now had <no reason at all.> to claim that the resurrection was not a rational or intelligent idea.

I don't know how old you are but you had been carrying that fallacious idea around in your pocket all your life until now. Only now do you realize that there is <no reason at all.> to think that.

The fact is, the more you look closely at the historicity of the gospel accounts of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, the more you will learn that the superficial objections (like the one you posed) don't really carry that much weight.

< everything that began to exist has a cause>....It seems that way within the context of our limited life and understanding but let's be honest, we really DON'T know ( not to mention the gross special pleading that is done trying to keep God off the hook on this one. "He didn't begin to exist, he has existed forever", yeah, like we would know).

< The universe began to exist>...once again we really DON'T know, we only have mathematical models that tell us about this known universe and how it "exploded" at one point some 14 billion years ago. All our words and concepts like matter, time, space, beginning, causality, etc. are inadequate and they break down around the time of the big bang. What scientists think today about what happened at that point is probably very different than what mainstream science will be considering as probable a few decades from now. This is obviously just common sense. It's the nature of scientific advancements. We don't know for sure is a perfectly good answer and the only honest one.

<If the premises of the Kalam are true, then it most definitely tells us about the attributes of the Cause. This can easily be deduced>...it most definitely cannot. No honest philosopher will use the "argument from ignorance" at this point. If the universe has a cause then bla,bla,bla,....therefore this cause <must> be timeless, immaterial, spaceless, powerful and a person. Such arrogance. The truth is that "if" there is a cause, NOBODY knows anything about it, regardless of the amount of metaphysical @#$%*&!# we throw in the mix.

< given Jesus' personal radical claims about forgiving sins and speaking as though he is God, and claiming to be God,...>...we can deduce that he was one more among the hundreds of charismatic deluded nutcases that the world has witnessed, whose stories are believe mostly by the needy, the gullible and the uneducated...

You've left my refutation to your rebuttal completely untouched.

Those points therefore still stand. You can just copy the presumes and repeat yourself once I've refuted your first rebuttal.

Go back to my very detailed response and deal with my specific arguments, otherwise you're at a dead end.

You see, I've taken your rebuttals seriously and responded directly to each of them. This means I've moved the debate forward. You need to do the same lest you come up empty.

The resurrection is objectively the WORST explanation for an empty tomb found by some women combined with a few men believing that a dead man came back to life and he was seen walking around. Why? For many reasons, among them,

It invites "the supernatural", something for which there has never been any good evidence. Hundreds of claims by thousands of groups throughout history and no supernatural explanation has ever supersede scientific answers or used to permanently settle any important issue or question.

It shows total lack of understanding of basic human psychology. The many errors that we make when we are ignorant of something, the fallibility of passing information with an oral tradition, the way we tenaciously cling to our hopes and dreams.etc.

It conveniently disregards the propensity to exaggerate and even lie when deep held religious beliefs turned into mild and strong fanaticism.

Occam's razor.

There has been no refutation except in your own head. In my opinion (and in the opinion of most philosophers and scientists as you probably know), the Kalam's premises are not convincing and the conclusion leaves us only with more ignorance. It does nothing to support the god of classical theism. If you fail to see it that way after watching minutes 6 to 12 of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Y... , and parts of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE8... , then perhaps there's nothing more to add.

As far as the resurrection, Richard Carrier shows exactly how an unbiased thinker should approach most of the issues here:

http://infidels.org/library/modern/... , and I agree with him completely, if you don't see it that way, once again we have probably reach another dead end.

There has been no refutation except in your own head.>

1. I explained to you about why verificationism, which is what your objection (and tga's too) is based on, is not a valid objection, and how and why it died out along with logical positivism. You didn't respond.

2. I explained how the permutation known as the Falsification Principle failed as well citing work from Flew in 1948. You didn't respond.

3. I explained that these two theories died off because they would wipe out vast tracts of obviously meaningful statements, including much of what we know about science, in one fell swoop. You didn't respond.

4. I explained that science itself assumes the metaphysical principle of cause and effect, which is how science works. We see effects (like cosmic background radiation) and look to explain the cause. We see variety in species (an effect) and look for the cause. We see an expanding universe and look for a cause. We see cancer cells and look for a cause.

You didn't respond.

5. Regarding premise 2 I cited mainstream science in the Big Bang, which definitely gives us a universe that came into being a finite time ago.

You didn't respond.

These refutations stand uncontested because all you could say was, <There has been no refutation except in your own head.>

If you can think of any responses to these refutations post them here. If you can't, don't bother wasting time by repeating yourself.

<In my opinion (and in the opinion of most philosophers and scientists as you probably know), the Kalam's premises are not convincing and the conclusion leaves us only with more ignorance.>

Yes, you've said this three times but never engage in the arguments. You keep shrugging it all off by speaking in generalities, purposefully avoiding the arguments.

There's lots of good evidence. Most of the people that have ever existed thought that God existed.

Good reasons to think God exist include,

1. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
2. The argument from contingency
3. The argument from intentional states
4. The ontological argument
5. The moral argument
6. The teleological argument
7. The argument from physical constants
8. The argument from the applicability of mathematics.

But most people believe God exists because they experience God; they sense God, just as they sense the external world or right and wrong. Alvin Plantinga has successfully argued that belief in God is Properly Basic.

But, <CS>, we don't really need these arguments to posit the resurrection hypothesis at all!

If one is at least open to the mere possibility that God exists, (in other words, such a person does not defend the proposition "God does not exist") then the resurrection hypothesis does nothing extraordinary in using a supernatural explanation.

You are working under the presumption of atheism, which you haven't given any arguments for. You are assuming atheism is true and reasoning from there that any supernatural explanation is a bad hypothesis.

Are you saying that there is something objectively wrong with extreme suffering of innocent humans and animals?

Or, is it just your opinion? If it is just your opinion that suffering is wrong, then what problem is it?

However, if you are inadvertently appealing to some sort of objective moral standard, then that is an argument for theism!

1. If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist.

2. Objective moral values exist.

3. Therefore God exists.

This is a deductive argument in the form of:

1. If not A then not B
2. B
3. Therefore A

We know that you believe that premise 2 is true, as do I, because you are appealing to it in your question. (Why does God allow so much suffering in the world - the problem of evil). You show with your question that you apprehend an *objective* moral standard that appears to be being violated to you, and you want to know why if God exists, he would let this happen.

You see, <CS>, by asking your special question, the one that is most interesting to you, the big question, you actually help make the case for theism!

At this point all we have to do is look at the first premise of the moral argument 1. If God does not exist the OMV do not exist, and if you think that is true, then you should think God exists.

Philosophers of all stripes agree with premise 1, as without there being some sort of transcendental foundation for moral values, we can't account ontologically for moral values existing in an objective sense. We would just be left with relative moral values where they are nothing more than ideas that we each hold to ourselves.

<CM: That's assuming extraordinary claims were made at the time rather than retrospectively. But even if they were made at the time, why should they precipitate vehement denials?>

I don't know. What was the reaction to Abdel's 10K Peace Walk?

< Seems to me you are projecting modern skepticism onto on age that was far more superstitious.>

The Christian God was a direct threat to the polytheism of that time. The issue was not belief in the supernatural. The issue was the belief in that specific supernatural.

<OCF: Where's the negative responses to the claims of the resurrection?>

<CM: Where are the claims of the resurrection historically?>

"You have left my refutations untouched BigPawn, my points still stand and you are not addressing them".

1. I mention that, independent of the fate of logical positivism, the first premise of the Kalam is weak, unconvincing and shows limited understanding of how science evolves and that in the big scheme of things is probably false (just as the Newtonian laws of physics are inadequate at the level of the "very small", the notion of cause among others is inadequate at the "very early"). You ignored it.

2. I pointed at models by eminent cosmologists that leave totally open the possibility of something existing before the initial "explosion" of the universe known to us, which in turn makes the second premise of the Kalam very deficient. You ignored it.

3. I posted a link to a video that explains very convincingly that even if the Kalam was successful, to give this Cause similar attributes as one of the "Gods of the humans" was nothing more than arguing from ignorance. You ignored it.

Despite all these criticisms, that are simple but powerful enough to convince any dispassionate witness of the hollowness of the Kalam, you still go and list it as one of the good reasons to think that God exists, because,... you just ignored them.

5. I explained that Jesus'radical behavior and claims to be God should be seen by neutral observer as the mumblings of yet another charismatic but deluded man since we have had hundreds of them and the proofs of their claims have never been convincing. You ignored it.

6. I posted a great essay by Richard Carrier that shows among other relevant things that the evidence for the resurrection is extremely poor to say the least. He can do a better job at it than me or anybody else. You ignored it.

7. <there's lots of good evidence for the supernatural. Most of the people that have ever existed thought that God existed>. (?) Smells like a childish non-sequitur to me ( and I'm sure to you too) At least when I do something similar I appeal to the authority of "most philosophers and respected scientists" for example,...

8. You, < good reasons to think God exist include 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8 (see above) > Me, bad reasons to think God exits include 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8 (same as above) For an explanation consult with 90 % of good philosophers (the experts at thinking correctly) and 90 % of top scientists (the experts at understanding reality).

9. < how do you explain extreme suffering to innocent human beings and animals? >.

No answer. You ignored it.

Finally the imprudent and ill conceived "Moral Argument". To any rational mind it would be enough to say, " IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TYPE, THE ORIGIN OR THE LEVEL OF OBJECTIVITY OF MORALS YOU IDIOT, IT'S ABOUT THE SUFFERING !" but apparently for some like Mister W.L.Craig that is too simple and obvious to be true. Let's see what rational people think about it,

1. Morality is neither objective nor absolute.

2. A subjective account of morality does not lead to moral anarchy.

3. Biology and Sociology account (better than anything else) for the development of human morality.

4. Theists are still trying to cope with Euthyphro's dilemma and their futile contortions are not getting them anywhere.

5. It's the consent of humanity that gives morality its force.

6. The fact that humans almost universally abhor murder and most cultures, but not all, ostracize pedophiles, doesn't mean that there is a supernatural objective law giver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE8...

Again, you say "So what?" to the fact that the basis of your objection has been rendered obsolete by philosophers for 80 years. The basis for your objection, verificationism, is held by almost *no* current philosophers, and for good reason.

To this I added that if verificationism were imposed, it would wipe out large tracts of obviously meaningful scientific statements. Your response is simply to number the points as I did and say, "so what".

You need to give an argument for verificationism if you want to bolster this point. Otherwise, you have marginalized yourself with an outdated obsolete theory that is virtually dead.

<2. I pointed at models by eminent cosmologists that leave totally open the possibility of something existing before the initial "explosion" of the universe known to us, which in turn makes the second premise of the Kalam very deficient. You ignored it.>

This does not correspond with my 2nd point above, <2. I explained how the permutation known as the Falsification Principle failed as well citing work from Flew in 1948. You didn't respond.>

<3. I posted a link to a video that explains very convincingly that even if the Kalam was successful, to give this Cause similar attributes as one of the "Gods of the humans" was nothing more than arguing from ignorance. You ignored it.>

I told you before that in this forum you make your own arguments. I'm not chasing videos around. If you can't make your argument then you can't make your argument.

So far I've seen nothing new from you in these first three points. You've marginalized yourself on point one and failed to give an argument for the basis of your objection, verificationism. You've mismatched my second point and didn't address (instead just offering your own random 2nd point - total mismatch), and 3rd, you posted a video and bailed out of the argument.

Finally, concerning the Kalam, you've not offered a counter argument as to why the first premise is not plausibly true.

So unless you can do that, you've offered nothing by hand waving. What is your argument that the first premise is either false or not plausible?

Give your argument for verificationism. Then give your argument for why premise 1 is not true or plausible.

You asserted that Jesus was crazy. You have no arguments for that assertion so there was nothing to respond to. Give your arguments and then I can respond. Ball is in your court.

<6. I posted a great essay by Richard Carrier that shows among other relevant things that the evidence for the resurrection is extremely poor to say the least. He can do a better job at it than me or anybody else. You ignored it.>

Carrier is well known as a crank exegete. You didn't actually make any arguments yourself. It's like the video you posted a link to. *YOU* need to bring the arguments!

<7. <there's lots of good evidence for the supernatural. Most of the people that have ever existed thought that God existed>. (?) Smells like a childish non-sequitur to me>

I listed the arguments. Calling me childish and silly and so forth might make you feel good but it doesn't actually contend with the arguments. You need to contend with them.

<9. < how do you explain extreme suffering to innocent human beings and animals? >.

No answer. You ignored it. >

I gave a long answer to it, which showed that your very question is an argument for theism. I did not ignore it.

<Finally the imprudent and ill conceived "Moral Argument". To any rational mind it would be enough to say, " IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TYPE, THE ORIGIN OR THE LEVEL OF OBJECTIVITY OF MORALS YOU IDIOT, IT'S ABOUT THE SUFFERING !">

Imprudent, ill conceived, idiot - why all the bluster <cs>? Not having an easy time here? You'll have to engage in the arguments rather than show your frustration if you want to defeat the argument.

<1. Morality is neither objective nor absolute.>

Where is your argument?

On the contrary, you've already tipped your hand! You are appealing to an objective moral standard that is apparently being violated when you ask, "Why so much suffering in the world?"

I gave the moral argument:

1. If God does not exist then OMV do not exist.
2. OMV exist.
3. Therefore God exist.

You didn't engage with either premise and instead listed a bunch of general points. If you want to refute this argument, then you need to refute premise 1 or 2.

Do that now or else you've got nothing more than calling me a silly idiot.

Now, when you respond, make sure your points match my points! I numbered them so you wouldn't get confused, but it didn't seem to help.

In summary,

You need to give an argument for verificationism, the dead theory.

You need to give an argument against premise 1 of the kalam.

You need to stop handing off your arguments to videos and articles and *debate me* yourself.

You need to refute premise 1 of the moral argument.

You need to realize you appealed to the truth of premise 2 in the moral argument!

You need to give an argument (not just a bald assertion) as to why Jesus was a madman.

I think that's been addressed in this forum already but I can go search some out.>

Yes it has been addressed in so far as those who were addressing it were claiming 'historical' evidence while 'shunning' the Bible.

Which is strange because they were invoking the 'historical' from the Bible itself.

I don't have a problem with the religious who believe the Bible in pursuance of their faith.