Seeing is believing

John W. Loftus said:

“My views are not based upon a hasty generalization. My views are based upon every waking moment of my life. I have never seen God's working or his miracles, so I am every bit rational to conclude he didn't work in the past.”

So if Loftus has never seen ball lightning, then it’s rational for him to dismiss the testimony of others to the existence of ball lightening.

“The problem is that I won't live that long, nor have I lived in the past. I can only judge things by what I have experienced in the present. And in the present times miracles do not occur. So I have every right to think they did not occur in the past either, and that claims of them cannot be substantiated with evidence.”

i) Nothing could be more irrational than to make one’s personal experience the yardstick of what’s possible or real.

ii) The only reason Loftus takes such an extreme position is that by excluding all testimony, he can thereby exclude religious testimony.

iii) To claim that miracles don’t happen at present is a bare assertion which disregards a great deal of contemporary testimony to the contrary.

“So tell me, how many events have YOU experienced that require a supernatural explanation?”

This is an arbitrary standard of evidence. A rational rule of evidence is the best available explanation of a given event, not the only explanation or necessary explanation.

Once again, Loftus must resort to special pleading to preempt any evidence that would undercut his atheism.

First he limits probative evidence to his personal experience.

Then he limits probative evidence to only what is absolutely required to account for a given event.

“It's just interesting to me that Christians must argue that ancient people were not as superstitious as they really were, and then they have to downplay our knowledge today, arguing that science isn't solid enough. Do you use a computer?”

i) Of course, Jason never contended that ancient people were not as superstitious as they really were.

ii) Rather, Jason has argued that Loftus exaggerates the gullibility of the ancients.

People are no different today than they were in the past. You have credulous people today, just as in the past.

You have sceptical people today, just as you had in the past.

iii) Why is Loftus appealing to science? Science makes many claims about the past, present, and the future which fall outside the scope of Loftus’ personal experience.

iv) How is computer science relevant to his claim?

There’s a difference between technology and scientific theorizing.

Is science a window onto reality? Hard to say. Science deals with appearances.

It may deal with appearances at the microscopic and macroscopic level, as well as naked-eye observation; it may artificially enhance our sensory perception, but it is still limited to appearances.

It works at the level of appearances. Of phenomenal relations. Of how things appear to the observer.

But that tells us nothing of the degree to which appearance and reality correspond.

“And I can't think of a properly interpreted OT prophecy that unequivicably pointed to the nature or mission of Jesus that wasn't misapplied to him, or that wasn't based upon a nebulous hope of theirs. The so-called messianic psalms, if interpreted correctly by the grammatical-historical method, and not through midrash or pesher, were merely psalms of hope and anguish from the writer's perspective alone.”

This is another blanket claim, shorn of any supporting argument.

“And as far as the superstitious people in the Bible goes, I have done a unique analysis of the Bible in my book (my longest chapter) and found superstitions everywhere. That is, taking the Bible at face value, as you might do, I document the various superstitions among those people. I will post something on our blog from my book today to show you the kind of superstitiousness there is in the people of the Bible. Just ask yourself, is there anything like that in today's world? I'll share only one incident...there are many many many more of these. Here goes....”

Why is Loftus making claims about the past? He has told us on numerous occasions that it is rational for him to disbelieve anything that falls outside the scope of his personal experience.

By definition, events from the distant past fall beyond the purview of his own experience.

Why does he dismiss past (as well as present) testimony to the occurrence of the miraculous while he appeals to past testimony regarding the extent of superstition in the ancient world?

For Loftus, past testimony is reliable if it happens to agree with him, but unreliable if it happens to disagree with him.