“Straw-man, I don’t argue that miracles don’t happen simply because I’ve never seen them.”
Now you’re moving the goal-post. You’ve repeatedly appealed to your personal experience as a reference-point for judging miracle claims. In fact, you yourself repeat that claim in the course of this very thread:
“Did you forget that I use ‘the present is the key to the past’? my own experience in life is my ultimate criteria through which I test the personal experiences claimed by others, and it must necessarily be in that order.”
Moving along:
“Look back on the dark ages with your precious hind-sight, and imagine the very likely scenario of a theologian asking an atheist-doctor to explain why that man over there is throwing himself on the ground, frothing at the mouth, and screaming at people. The theologian says “demons!”, the atheist says ’current medical science cannot provide a naturalistic explanation for that phenomena.’
Do you agree now that your ‘god-of-the-gaps’ reasoning is fallacious? Or, do you consider the existence of bi-polar epileptics too improbable to worry about?”
False dichotomy. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was a distinguished physician before he went into the ministry, has laid down criteria in which he differentiates the symptoms of ordinary mental illness from symptoms of possession. Cf. Healing & the Scriptures (T. Nelson, 1988), chap. 10.
“Steve said:
It might be a coincidence. It might also be an instance of what we call God’s uncovenanted mercies.
empiricism202:
You are avoiding the point.”
No, I’m not avoiding the point. I’m answering the point from my theological viewpoint.
“Why? Jesus said ‘with god all things are possible’ (Matthew 19:26).”
Irrelevant since God doesn’t will all possibilities and we can only act on God’s preceptive will.
“The uniformity of your life experience is a beautiful thing, isn’t it? I’m happy to see that although god might actually give the dealer several royal flushes in a row, you’ll still side with David Hume and say the deck is more than likely stacked.”
It’s a pity that you’re incapable of absorbing the basic distinction between miracle and providence no matter how often that distinction is explained to you.
Instead of discussing Christian theology on its own terms, you simply recast Christian categories into your own secular terms. Your arrows keep whizzing past the target.
“But you cannot fully discount the absence of god as a way to explain miracles. If I pray to the corner-of-the-coffee-table god, for more coffee in my cup right now, and my coffee cup doesn’t fill up, am I wrong to conclude that my prayer went unanswered because the god I prayed to didn’t actually exist in the first place?”
You evidently know nothing about the theology of prayer. In Scripture, prayer has certain conditions. This is not Aladdin’s lamp.
“Thanks for the info, but you now appear to be leaning on “that’s the way I see things” more so than in actually discrediting my arguments for coincidence. I realize that as a Christian you don’t view anything as mere coincidence, however, do you have anything more than this to refute my naturalistic interpretation of your miracle-claims?”
This goes to the question of competing worldviews, of which see more below.
“Straw-man fallacy, you know perfectly well that should I give you an anecdote from my personal life such as ‘my friend Billy came up with an irrefutable argument against god’s existence’ you would NOT suddenly stop being a Christian (i.e., give up your world-view) on the basis of anecdotal evidence alone, amen?”
The point at issue is the question of cumulative anecdotal evidence on the nature of historical causation.
“I’ve never seen evidence for god that couldn’t be explained naturalistically, so I guess you thus approve of my atheism? “
Those that turn their back to the sun cannot see the light.
“Sure, the miracle could nevertheless be true, but that’s irrelevant to people living 2000 years after the fact who have nothing but ancient religious propaganda to substantiate their claim.”
This is a very solipsistic standard of evidence. Witnesses from the distant past are no more or less reliable than your own contemporaries. What you’ve done is to give is a recipe for doubting everyone, past or present.
“I was a church-going bible-believing Calvinist for 20 years up until 1998.”
Ah, that explains a lot. An apostate brings a particular animosity to the debate.
“Do you say they are imaginary because of your reliance upon your uniform consistent experience of life from the past? Or because you can read my mind?”
Now you’re playing dumb. Flying elephants are just a variant on the old adage: “If pigs could fly.”
“I realize everybody has different experiences. What I would say is that you have mis-interpreted your experiences. If you handing me three uncheckable cases of alleged miracles from your personal family history over the internet says anything about what you think constitutes “evidence” for something, then I think this confirms my theory that your experience with the paranormal involved you in concluding something was supernatural LONG before the naturalistic explanations were found insufficient.”
I don’t object to naturalistic (read: providential) explanations when they make better sense of the data. But sometimes a supernaturalistic explanation makes better sense of the data.
“You now just contradicted your own statement from before in which you said: ‘Lack of evidence for the existence of something is sufficient reason to disbelieve in its existence.’
Well, does lack of evidence justify a denial, yes or no?”
No contradiction: lack of evidence is just that: the absence of evidence; zero evidence. It is not at all the same thing as positive evidence that something does not or cannot exist.
“If you had to choose, whose version of the Holocaust would you accept, Hitler’s or the Jews’?”
You persist in your studied equivocation over the meaning of “propaganda.”
“The fact that apologists have had no problems before in citing the extra-biblical miracle-claims they believe and don’t believe, in answer to my question, makes me wonder how exactly you think that extra-biblical miracle claims in ancient religious literature is a “rabbit trail”. Do you even KNOW of any? If so, why not just list one or two and tell me why you don’t or don’t accept it? Wouldn’t your views on specific ancient miracle-claims outside of the bible, function as a major test of your objectivity?”
To begin with, this is just a diversionary tactic on your part. If you want to give me a specific example of what you mean, I’m prepared to comment on it. But I’m not prepared to get into a long winding detour which is irrelevant to the veracity of Scripture.
And, as I’ve said before, an authentic report of an extra-Scriptural miracle does nothing to invalidate the claims of Scripture.
“So why exactly do you deny the existence of flying pigs, if it’s not due to your own experience of life, which you condemn atheists for using to deny stuff?”
One of your tactics is to present a simplistic version of the opposing position. I’ve explained my position on several occasions. Your comeback is always to drop my detailed qualifications.
“Go ahead and assume god doesn’t exist for the moment, and then tell why an atheist who does the above experiment should, if she is consistent with her atheism, think 'there’s no good reason to believe that the past will resemble the present.' In this case of dropping a ball.”
Once again you disregard the distinction between providence and miracle, along with treating the principle of uniformity as if it were synonymous with the resemblance between past and present, although that difference has been explained to you repeatedly.
“Do you think ‘our infinitesimal sampling on planet earth amounts to the tenth part of nothing,’ is nevertheless fully sufficient beyond reasonable doubt to deny the existence of flying elephants, yes or no? And don’t call my analogy here silly unless you have a good reason for why you believe flying elephants are silly.”
I’ve answered these questions time and again. Your problem is that you don’t want to listen because a qualified answer doesn’t serve your purpose.
“But you said I failed to distinguish personal causation from impersonal causation, and I still fail to see how failing to do this refutes the uniformity of nature that I observe. Uniformity is uniformity, regardless of whether it is a human being needing water to live, or leaves falling off trees, right? Why then say I need to distinguish between the different types?”
This whole debate is about miracles, which turns on supernatural agents.
“And WHY do you believe God’s ordinary providence obtains? Obviously the only reason you trust the bible’s statement to this effect is because you find that the real world operates exactly the way the bible says it does, right? Isn’t that a Calvinist relying on the uniformity of history to conclude that the bible’s world-view is correct?”
First of all, there are many different reasons for believing in Scripture, as I’ve already stated.
Second, I do see the real world operating exactly the way the Bible says it does. What I don’t see the real world operating exactly the way you say it does.
“I don’t understand why you are now quoting the bible, when not very long ago, you were trying to show objective rational and logical reasons to discount one’s full acceptance of the uniformity of historical causation and natural law. Have you switched the subject to simply telling me what you believe?”
Since God has not spoken to me the way he spoke to, say, Moses, announcing a miracle to come, I have no expectation that ordinary providence does not obtain in my particular case.
There are times when belief in ordinary providence is warranted as well as times when belief in extraordinary providence is warranted. It all depends on the personal and particular epistemic situation in which we find ourselves.
“If a ball hits the floor when it falls off a table, what more is causing the ball to travel toward the earth, other than the law of gravity?”
This is a disguised description, not a genuine explanation. The attractive force of gravity has no more explanatory value than the dormative power of sleeping pills. It’s just a label, like “instinct,” which we slap on a phenomenon for ease of reference. By itself it explains nothing.
“No scientists deny gravity…”
Again, you’re equivocating. No scientist denies the phenomenon, the effect. But to say that gravity is the cause is just a form of words with nothing to back it up.
“We haven’t gotten to god yet, we are still at the miracle level and trying to figure out whether atheist naturalism makes best use of historical evidence or whether some other world-view does.”
Even at a hypothetic level it is quite pertinent to compare and contrast the implications of a theistic and atheistic worldview as that bears on the character of historical causation.
“And your denial of the existence of talking crayons probably arises from your life experience (past), which never gave you a reason to believe they actually exist (present), right?”
We’ve been over this same ground many times before. Reread my qualified answer. Try to keep more than one idea in your head at a time.
“I’m rather waiting for you to mention just ONE miracle-claim in such literature (say, the 1st thru the 3rd centuries), and then tell me why you either do or don’t trust it.”
What’s the point?
“What’s wrong with having a dogmatic commitment to a world view which precludes one from ever accepting a certain explanation as a cause? Does your dogmatic world-view preclude you from ever accepting that atheism is best explained as the most logical and rational world view?”
This comes down to our respective reasons.
“I’ve got about 50,000 more witnesses to Mary appearing at Fatima Portugal…”
Now you’re changing the subject from your original denial of multiple-attestation to the Resurrection to the quantity of attestation.
“By the way, doesn’t your rebuttal of my methodology call the scientific method into question? If I drop a ball 500 times, and it falls to the ground 500 times, am I a fool for thinking it will do likewise on drop # 501?”
I have a better idea: try writing “providence” on the blackboard 500 hundred times. Once you learn to appreciate the concept you’ll be able to stop reiterating the straw man argument of equating providence with uniformity.
“Of course the burden of proof is on you. I’m asking why you have this extremely high view of bible inerrancy, which you flatly refuse to accord to any book in the world outside the bible. I ask “why” because I know the real reason, but I want you to actually admit it, because if you do so, you will then supply me with justification for part of my world-view, since you obviously don’t dare condemn me for what you yourself do.”
This is a non sequitur. To say that Scripture is inspired, and thus inerrant, does not imply that uninspired writings can never speak the truth.
“Let me know if you need further clarification.”
How about a specific example?
“I wasn’t asking you about biblical miracle reports. I was asking you your view on NON-biblical (read: extra-biblical) reports of miracles, in ancient literature.”
No, you were asking me why I have more faith in Scripture than in extra-biblical reports. That’s the question I’m answering.
“Sorry, the many instances of rank unbelief in the Israelites not only during but after their miraculous exodus from Egypt, makes them appear more than a bit too stupid for real life.”
Oh, I’d never underestimate the stupidity of unbelief. I see it on display on a daily basis.
“Since I’m not asking you what a spirit is NOT, all negative definitions are by definition irrelevant to the question.)
Perhaps we should back up and ask you to sustain your more general thesis that matter and energy aren’t the only things that exist? If that’s what you believe, what evidence did you base your belief in them on? Choose any specific example you currently believe in.”
I don’t need a negative definition. How about the mind and mental properties, which are irreducible to tangible properties? How about abstract objects like numbers?
“Please try to refrain from giving me bibliographies, and instead actually support your statements with specific evidence or arguments. Referral to books that support your viewpoint doesn’t a rebuttal make.”
You are not the only reader of this blog. And referring a reader to literature in which a detailed case has been made for a particular position is an accepted short-cut. Scholars do it all the time. That’s what footnotes are for.
“None of which qualifies as evidence…”
Citing case-studies which document the paranormal, contrary to the principle of uniformity, certainly qualify as prima facie evidence. That doesn’t cinch the argument, but it’s a legitimate starting-point by supplying the raw materials for further discussion.
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