he_who_is_nobody
Well-Known Member
-
Welcome to League Of Reason Forums! Please read the rules before posting.
If you are willing and able please consider making a donation to help with site overheads.
Donations can be made via here
Dr. William Lane Craig
- Thread starter BrachioPEP
- Start date
ldmitruk
Active Member
Mister Deity knocks it out of the park again. I just love Brian's videos.
he_who_is_nobody
Well-Known Member
Led Zeppelin
Active Member
Yeah, it's pretty dumb for Christians to believe we evolved from lower life forms.
This sounds like an admission that it would be "pretty dumb" for Christians to believe true things. I'm sure that's not how you intended it, but nevertheless.
Led Zeppelin
Active Member
If the Bible is a lie, then there is no reason for anyone to be a Christian.
ldmitruk
Active Member
Given there is very little in the Bible that is even close to being true, one has to wonder why there are still so many Christians.
That's not strictly true, there could be other reasons to be a Christian. Even if the Bible didn't exist and never had, there could still be other reasons. The problem is, when those other reasons are offered they are usually untestable, and thus unfalsifiable. When they are testable, they fail the test, every time.
Led Zeppelin
Active Member
This sounds like a off the cusp response, typical of members of your group. Have you spent much time actually thinking about it?
Led Zeppelin
Active Member
That a good perspective. Of course Jesus never quoted from the New Testement (it wasnt written yet) and the Jews even completely lost the Torah for a considerable amount of time.
My point however is that if it's a lie, like Craig thinks it is, then there is no reason for anyone to believe we can derive any sort of morality or understanding from it.
Even people who are against God will often give the Bible lip service. Pro homosexual and pro abortion politicians will say things like "Oh Jesus was a good man and you can learn bla bla bla from the Bible" and at the say time they will tell you its all a myth and based on how you feel about it. Regrettably Craig seems to agree with them.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Give us an example of what you think would be the best test for the existence of the God of the Bible/The Christian God.
What I mean is, claims about God(s) (the existence thereof) tend to fall into one of two categories.
1 - Untestable.
Claims that fall into this category are non-starters. If they're not testable, they're not falsifiable. Unfalsifiable claims are useless in any investigation.
2 - Testable.
Claims falling into this category are much more useful. If the claim is testable, then we can do exactly that - test it. And when we do, thus far we have always found claims (testable ones) regarding God(s) to fail said tests.
As an example of the latter, prayer. Prayer is testable, and has in fact been tested several times in controlled trials. It fails. It works at roughly the same rate as chance, and in cases where, for example, hospital patients were informed they were being prayed for, the rate of success was actually less than the rate of chance. Ergo, prayer has been shown to not work.
Another example, although not necessarily related to God stuff, but often tied to it in many cases, is "Outer Body Experiences" - People in operating theatres claiming to have floated out of their body and watching the surgeon doing whatever it is. This can (and has been) tested. They just put a piece of paper with some number, word or symbol on it on top of something above the patient. Like, a cabinet or something. They ask the patient who claims to have been floating around what was on the paper. They have never gotten it right, most of the time it's "what paper?"
Desertphile
Member
Sarcasm is fun. On reddit people denote sarcasm with "/s"
Led Zeppelin
Active Member
Can you give a couple examples of what you would call untestable claims about God?
I often feel like Im the only one on this forum who isnt afraid to lay all his cards on the table while my opponants offer mostly petence and facade. One reason I feel this is because I think you are smart enough to know that all this really tells is that God doesnt go around performing miracles for people, just like He doesnt keep us safe from every harm nor does He go around giving everyone what they ask Him for.
And I suspect you also aware of at least a couple reasons why He wouldn't. It's been a common enough topic in literature, plays and movies. Asimov even speculated on adverse effects of future societies wealthy enough where every person owned robot slaves who would do anything for them.
Clever.
Yeah.
Personal experiences for one. If you were to claim you'd had a "personal experience" with God, there's no possible mechanism by which we can test this to verify that whatever experience you had has anything to do with any God. We can even refrain from calling you a liar, or delusional, we can instead grant that you did have an experience, but we can't verify any God or other was involved in it.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. What pretense or facade do you imagine is at play on my part here?
I don't think God exists, dude, so that seems to align pretty well with him "doing" a sum total of precisely fuck all. But I digress, because you are missing the point. I didn't say anything about miracles or harm. What I said was in the case of prayer, this falls into the category of testable claims. And we HAVE tested it (because we CAN) and it FAILS the tests. Every time.
These tests are repeatable, meaning we can test it as many times as we want. When these tests fail to confirm, over and over again, that prayer works, that doesn't exactly support a case for believing it does. It does the opposite.
Led Zeppelin
Active Member
I think God probably gave us an ability to know certain things are true without us having to perform scientific experiements. The Bible talks a lot about truth and about people who hear truth and about people who accepet truth and about people who deny truth. Because anyone with a brain can come up with any reason not to believe anything.
Jesus said "I am the Truth", Pilate questioned the existence of truth and condemned Jesus to death. No matter what you say you believe, you have to admit that this provides us an awesome model of the reality we live in. Do you believe that it is true when I say murder is wrong? How would you verify it?
OK! Well I guess I would say that the idea that God should always do whatever we ask Him to do is a bit immature.
We know you think that. The issue is, you can't prove any of it. So you're just going to assert it over and over again.
The Bible says lots of things. Most of which are demonstrably false. What ever it does get right is probably coincidental, and definitely trivial.
Did he? How do you know that? I'll help you out - you don't.
Did he? How do you know that? I'll help you out - you don't.
I have to admit no such thing.
If you want to have a discussion about prescription vs description, or objective vs subjective morality. that's going to need a thread all to itself.
You keep doing this, and I'm going to keep pointing it out. I didn't say anything about God always doing whatever is asked of him, that's not even a possible state of affairs. Even if God existed, it still wouldn't be a possible state of affairs. What was being contested is the idea that prayer works. So once again, I shall point out that prayer has been tested, over and over again, and it doesn't work.
Led Zeppelin
Active Member
Oh. I see you're an expert.
I think I do.
You behave as if its true though. See exactly what I'm talking about below .
This is exactly what I'm talking about. All I did was say that it is true that murder is wrong. And you think we need an entire thread to discuss weather or not it is true.
Jesus said "I am the Truth", Pilate questioned the existence of truth and condemned Jesus to death.
Do you think it's true that if you are born a male, you can't turn into a woman?
Dude you are the one who suggested that this was a good way to test if god exists or not. I ASKED YOU for what you thought was a good example of a testable claim about God. Im not even contesting the results of the test. Personally I dont believe you can ask God to heal someone and expect Him to do it. And I have never made such a claim. I am actually kinda on your side here. I just think the claim AND the test are both kinda stupid. Probably the only reason such a test was ever done was because of stupid TV christian faith healers or something like that.
Well anyone that can read can see the Bible is inaccurate.