Here, from "Deacon Duncan's blog!" , Duncan demolishes a commenter, Jayman's two cents worth that is trying to refute the claim that 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', giving alleged miracles 'carte blanche'.
Jayman claims that 48% of the population of the United States are positive that they have witnessed a miracle.
Jayman says, "If you were to try and explain many of the miracles you would offer extraordinary explanations as well."
I think that this is brilliant. Here Jayman turns-tables, or, attempts to hoist atheists by their own petard!
I love that stupid saying!
I always picture a crazy man running with an unreliable bomb.
It's 'funny' that Tony warned everyone about just such a confusion between meanings of the word extraordinary!
It certainly WOULD be extraordinary if you COULD explain all the 'wannabe' miracles to everyone's satisfaction, in the process advancing science and medicine immeasurably!
Alas!(hehe)Jayman knows he has hundreds of millions of Catholics who are guaranteed to be dissatisfied with anything less than a miracle!
No matter how convincing your explanations are, they will simply refuse to be convinced, making your task impossible.
If you managed to convince the public that 99% of their supposed miracles were natural events, they'd change tack and pronounce you evil for stealing their thunder, for being a successful adversary, for being SATAN.
e.g. The Resurrection.
Explanations.
1)Jesus wasn't quite dead.
2)Jesus' identical twin subbed for him.
3)After his death, Jesus 'appeared' a la if-there-are-two-among-you-gathered-in-my-name' and/or as he appeared to Paul.
(This was originally meant as a comment on Deacon Duncan's(I get mixed up and call him Duncan Deacon(LOL))blogpost but I don't want to be accused of stealing his thunder, PLUS, Duncan 'tch-tched' me and Gear Hed Ed, or at least Ed, for being snarky to Jayman.)
17 comments:
Personally, I like option 1 (since they even remarked that Jesus died a little too quickly on the cross), but even if option 3 is correct, it doesn't mean anything except "Jesus came back from the dead".
Also: from the looks of it, the good Deacon is pretty much under endless scrutiny from the people he himself scrutinizes, and their followers (Vox Day, J.P. Holding, and another random guy who just recently started responding to a post Deacon made about him in December). They poke and prod whenever they can find something even remotely off-base and get their sophist horde to follow suit. If the comments turn ugly somehow, Deacon will most likely be left to blame. But, even he falters apparently, judging from the fact that his recent Sunday Toons was deemed to be too, well, "ad hominem-y" to be pleasant to read. So, we should all show some restraint over in those particular parts, and he will probably be showing even more than he usually does in the future.
"if option 3 is correct, it doesn't mean anything except "Jesus came back from the dead". "
I thought that option 3 made the risen Jesus an illusion, a trick of the mind, or at least 'all in the mind'.
Edward Current on 'Extroidinary evidence' (occams razor) - new! :-)
Although it's supposed to be a satire, it still makes my skin crawl.
Occam's razor(the simplest explanation) is 'wrong' because, blah, blah, blah God did it(the 'simplest' explanation).
This is called 'having your cake and eating it too'.
"Although it's supposed to be a satire, it still makes my skin crawl.
I know ... The first time i saw him I wasn't quite sure if he was serious or not.
PLUS the Christian commenters 'high-fiving' him for his brilliance!
I know it's not one of your options.
But I submit option
4.) It's all made up BS anyway. There is no explanation because it simply is phoney.
Oh, yeah, BTW, I get a kick out of Current.
It's a hoot :-)
Yea mac, that's always the most popular option for any story!
Being snarky is one of your best qualities. Along with your wit.
But it does get in the way of your wit sometimes.
Thanks oneblood! I try to give as much snark as I feel that I'm getting, and not one sni more.
Ed's heart was in the right place, but I think we could all see that he was a bit rough around the edges.
Plus some things that you find snarky might be some things that I find funny.(We just don't know)
Do you read the Evangelical Realism blog?
No. I entertained it for a little bit last night but needed to head to bed. I'll read more later today.
And you are right once again. Humor is relative, as is snark.
You know what pboy...
You're right about being 'self-indoctrinated.'
It would be easy to rid yourself of certain viewpoints but, and I have to get this through my thick skull, you have to deliberately choose! Even when "compelled" by evidence!
-Understand I'm not just pedantically kvetching about freewill.-
I kind of treated the will to choose like it was a lark, a given, natural, like there was no system in place to maintain the pre-existing construct.
It's not just the ideas a person has or wants to change but their modes of thinking. Those modes are so basic.
I wonder what kind of chemicals write them into our brain? Are they somehow different than the ones we use in realizing that numbers aren't heavy, or that the color blue isn't a hexagon?
Maybe if Harvey sees this he can enlightened the unenlightened.
Any thoughts pboy?
Pboy:
Most physicians (and I number myself among them) have at best a rudimentary understanding of brain chemistry, although there are physiologists who are begining to understand.
My personal read on all of this is that all organisms are born with certain inbred mental mechanisms (at least those who have evolved a brain) without which their species cannot survive. Another way to look at this is to see these mechanisms as having evolved via natural selection. In any event, most (but not all) newborns have these capabilities at birth. Thererafter, life experience, parental teaching, and internal thought processes of necessity lead to varying degrees of maturation or further development of these capacities in the individual. Those "new" intellectual developments that allow some advantage to those individuals that happen to develop them may, over time, become ingrained in the species, so that future newborns will be "born" with them in place.
Some of this must, according to our present understanding, occur because of chemical changes in our brains. As to where "free will" enters into this, I haven't a clue, but it seems to me that it must be one of the "basic" capabilities we are born with. That said, I imagine each individual "develops" that basic capability throughout his/her life and that it is highly dependent upon and influenced by his/her life experience/learning.
Thanks Harvey!
Very kind of you to elucidate. What I take from what you're saying is that the "shapes" of our neural pathways must be stable (in one sense only) for our survival. Whcih makes sense as to their, how would you call it, a 'reactive rigidity' to change.
So it seems that essential + non-essential environmental happenings/beliefs would kind of form into "one" if you will.
Does this seem like a logical conclusion to you?
Quite a reasonable way to put things. We seem to be born with a basic brain "map", with all the essential "continents" already laid out. The eventual placement of "country borders, major cities and towns and the highways" connecting them are "filled in" beginning after birth and proceeding from then until we die, influenced by our physical and mental experiences thereafter. Thus our excercise of "free will". for example, might be seen as a roughed in "continent"; what we are taught and experience as we mature eventually fills in the details and determines just how "free" our eventual concept of the exercise of free will becomes.
You said, "PLUS, Duncan 'tch-tched' me and Gear Hed Ed, or at least Ed, for being snarky to Jayman."
LOL! What else is new?
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