by Bilge Bulge » Fri Jan 22, 2016 12:54 pm
Thanks for being civil and coherent. I'll get right to it.
> Supernatural events are only impossible if your presuppositions disallow them
Nope. That isn't how this works. Beliefs are formed as they're demonstrated, not believed until they're proven wrong. I don't presuppose that these things are impossible, and never claimed they are, but I have no reason to believe them until they're demonstrated.
> science cannot prove...that no metaphysical being exists
Again, there is no reason to believe that one does simply because it can't be disproved. I'm sure I'm not the first one to tell you this, but that is just another positive presupposition that can be used in support of any claim.
> Does that prove it didn't happen?
The fact that we can't find it isn't proof that it never happened, but again, there is no reason to believe it did just because it hasn't been proven to have not happened. Flying Spaghetti Monster exists entirely because of this argument.
> When we go back to the house eager to tell our story, other family members may want to see the evidence.
Sure, but considering this is a perfectly realistic event that happens and we know that cougars are real, this is hardly related. It's a bit of a stretch to try making this connection.
> What evidence does one expect of the feeding of the 5,000, an axe head floating, a donkey talking, a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, or Jesus healing a lame man? Certainly nothing an archaeologist can find, and obviously not a phenomenon a scientist can test and confirm.
Maybe we can't find the archaeological evidence for this, but that doesn't mean we should believe it. Virtually all of our evidence, throughout all fields of science, would lead to us concluding that these things do not happen. Certainly we could not disprove it happening then, but there has never been the slightest observation to support these possibilities, and countless observations that make them absolutely outrageous claims. In all of the tests that scientists have done so far, not any observations have been made to support this being a possibility.
> wishful thinking or legend building
Now you're getting somewhere.
> If there is such a being as God, and if Jesus was his Messiah, it would not at all be improbable for God to empower him to do miraculous signs.
Sure, and if Allah is the creator, it would not at all be improbable for Mohammed to have flown to heaven on a Pegasus.
> Science cannot prove that the universe is all there is, meaning that it's a closed causal system.
This has been covered so thoroughly it's tiresome. Something not being disproven is not evidence that it is true. Claims like this become harder and harder to support when all of the evidence that we do have continues to explain reality in other ways.
> The only way to show that miracles are impossible is to disprove the existence of God, a task that is both logically and scientifically impossible.
You are saying the same thing over and over, and the response is rather obvious. It's the same as your other points.
> What about Jesus' Miracles?
1. Eyewitness testimony, in a book full of other stories that already contradict reality, is hardly reliable.
2. Some points being historically accurate has no bearing on the truth of spiritual claims. If I perfectly describe my house, school, and city to you, then tell you that I'm God, you have no reason to believe that I'm God, even if my descriptions of the former claims are perfectly accurate, especially if I waited to tell you for thousands of years and my story has become legend.
3. Josephus is widely regarded as a forgery, and at best is just another story we don't have any reason to believe.
4. See response to number 2. This is still evidence written in the Bible and we don't have good reasons to believe it is literal history. Other religions and other supernatural claims line up with the cultures from which they've originated, and you don't seem to believe in those.
5. Jesus' enemies, according to the Bible, also performed miracles. For all the same reasons above, this is not evidence that any of it happened or is more than a story.
6. Alternative interpretations are irrelevant unless we take the Bible as literal history, which we shouldn't, especially considering much of it contradicts what we indisputably know about actual history.
The resurrection of Jesus is told in stories that all contradict each other and hardly compelling unless you already believe in the rest of the Bible. To an outsider, his resurrection is barely an inconvenience to him and can't be considered a sacrifice, thus hardly compelling. Furthermore, it is another story in the Bible that makes little sense and makes God seem either inept or cruel. He was so thirsty for blood sacrifice that He had to create a loophole in his rules in order to feed his bloodlust without murdering all of his creation (most of which he continues to kill anyway). He sacrificed himself to himself to appease himself over a rule he created for the wrongdoings that he knew his creation would do when he created them. Why he didn't just actually forgive everyone and not require sacrifice is a question that theists continue to dance around.
> OT corresponds tremendously well with what we know of actual historical events
No, not at all. Either you've been given bad information or you are willfully ignorant of what archaeology and history have actually told us. There was no worldwide flood, there was no Exodus, and we certainly weren't created from sand. We also know that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, and the Earth doesn't sit on pillars. If you're genuinely and honestly looking for what the evidence says, I'd encourage you to read some works by legitimate scientists, not the acrobatic woo put out by Creationist "scientists". This is an area you simply can't get around if you're talking about the weight of actual evidence.
Your post was well-written, but essentially boils down to a really long version of "Since you can't disprove God, you must believe in him". I could use nearly all of your claims, up to the point of Jesus' specific miracles, in support of literally any other god or supernatural claim. You must understand why this is not compelling to someone who doesn't already believe. You are the one making the presuppositions here; I'm simply not accepting them.
I'm curious. Are these points the main reasons for your belief? If you base your beliefs on what hasn't been disproven, why don't you believe in Allah or Krishna? Do you believe alien abduction stories similar to your cougar story? Do you believe the tales of Xenu or the writings of Joseph Smith? Once you think about why you don't believe in these things, you might begin to understand why I don't believe your claims and be able to formulate a more compelling argument. You certainly write well and communicate effectively, which is something I don't see a lot in these discussions.