My point throughout this discussion was that N_R and me and neeel apparently weren't sure what questions you were actually asking, I'm not trying to duck and wriggle out of anything I'm not interested in an argument I'm trying to have a discussion.

Is it a surprise to you that neeeel is another asking the same questions that I have?

I don't care about your good feeling credit I post for my benefit not yours. To benefit you would be a stronger challenge than have N_R discount his beliefs.

You've never come off my ignore list MB I just read posts of yours when it's the only game in town. And yes I am more interesting in discussions rather than arguments as anyone who reads my posts in this thread will attest.

The one thing that is clear is that you haven't answered my question you haven't accepted you referred to a post of duffee's with no idea what was going on about it and you were engaged in a discussion of epistemology during which you considered the concept of justification useless. They are your mistakes not mine.

Good luck.

No, it's clear that like you, Neeel also hasn't read the thread in any detail, so I'm just not bothering to respond. The answer to his question, and yours, is given numerous times.

You're interested in criticizing my approach to a discussion when it suits you and then when I point out the mistakes you're making because you haven't read the thread properly you suddenly want to 'engage in meaningful discussion'. Shame you didn't do the latter the first time instead of wading in with your under-informed criticisms.

I'm quite tired of your attitude and your habit of attacking me then running away and being 'done' with me time and again. Do us all a favour and keep me permanently on your ignore list. Now, enough with this derail please.

so that explains me and Neel what about explaining why N_R didn't understand what it was you were asking?

If you want it can continue to be everybody else's fault that discussions you end up in frequently turn to **** or you can take some steps to improve them responding to genuine questions with genuine answers would be a start.

I suggested that MB take this line of argument earlier, as I think it is more honest to his objections. Not sure he will agree, but I think he ends up inadvertently rejecting such states.

I don't entirely disagree with you here, I just think you underestimate my experiences versus your own. Pascal's wager comes to mind when you speak of how important the issue is.

I can't grant other people's beliefs the same credibility I grant my own, because they are inherently convincing to oneself, as noted above in the James quote. I have noted that the closer I am to a person, and the better I know him, the more likely I am to give his personal experience credence.

I can't agree with your 1. I believe you've misunderstood me, or are misrepresenting my position.

As for 2. You don't need to take the position that the bible is divine, you can take it as a historical document, which some do, and see that there is some evidence that points to Jesus' resurrection. When you begin to study the history of Christ, there are compelling arguments, that at the very least give some credence to the story.

As for 3. I could take it or leave it as unsound, but it ties into 1. Christ reveals himself if you seek him. That may point to dissonance, but it's not necessarily the case.

One last comment on experiences being circular. If you can concede that sight is not explained with circular reasoning, surely you can concede the same for any spiritual experience.

I think what is credible from a historical perspective is that there was such a person named Jesus, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, his followers genuinely believed that he was raised from the dead, and that this belief was somewhat unprecedented. That is, there isn't evidence that other messianic claimants were thought to have been raised from the dead, or anyone else for that matter, even though some jews believed that there would be a future resurrection of the dead.

I think the standard skeptical response should just be that the novelty of the disciples' belief in Jesus' resurrection is more plausible (to understate things :P) then the novelty of someone actually rising from the dead. But I do think it is historically credible to note that this belief was an unusual and singular event nonetheless

I agree with the first part, that Jesus was probably a real person but I think that there were resurrection myths that not only predate Christianity but might have been known about at the time, particularly the Horus myth, since Egypt was only a stones throw away.

I had stories like that of Horus in mind when I said "somewhat" unprecedented, rather than entirely, as well as the Pharisaic belief in Resurrection that was seemingly fairly recently developed. The idea of resurrection certainly existed, but neither the Jews nor the surrounding cultures commonly believed that dead people came back to life. There is no evidence that I'm aware of that 1st century Jewish culture borrowed from Egyptian mythology (re: Horus specifically), and there were more than a few other messianic movements which ended in the death of the would-be Messiah, where his followers did not believe that he had been raised from the dead.

I've separated the three circular arguments because the examination of whether or not they're circular and therefore logically fallacious actually has little bearing on the conversation about the trust you place in your personal experiences.

Possibly I've misunderstood, I would never deliberately misrepresent someone's position, it's pointless. This was the quote. "but I live my life the most rational way possible, which for me is to believe in God, because for me to reject God would involve me ignoring and outright lying to myself. "

The crucial word is 'lying'. Lying implies that what you would be telling yourself isn't true, i.e. it's not true that god doesn't exist, and you know it's a lie because you know the truth, that actually he does exist, and how do you know that it's true that god exists.... because you believe in god. So, you 'know the truth and believe in god, because you know the truth and believe in god'. That's circular.

If you actually meant to say that you should live according to your beliefs, that would have been different.

A historical document can't prove the divinity of anything. The authority of the bible as evidence of divinity comes from the assumption that it was inspired divinely by god. Which is circular. Otherwise, it's just a book.

Yes, in other words, you know Christ is real because you accepted that Christ was real, and guess what, you found him. That's about as circular as it gets.

The problem is that I accept mystical states and the authority that they can have over the one who experiences them. I'm not sure about the 'intellectual right' that they have to be convincing though and as I said earlier, James didn't have today's knowledge of cognitive biases and that might have changed his view. In 1910, we didn't have the understanding we have today of how our brains are hardwired to trick us all the time. I think that's a game changer.

I actually understand how people can claim certainty on the issues of deities, despite it being possibly one the most important and difficult issues in our history and therefore subject to the most rigorous standards of evidence we can device, because that's the purpose of faith. Faith provides certainty where there really shouldn't be any, that's why I consider it dishonest.

After talking to you about this, it seems to me that your real reason for your belief is your faith. The use of faith is what has allowed you to bypass the uncertainty that accompanies uncertain sources of information.


Depends, it's the reasons you gave that were circular, not your simple statement about the fact that you believe. This is a point that I've really struggled to get across. If I say 'I believe in god', that's not circular, it's just a statement of fact. If I support that belief by saying that I believe because it says god exists in the bible and god inspired the bible, that's circular. The premise 'god wrote the bible' contains and therefore IS the conclusion it supports that 'god exists'.

Let's keep in mind that Jesus made references to people who were living as behind "dead". So, perhaps Jesus had a different idea about what being 'raised from the dead' meant compared to his followers. It's kind of perplexing to me that most Christians have no problem seeing being "born again" as figurative but they never consider 'resurrection' to be.

I don't think that it not being common is a reason not believe that it occurred to someone, especially given that the cult had just been decapitated, so to speak. How many people would have realistically taken to remove a body and claim it had vanished on it's own? A couple? Maybe even just one. Maybe Mary wasn't even in on it. Myths don't have to be totally credible to gain traction do they, just look at the King Arthur myth.

This is entirely coincidental but I have been reading a fair amount of N.T. Wright lately and he makes fairly reasonable arguments that the word "resurrection" has to mean physical, bodily resurrection in the way it is used by early Christianity, and how it would have been understood by the surrounding cultures. These are exegetical lexicographic arguments which I'm not really qualified to critique, but nonetheless.

Regarding the comparison to being born again, it might be pointed out that Nicodemus was perplexed and took it literally (according to the gospel), and that the gospels imply pretty strongly that the disciples had no expectation of Jesus' resurrection. For instance when John 2 talks about Jesus claiming to rebuild the Temple in 3 days, the text says that "after He was raised from the dead, the disciples remembered that he had said this". From the Christian perspective, they believed in the literal physical resurrection of Jesus because they witnessed the empty tomb, and they did not believe in a literal process of being born again because they did not witness or experience it in a literal way, but connected it to other of Jesus' sayings about the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, and with their experiences after his death. If you treat both resurrection and "being born again" as entirely abstract ideas, it seems reasonable to wonder about the different interpretations, but even if you want to put all of the difficult assertions of early Christianity in brackets, the experiences that early Christians claimed to have had should explain why they see the two differently, regardless of the amount of validity you grant to their stated experiences

Baal died and resurrected and he is a semitic God that was even worshipped in Canaan, also by Israelites.

Ye, thats right, both me and dereds failed to read the thread in any detail.

You are making the mistake of thinking that I suggested that the skeptical view of the resurrection was illegitimate, which I'm not. It is more rational to believe that the disciples' were mistaken in their belief than to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. But my opinion is that this is not because the belief of the disciples is not novel and singular, or that it is not usable as evidence, but rather it's something like a question of bayesian probabilities (if you grant some tiny possibility of a resurrection) or of ruling it to be entirely impossible, so that the evidence of the disciples' belief is moot.

But I don't think any hypothetical that claims the disciples didn't really believe that Jesus had been raised are as compelling as the argument that they really did believe it to be true. It's obviously possible that someone invented the idea. But given the evidence available it seems far more likely that their belief was genuine. The reason we look for an alternative to them actually believing it is simply because the "it" is a priori impossible.

My opinion is that this doesn't really affect the argument I'm trying to make. Partly in that Baal was never a human being as far as I know, and stories about his death and resurrection are not stories made by contemporaries who claimed to have witnessed it directly, and partly in that I really am meaning to distinguish between saying that belief in Jesus' resurrection was entirely unprecedented and just saying that it's very unusual.

It's obviously possible to extrapolate from stories about gods, but this did not commonly occur. That's the point of mentioning other messianic claimants where it did not occur.

The point is not to say "and therefore we should conclude rationally and historically that Jesus is raised from the dead".

Oh, I don't doubt that even those around during the time of Mark or even during the time of Paul thought there was a literal resurrection. I also don't doubt there was an empty tomb.

oh, I see how I misunderstood you. You've previously stated your preference for the Gospel of Thomas so it makes sense that you prefer a more docetic (I feel like there is a better word I'm forgetting) understanding.

I had to look up docetic but, lol, no not at all. Wasn't it not uncommon for tomb raiding to occur during those times? That's what I meant.

0/2 is about my normal rate of accuracy

I can't speak to how likely it should seem that the tomb was robbed. It would seem to me that in such a case the disciples would have been the most likely culprits though

This was a summation of my belief, not meant as a stand-alone statement. I'm not saying I believe because I believe (as the reason for belief). As a result of everything, the most rational way for me to live is with a belief in God.

It's just a book, yes, but it does provide some historical records, that Christ lived, had a following, and was killed for blasphemy. The records also show that his popularity increased after his death, and that there was controversy surrounding his death, as many people claimed to have seen him. This alone may not convince me, but they corroborate my experiences of Christ. If I had read the bible and it did not corroborate my experiences, it would provide more of a reason for me to question the sincerity of these experiences.

It is possibly circular, but not exclusively circular. I agree that this line of thought can give rise to cognitive dissonance, but it's also possible that God rewards a little bit of faith, and will reveal himself when you approach him with an open mind. Of course if God does not exist, you are likely right, but from the objective perspective where it is unknown whether God exists, either possibility stands to reason.

I dind't suggest that but in any case it doesn't disprove that the resurrection was faked, neither does the fact that other cults didn't have resurrections. It could have been faked and the disciples that weren't involved could have believed it was genuine, they were fooled like everyone else.

I'm not suggesting that it did happen either, just that it's a realistic possibility that can't be ruled out. Not so realistic is the idea that someone from the future went back in time, brought him back to life and spent three days chatting to him in the tomb before opening the door for him... oh wait... are we living in an alternate timeline?

I really don't know much about it, but I remember in Dan Carlin's podcast about Rome he talked about it happening to divisive figures.

If you accept such states, you should likewise accept that they are convincing, it's inherent in the experience. You seem to accept that these states exist, but then deny any credibility they may have, which amounts to you rejecting mystical states to begin with. If you truly accepted mystical states, you would accept that my beliefs are supported by them, and would not be so insistent for me to give you proof of my justification.

I employ faith, no doubt about it, but it's not blind faith. I would not have believed in Christ had I not had these experiences (as far as one can know this). As a teenager I searched for God(s) and looked at different paths and religions, but I would never commit to one without having some basis to.

Yes, I agree that saying you believe in God because the bible says so is circular. What I don't agree with is when I say that I'm convinced by "mystical states" or "spiritual experiences", that this is circular, at least no more than any other experience. I'm fine with you rejecting such experiences altogether, or rejecting them as a good justifier for beliefs, but your objection of circular reasoning of this in particular is not quite right, imo.