Comment Thread for The Resurrection of Jesus - Apologiaphoenix vs Gary

[William]

God is not bound by natural law, and natural law is far from prescriptive. It describes what usually happens, without outside intervention.

Hume famously denies induction, so he has no business discussing laws of nature.

i dont care about hume, I was just talkin

[One Bad Pig]

Medicine and the clinical judgments of doctors in treating disease and injuries is based on the scientific method (research based on evidence). Modern doctors do not treat people based on what an inner "spirit" tells us.

Yes, they're much more likely to treat people based on samples sales reps give them, or guesses. Medicine is more like informed guesswork than an exact science. And unless you're doing clinical research, you're not using the scientific method; at best, you're applying knowledge gained from others using it.

And this has nothing to do with proving or disproving miracles or historical events.

[William]

Yes, they're much more likely to treat people based on samples sales reps give them, or guesses. Medicine is more like informed guesswork than an exact science. And unless you're doing clinical research, you're not using the scientific method; at best, you're applying knowledge gained from others using it.

And this has nothing to do with proving or disproving miracles or historical events.

doctors are a bunch of crooks - unlike proclaimed miracle working cult leaders, who are all well known for being completely honest and exceptionally rational.

[One Bad Pig]

Doesn't acknowledging a creator of some sort make you a deist?

I don't think the Creator/Christian God split is nearly as wide as people think. For Aquinas/Duns Scotus/Augustine/Maimonides, there is no difference between the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle and the Christian God. Aquinas and many, many others make the case an Unmoved Mover must logically be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

I'm fairly certain that Aristotle said nothing about the Unmoved Mover being omnibenevolent - and Aristotle's Unmoved Mover was not a Creator AFAIR, but simply one who organized preexisting chaos.

[One Bad Pig]

doctors are a bunch of crooks - unlike proclaimed miracle working cult leaders, who are all well known for being completely honest and exceptionally rational.

[William]

Yes, they're much more likely to treat people based on samples sales reps give them, or guesses. Medicine is more like informed guesswork than an exact science. And unless you're doing clinical research, you're not using the scientific method; at best, you're applying knowledge gained from others using it.

And this has nothing to do with proving or disproving miracles or historical events.

but with all seriousness, this is pretty cynical. Most pharmaceutical companies invest large sums of money and research into trials and research. Pushing the wrong medication to market could lead to significant settlements and costs, not to mention the harm to others.

Doctors evaluate the pharmaceutical product information and can get the research documents to further sell them on it. Medicine is a business. People dont get well an/or die, they also risk malpractice suit, financial ruin, plus having to deal with harming those they meant to help.

this is sort of like those who say the only ones going to church are hypocrites or that all preachers just want what's gathered in the collection plates. I dont think that's true, and I'd suspect you wouldnt appreciate the claim either.

[Gary]

Can skeptics prove that miracles do not occur? Answer: NO! Absolutely not.

Here is an example why: Mrs. Smith has a severe headache on the right side of her forehead above her eyebrow accompanied by nasal congestion and green mucous drainage from her nose. She suffers with the pain for five days but it becomes so bad that she is unable to work. She goes to see her doctor, who, based on the scientific method, diagnoses a right frontal sinus infection. He gives her prescriptions for a ten day course of antibiotics and oral steroids.

By 7 PM that evening Mrs. Smith has seen no improvement, even after taking two doses of the medication.

Mrs. Smith calls the leader of her church's prayer group and asks for prayer for the healing of her headache. Twenty members of the church pray for Mrs. Smith that very night to be healed of her headache. The next morning, Mrs. Smith wakes up with her headache mostly gone.

Questions:

1. Was Mrs. Smith's recovery/cure due to prayer? Answer: We don't know. Possibly.
2. Are there any more probable, naturalistic explanations for Mrs. Smith's recovery/cure? Answer: Yes. The effects of the antibiotic and steroids did not kick-in immediately, but their effects were apparent by the following morning.

Conclusion: The scientific method cannot determine if Mrs. Smith's "healing" was due to a miracle or to natural causes, but, the scientific method can help you estimate probabilities, and probabilities say that Mrs. Smith was healed by medication, not prayer.

[Gary]

Doesn't acknowledging a creator of some sort make you a deist?

I don't think the Creator/Christian God split is nearly as wide as people think. For Aquinas/Duns Scotus/Augustine/Maimonides, there is no difference between the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle and the Christian God. Aquinas and many, many others make the case an Unmoved Mover must logically be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

A deist believes there is a God, he just isn't sure who that God is. An agnostic says that there MIGHT be a God, but is not convinced the evidence is strong enough to be absolutely certain and therefore cannot be as confident in the existence of a God as is the deist.

[Gary]

Yes, they're much more likely to treat people based on samples sales reps give them, or guesses. Medicine is more like informed guesswork than an exact science. And unless you're doing clinical research, you're not using the scientific method; at best, you're applying knowledge gained from others using it.

And this has nothing to do with proving or disproving miracles or historical events.

You don't have to be the one conducting the experiments to use the scientific method. If you see a doctor who practices western/traditional medicine, then both your doctor and you are participating in the scientific method. If you don't believe in the scientific method, you should stop seeing doctors and see a faith healer.

[Gary]

https://porphyryredux.wordpress.com/...-explanations/

[psstein]

I'm fairly certain that Aristotle said nothing about the Unmoved Mover being omnibenevolent - and Aristotle's Unmoved Mover was not a Creator AFAIR, but simply one who organized preexisting chaos.

We're getting way beyond the topic of the thread, but some readings of Genesis 1 see God ordering pre-existing material rather than simply creating ex nihilo.

I think the Hebrew is equally compatible with either reading.

[Gary]

http://smithandfranklin.com/current-...zIWwwbQ5d63.99http://smithandfranklin.com/current-...sjS7kTuUcOh.99

[tabibito]

I couldn't disagree more. We have very good reason to trust God, and he has demonstrated time and time again that he keeps the promises that he makes.

What we have is an insistence that we should rely on nothing more than hearsay evidence in support of the claim that he keeps his promises.

The type of faith that you seem to accept most people around here would consider very weak. And in fact, it's that sort of blind faith that

the founding apostles had - except that blind faith means believing on the basis of no concrete evidence whatever.

eating at Christianity from within.

That would all manner of teachings that go unchallenged - as though the concept of adherence to full and proper doctrine is somehow an obsolete inconvenience.

The type of Christian who relies on such blind faith is easy prey to skepticism, because that person typically never thought to ask why he ought to believe what he believes beyond the shaky hope that God might keep his promises.

And then one day he asks what basis he has for his faith, and finds that it is no more than wishful thinking.

But in the patron-client world that the authors of the NT lived in, to have trust in one's patron to deliver was not merely wishful thinking, it wasn't a-hopin-and-a-prayin. It was trust based on the knowledge that the patron was more than capable of keeping his promises and that he had a strong record of doing so. As David deSilva puts it in Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity,

In short - the client and patron each had a reasonable body of experience underpinning their faith.

Source: Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity by David deSilva

It is worth noting at this point that faith (Lat. fides; Gk pistis) is a term also very much at home in patron-client and friendship relations and had, like grace, a variety of meanings as the context shifted from the patron's faith to the client's faith. In one sense, faith meant "dependability." The patron needed to prove reliable in providing the assistance he or she promised to grant. The client needed to "keep faith" as well, in the sense of showing loyalty or commitment to the patron and to his or her obligations of gratitude. A second meaning in the more familiar sense is "trust": the client had to trust the goodwill and ability of the patron to whom the client entrusted his or her need, that the patron would indeed perform what he or she promised, while the benefactor would also have to trust the recipients to act nobly and make a grateful response.

© Copyright Original Source

Yes - faith could mean faith as in belief, or as in faithful (or faithless) spouse, and keeping faith. And among the people who undermine the Faith, are those who insist that it means only belief.

Then also, there are those who claim that "blind faith" is a virtue - in defiance of such Biblical records as 1 Corinthians 2:4.

[Gary]

http://smithandfranklin.com/current-...zIWwwbQ5d63.99http://smithandfranklin.com/current-...sjS7kTuUcOh.99

http://smithandfranklin.com/current-...UpzeUCzW7YF.99

[Gary]

http://smithandfranklin.com/current-...uYRGp2vavJ9.99http://smithandfranklin.com/current-...VHEZpKc4GJr.99