We don't have any reason to think that the ghosts will keep coming around or that Moroni will visit again either, Concerto. The point is that when someone claims "God just HAPPENED to come around and intervene in the world ONLY during those times before many technologies that would make the claim easier to verify came on line, and won't come back now that the technologies are here", that is a suspect claim.

This is not an answer. I asked for a specific hypothetical scientific finding, not a reiteration of the observation.

Science has never observed "impossible according to the laws of nature" nor will it ever do so. This is not a scientific concept.

Then this is like the boy claiming the ghost just happened to come around before you set up the detection equipment and has now departed, so not detecting it is hardly surprising.

This thread is spilling out of control a bit so maybe I just missed your response. But have you addressed the possibility that God, for some reason, doesn't want to be recorded, revealed, or verified and therefore isn't performing miracles on camera?

YouYou are missing my point on purpose here. If any of these things were observed, they would demonstrate supernatural phenomena.
You should familiarize yourself with James Randys work; it is quite possible to test for supernatural abilities.

Science has indeed never made that observation, I wonder why...
Everything about our world that has been investigated has been shown to be governed by deterministic rules.
Showing that those rules can be suspended by an act of will, would demonstrate supernatural abilities.
So far no one has been able to document that.

Because it can't.

Establishment physics disagrees with you.

So far no one has the means to. That is why I asked you what a hypothetical scientific determination of "supernatural" would look like, and why you can't provide an answer.

I don't think that it is just "that God, for some reason, doesn't want to be recorded, revealed, or verified and therefore isn't performing miracles on camera", but it is also that his documentation using the available means at that time is so flawed.

For example, why would he allow so much obvious plagiarism in the synoptic gospels?

Overlooking my answer twice, while claiming I didn’t give any is pretty weak.

It would look like James Randys tests. If someone is able to demonstrate the ability to predict the future, communicate telepathically or anything else that is impossible according to the laws of nature that would demonstrate supernatural ability.
If I proved the ability to uproot skyscrapers with telekinesis, do you really think scientists would deny that I had magical powers?

Again, "impossible according to the laws of nature" and "magical powers" are concepts foreign to science which simply has no way to recognize such things.

If I proved the ability to uproot skyscrapers with telekinesis, do you really think scientists would deny that I had magical powers?

Concerto you keep claiming these things cannot be investigated, yet plenty of scientists have investigated supernatural phenomena.
It is clearly possible to test whether people have the powers they claim to have.
If someone claims, say, the ability to find water with a stick, we can make a test and find out if they are actually capable of doing that.
That is a direct investigation of the supernatural, so clearly it is possible for science to investigate supernatural claims.
So far everyone who has stepped forward to have their supposed supernatural abilities tested, have been busted.
Not because of some esoteric philosophical problem, but because they quite simply were not able to do what they claimed they were able to do.
When people make supernatural claims, that would have direct and measurable consequences, we can test that.
There is no weaseling out of that.

In other words, when you have nothing affirmative to say, you're merely going to resort back to personal insult.

This really is a matter of philosophy 101. You have a single explicit assumption, some number of assumptions which are not presented, some undefined terms, and then you draw a conclusion. This is not an effective way to make a persuasive argument.

As mentioned before, it actually is evidence against based on the bible's description of God. He sends his son at a suboptimal time when you look at his reasons for doing so. His goal seems quite clear - send his son to save humans from their fallen nature. This can be worded many different ways, obviously, and some will add a goal or two. But this seems to be the most important at a minimum because it deals with eternal life. The God of the bible does not seem like one who would settle for a lower than achievable percentage of humans to join him in heaven.

So we have to ask ourselves, "Is the time period when God sent his son to earth the most optimal for saving as many souls as possible?"

Afaict Jesus should be chilling amongst us humans on earth at all times. This give us all an equal opportunity to find a relationship with our creator. It's a given that it won't ruin our chances from a "gotta have faith and it would take away our free will, etc" perspective, because the humans that did meet Jesus irl where able to get into heaven. It's also quite common for Christians to say how some people will never believe, no matter what.

I think in order to dismiss this argument you have to lie to yourself about God's motives for sending his son, or you have to argue that when he sent him it was optimal. I've heard that argument and it's about as empty as JD's spank bank.

I'm amused that you're so stuck on "contemporaneous" and that you think "public consumption" is somehow useful in this conversation.

It's interesting to me that wide dissemination is somehow an increase in reliability to you. This is especially curious because wide dissemination of contemporaneous writings is how the New Testament came about. I'll let you do your own research on the number of copies of the New Testament that are available.

Oh... you don't like second-hand accounts? What do you think was published in most of those newspapers before we had extremely fast means of communication (ie, telegraph or later)?

Show me where I said that those things were not important when considering the New Testament. Again, you make these false accusations that you simply cannot support with evidence.

One of the most entertaining aspects of our interactions is that it's like you're never arguing against what I say, but you keep projecting some psuedo-Christian position, and argue constantly against that.

No, I have not. Reading comprehension.

They can be investigated. It's just that a positive result of "supernatural" is impossible through scientific means, making an overall negative conclusion invalid on account of selection bias.

What? None of this is even in dispute.

This is a matter of changing the subject 101. You never state your argument, argue about things that were mentioned but weren't the premise of the argument, throw in a few academic references, and pretend you've refuted an argument that you never addressed.

And my assessment of you is right-- you've said about 25 ridiculous things since I've come here which you would never say if the subject were anything other than Christianity. And all because you won't just admit to yourself that it's a matter of faith rather than reason.

This is an example of one of the 25 inane arguments you have made, Aaron. EVERYONE-- historians, lawyers, psychologists, etc.-- values contemporaneous reports as more likely to accurately record events.

And you would too-- except that this hurts the case for your invisible man in the sky.

Christianity makes you lie. It makes you a worse person. Rather than bolstering the argument for it, you are a walking example of how dangerous it is.

Did I not characterize your argument properly? If so, please show me what your argument actually is. It's been noted several times that it's not very clear what you're really trying to argue.

Again, please highlight these things. Surely if there are 25 things, then you can quote me on a couple of them. And make sure that you can support your claim that I would never say it if the subject were anything other than Christianity.

Aaron, you spent a whole thread arguing that the Christian New Testament was of perfectly adequate reliability as history and that there was no reason to think that the claims were inaccurately reported. You can use the search function to look it up if you wish.

As I said, Christianity has made you into a liar. That's one more black mark against a religion with a lot of them.

You are lying. You know my argument. I even stated it in bullet point form for you.

Stop being a liar. Come over to the dark side, where we actually value the truth, Aaron. For a religion that has a commandment against lying, I am certainly not impressed with its ability to induce obedience.

But how "contemporaneous" is defined in each of those contexts is completely different!

You want contemporaneous to mean "the day of" or even potentially "not more than a few minutes after." But in the historical context, this standard is not useful. If this were so, then there is no contemporaneous history of anything before the age of pervasive visually recorded media. I've given explicit examples of how this standard doesn't work even for relatively recent history.

And the more I reflect on it, I'm not even sure if "contemporaneous" is meaningful to psychologists and lawyers as some sort of standard of anything. They would just sort of nod their heads in the same way I would when presented with the bare assertion that more time allows people to forget things. But again, this isn't really what the conversation is about.

A real issue with all of your presentations it that you seem to lack depth of knowledge in anything in particular. You continue to make broad stroke comments, but never seem to hone in on any details.

You can quote me on it, if you wish. You have presented an accusation, but if you're unwilling to provide the evidence, there's no reason to believe the claim.

If you did, I missed it. Where is it?

It's certainly not the 4 points you made in OP, because that's not an argument. There is no logical flow from those observations to the conclusion that you have in the thread title. If this *were* the case, then the question of the non-existence of Ancient Rome can persist.

I, for one, am still unsure what your argument is.

Something like: "Events that are claimed to have occurred before modern methods of documentation are less likely to have actually happened if they don't occur again where we can get them on video."

And this is not the first thread you started where it has taken several pages to arrive at even a vague idea of what your argument is supposed to be.

Aaron:

"Contemporaneous", like many things, is a continuum. Obviously, the reporter getting to the scene a few hours after something happened and talking to people isn't the same thing as a radio reporter providing live coverage. But it is still a lot better than someone writing a book about it 20 years later.

The point is we have had a long history of development of new technologies that enable more and more accurate documentation of events. The printing press and the rise of newspaper journalism is one of them.

(And yes, "contemporaneous" is HUGELY meaningful to lawyers. It gets you a hearsay exception, for instance.)

By the way, I don't know why we are arguing about this. You don't deny this. You are just unwilling to actually discuss the real point.

I would suggest you stop trying to nitpick around the edges and DEAL with the implications of the expansion of technology to religious belief. You seem to be trying to do everything you can to not do that.

Aaron and Concerto:

Damn it, go back and read the thread! It's there, and the fact that everyone else got it indicates that you guys are either arguing in bad faith or just don't get it.