Burden of proof for god's existence in a legal setting?

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Alistair McGrath takes it a bit further, he declared that atheism is in its last efforts. I don't necessarily agree but when Philosophy Now starts running articles saying that the case for naturalized objective morality is dead and that the new atheism is the same as the old atheism one is apt to think you are underestimating things. If you really think that Christian Morality only 'just alive' then check out philosophy now issue 78 'Is God really dead?' and look at some of the names on the writers list.

Rev. Dylan Schrader
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby
Rev. Bob Eckhard
Fr. Andrew Pinsent
Rev. Dr. John R. Mabry
Fr. Thomas Crean

A "one star" review of William Lane Craig's book "Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics" at amazon-dot-com includes the nearly identical "opposite" quote from Craig's website:

"So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing."

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=5767 around the 7th paragraph from the bottom of the long web page.




This states part of a few of my concerns also:

"Contemporary popular apologists tend to look for any way to salvage the text, no matter how unlikely or untenable the argument. They’ll use scholarly sources selectively, or pounce on one scholar’s argument and run away with it, without any concern for the fact the vast majority of scholars haven’t been persuaded by it. They don’t often make arguments for what’s plausible, preferring to argue for what’s “possible,” if it serves their immediate purposes. They trade in eisegesis, wild speculation, and fanciful interpretations, reading into the text what isn’t there, indeed, what’s often contradicted by the very passages they cite."
From "Is God a Moral Compromiser? A Critical Review of Paul Copan’s 'Is God a Moral Monster?'" by Thom Stark (2011), page 1.

While Stark says to buy Copan's book (since Copan's "publisher" prohibits even moderate quotations) to follow his (Stark's) critiques, I am not going to purchase any more Copan's/WLC's books, as WLC, et al. WLC's clones & groupies, have played way too many Mutt & Jeff games with the same old rehashed noxious balderdash with numerous others, back-and-forth, and even at nominal prices, prices add up to too much money for so little worth, and then, the vast amounts of such commingled & toxic trash.

Stark's review is available for free at (and elsewhere):
http://arizonaatheist.blogspot.com/2011 ... stark.html

The concepts of "Renaissance" and the "Christian Thought" of, and threatened violence from, fanatical apologists, are not compatible, except for "Bible-Thumping" propaganda purposes for the fascist apologists.

Tadzio

You do realize that your entire argument is outright BS in light of my statistic, right?

I'll do it again: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl
God: theism or atheism?

Accept or lean toward: atheism 678 / 931 (72.8%)
Accept or lean toward: theism 136 / 931 (14.6%)
Other 117 / 931 (12.5%)

Bam!

Selective citation to make an apologetic argument for any point you please is not going to change the actual situation, and that situation is that atheism is dominant in philosophy to an overwhelming degree.

Bam! What? The it matters what arguments are being published and just about every major atheistic argument has been put through the ringer in the time since Plantinga earned his tenure. I am not claiming that atheism is not the predominant view in philosophy; its a moot point. All I am claiming is that Theistic philosophy has achieved a stunning series of successes in the past 30 years; on that part the record supports my view. Moreover your attempt to claim that this does not amount to much because theists did not have much to begin with is a massive understatement.

91, philosophy is all about arguing about arguments. So, every theistic argument has been engaged thoroughly as well. The stunning success is climbing from nothing, but most philosophers aren't theists, don't think theism is true, and really don't think highly about the philosophy of religion.

I thought we were speaking hypothetically on the subject of whether the writings of government employes during the course of their duties was sufficient evidence is a court of law, either by judge or by jury, no matter how old? (Assuming they could be verified to a given degree of certainty, where they were found, what depth, the discovery video taped, etc.)

You made the claim that multiple Roman scribes were following Jesus around writing down everything he said. I asked for evidence of that. You have failed to provide said evidence.
If you could hypothetically prove - that is, with appropriately dated, verified, unbiased sources (note that having been buried at some point is not sufficient evidence; the papers themselves would need to be carbon-dated, examined by multiple researchers, etc.) - that there were Roman scribes assigned to follow Jesus around writing down everything he said, then yes: that would hypothetically be significant evidence for the existence and words of Jesus. Not that Jesus was the 'son of God,' but that he existed and was a significant personage of his time.

I don't think we need scribal evidence for the existence of Jesus. I mean, the existence of a particular person doesn't carry a very high standard of proof. For most people's existences, we are very willing to settle for a third-hand account, unless there is something overly spectacular involved (like they are the king of the universe), and for the mere existence of some cultic prophet in the 1st century, I don't think we really need a lot to just go with it. It explains some of the situation, and the notion that no such being existed just has too many problems.

As I understand it, the Roman scribes followed Jesus around hoping to catch him uttering something like "down with Herod" or "Caesar sucks" or some other act that he could be charged with. They weren't writing it down for posterity, just as a document of evidence in their accusations.

The Jewish scribes followed him for the same reasons, albeit hoping to catch him breaking Jewish laws.

I have only heard of or read of these documents through special interest shows or publications, something like: "Scholars believe after reviewing the documents left by the scribes that..." or something like that.

There are no such documents, nor would there be. Writing was expensive in those days as were people who could read and write. You wouldn't write down what you have a dozen witnesses to testify about anyway.

I disagree. They were used to convict Jesus.

Like I said before, I realize they didn't have reams of copy paper lying around....

They wouldn't use that. As well, there isn't that kind of evidence in existence. If there were, it'd be more commonly known and VERY REFERENCED in apologetic arguments. The fact that most apologists only use internal evidence in scripture is telling.

As far as I am aware no such documents exist. There certainly is mention of them in the Biblical account but none of it survives. I personally am skeptical of the claim that we need non-biblical evidence for the historical Jesus; we can get a really good material from the accounts of the resurrection from Mark and Paul.

As to extra Biblical evidence here is a rundown;
http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress ... ed-part-1/

Do we even have verifiable, same-time 3rd hand evidence for Jesus' existence? IIrc the earliest known documents that mention him are from decades after his death. If my parents told me, 'when I was a kid, I had a friend who had a friend who could walk on water,' I would take it with a pretty significant dose of proverbial salt.

From your source:

'Evidence' from the Bible is disallowed not because the Bible was written by people who believed in the existence of Jesus, but because it was written by people who worshiped Jesus. I'm pretty damn skeptical of people who are overly worshipful of the founders, Washington included, but there is a great deal of evidence from people who were neutral observers in Washington's time.