Ok I shouldn't of said you do this as you dont usually express your opinions on religion. But other Christians regularly do this. They say Jesus' resurrection is shown to be true by the fact that his apostles died form him and they wouldn't of died for a lie. Well to me that claim is weaker then an atheist who says Jesus might not of existed. Thats all.

Aaron, you said that the entire scientific method is based on "preconceived notions". It isn't. It's based on the fact that IT FRICKING WORKS. IT EXPLAINS THINGS.

And no, you aren't that smart. Indeed, I am not going to claim that it's impossible to be smart and be a Christian-- it obviously is possible-- but it is impossible to be smart and be YOUR kind of Christian. One of the things that those of us who are actually smarter than you understand is that the reasoning process can't be used to "prove" religion. It can't even be used to create the space for religion to take up. The entire arc of the development of our intellects, technology, and explanations for observed phenomena over the past 1,000 years or more has coincided with a whole lot of what religious believers considered INTEGRAL to their beliefs being proven false.

Now, what do people who actually know what the hell they are talking about do in response to this? They can still believe, but they realize it's just a matter of faith. It's just something they instinctively feel and believe.

What do dumb people, like you, do? They convince themselves that the last 1,000 years never happened and that you can still believe that science is actually based on preconceived notions rather than observation, and that ancient methods of recording information were reliable enough to believe the details, and that we can ignore all the BS that was disproven and still assume that the early Christians got everything right. And that you can go on the internet and convince others of this.

Aaron, I'm sorry, but conversing with you is an entire exercise is missing the forest for the trees. All the great thinkers-- INCLUDING GREAT THEOLOGIANS-- who concluded the Enlightenment and the scientific method were really bad for religion, didn't conclude it because they simply didn't think of the right very specific philosophical theory that one could deploy to try and justify it. They concluded it because it is very difficult to HONESTLY look at the last 1,000 years and decide that what really happened is that the SCIENTISTS came in with a bunch of preconceived notions, rather than the religious people having the preconceived notions.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In your case, you know just enough to argue really stupid things in internet threads without any self-awareness of why it's total BS. You know just enough to be able to invoke postmodernist ideas criticizing science without actually understanding that exploring the limits of science does not get you back to the ignorance, rumor, unsound methods, and stupid mysticism of people who lived short lives 2,000 years ago.

You really need to just stop trying to "prove" there's some room for your irrational beliefs. It's OK to just have irrational beliefs. I know people who go to palm readers. Intelligent people. But they are smart enough to know that you don't go on an internet forum and argue that in fact scientific paradigms are based on preexisting notions and that if you just define palm reading as outside the laws of the universe, psychic knowledge is possible. No, they just have faith that it might work without the slightest presumption that the mechanism can be explained.

Those people, Aaron, are smart. You are not.

LOL

Even the wikipedia can tell you why "IT FRICKING WORKS" isn't an adequate justification. The problem of induction is not solved by caps lock.

And where have I tried to "prove" religion?

And what beliefs do you claim that I hold that have been "proven" false?

LOL - You clearly have no knowledge of the philosophy of science. Science follows a certain epistemological standard. But on what basis does one accept that epistemological standard as the only means by which one can obtain knowledge?

LOL^2 - What is your obsession with 1000 years? Do you not know your history? The science that you've been referring to comes out of the enlightenment, which occurred roughly 300 years ago.

And you still fail at the philosophy of science. You simply cannot avoid that simple fact.

LOL^3 - Sadly, the evidence of this thread indicates that you are the one who lacks knowledge. Not only have you failed to make any affirmative points on your side (mostly due to presenting false information), but you've also failed at demonstrating that you even understand the conversation itself. You've perpetually made claims about my position which are false, and unsupported by the evidence of the thread. You continue to believe that the use of ad hominem and insult will somehow buttress your failing arguments, and you've repeatedly shown that you lack the philosophical framework to even begin to have a conversation about the topics at hand.

Again, where am I trying to "prove" anything?

The lawyer wants to confuse the court by introducing a lot of extraneous ideas, yet finds at the end of the day that he has failed to affirm a single one of his assertions that I am the overclaimer.

Yet in the course of reviewing the evidence, one can only conclude that it is lawdude himself who continues to make claims beyond that which have been presented, thereby convicting himself of that of which he accuses me.

In response, his only option is that of desperation, which is simply to fling repeated personal insults of no substance, and increase the lengths of his rambles, in the hope that the sheer volume of text may overcome his intellectual difficulties.

I believe that the evidence of this thread is sufficient for anyone who reads carefully and comprehensively to understand the nature of the conversation.

Lawdude, if you wish to continue this conversation, then you will abandon the personal insults and get down to business.

Berkeley did not reject empiricism. While more recent scholarship has emphasized the inaccuracy of the traditional story of a conflict in early modern philosophy between the rationalists (e.g. Descartes, Leibnize, Spinoza) and the empiricists (e.g. Locke, Berkeley, Hume), there is some truth to the story. And Berkeley has always, and in my view correctly, been understood as a paradigmatic empiricist philosopher. Berkeley did deny the existence of material substances, but that doesn't mean that he denies the validity of either the empirical or scientific method.

That's not an invalid form of classification, but many people do not classify Berkeley as an empiricist because the existence of material substances is basically one of the most obvious manifestations of empirical observation. (Or, as the joke went, "I refute Berkeley thus" while kicking something.)

In any event, my more general point was that Aaron's Philistine / post-modern position when it came to the supposed "preconceived notions" of scientists (and again, no Bible believer should EVER criticize anyone for having a preconceived notion) has a long-established intellectual history. It isn't, however, something he actually consistently believes in. It's just an excuse he uses so that he can continue to be intellectually lazy and believe in the Bible.

Obviously, this is all a side issue to your flamewar with Aaron, but again, this isn't quite right. While it is true that some modern philosophers have claimed that Berkeley was not really an empiricist, they usually do so as part of a general thesis that the rationalist/empiricist distinction is largely illusory.

Viewed as an epistemological doctrine, Berkeley fairly clearly presented himself as an empiricist in a roughly Lockean sense. For instance, the opening sentence of Principles of Human Knowledge says,

Here Berkeley is clearly representing himself as accepting the traditional empiricist view that knowledge comes from the senses and memory.

You note, correctly, that empiricists tend to lean towards more materialist views of the world (although it is worth noting that Locke was a dualist). However, the reason why Berkeley's idealism is a particularly empirical idealism is because his arguments rely on the fact that, contrary to what you claim, material substances are not only not an "obvious manifestion" of empirical observation, but they are not empirically observed at all. In fact, Berkeley claimed that the idea of material substance was an invention by philosophers who weren't sufficiently empirical in their approach to metaphysics and science.

As a final point, it is historically false to contrast the empirical viewpoint as scientific and the rationalist viewpoint as non-scientific. After all, the most famous rationalist philosophers, such as Leibniz and Descartes were important scientists in their own rights. It is probably better to think of these different views as emphasizing two different innovations of the scientific revolution. The empiricists focused more on the idea that we discover and confirm the laws of nature through observation and experimentation, while the rationalists focused more on the idea that the general laws of nature can and should be expressed in abstract mathematical principles. Anyway, if you a more nuanced take on the issue, here is good article on the topic by Michael Ayers.

I said this statement shows you haven't read the bible.

Because except for Stephen who's a disciple not an Apostle and Judas Iscariot none of the Apostles marytrdoms were written of in the New Testament.

So obviously any proof we have is outside of the book you say you don't trust.

But if you don't know a simple fact like the bible itself doesn't record the Apostles' martyrdoms then obviously you're not conversant with the bible.

I posted for clarification. I don't intend to be following this thread regularly.

I use apostle and disciple interchangeably and wrongly. But if you have anything to say about my main point which is you have no trustworthy proof people died for Jesus resurrection. Then show me wrong and show your proof.

Also like i said i read the bible a vary long time ago. I cant be expected to remember every last detail of a huge confusing book.

There's nothing to prove. It is a matter of historical record that is easily researched and I don't humor people by doing their leg work when they are capable of doing if for themselves.

Right....

the last two weeks were so pleasant ...