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"The reverse snobbery here is amazing. My only wish is that out of some strange tragedy of fortune you get the chance to attend a doctoral program, go through the rounds, and end up with an appreciation for the work a doctoral degree requires."

I begin to think some amongst us are easily amazed. Amazingly so.

Buddy boy, whatever mynheer GeenPerroquet may do oir fave done, I HAVE gone through the rounds.

INCLUDING voting nay on a really bad doctoral candidacy for good cause. When I refused to knuckle under and vote "right", the Dean he just say, not to worry, I will just decree that the doctorate flies.

The argument used in an attempt to persuade me? We gave the candidate decent grades, so we cannot refuse a doctorate without seeming to be stupid.

AND other cases too depressing to enumerate.

Well - one more - candidate got doctored [I was not on THAT committee] because the one responsible prof who should have been on the committee was on leave that semester. That one was asvise repeatedly to get out - but was [pardon my French] too dumb to hear the message.

The problem is that any given outcome of rolling (lets say by some sort of machine) 100 dice is going to be unlikely, yet it just has to happen. What we regard is "life" developed in response to what was already here, had the constants or structure of the Universe been different, so too would be what forms in it. Out of curiosity, by "life couldn't form" do you mean any form of life or just carbon-based life?

The formation of carbon-based life in a Universe, solar system, galaxy, and planet consistuted in a way that would only allow carbon-based life (after, potentially, billions of years of lifelessness or missed opportunities) seems exactly what you'd expect given thoughtless processes "taking advantage" of what's available.



No, it just has to prove that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent entity dislikes suffering and would never directly ensure it happens. The use of more intersubjectively well-defined suffering was meant to avoid some of the tricker metaethical issues that can sidetrack such debates.



My example referenced natural disasters. I'm not talking about God giving people "free will" and then, as much as he dislikes this, seeing them stab other people for money. I'm talking about Tsunamis that kill millions of infants. "Free will" wasn't really responsible for that (except in the really convulted way in which certain villagers choose to located near the sea so as to fish). An omnipotent God could have easily designed a world in which that problem doesn't occur without obstructing free will at all.



Does omnipotence imply the ability to bring about the logically impossible? If not, then does than mean that God's abilities are constrained by higher laws of logic?



While your analogy seems sneaky, I'll admit that it suffices for the moment as I don't really have a clear ontology of Mathematics at the moment.



I was pretty clear in that I was making an abductive inference - that is, God could either be a real entity who has been mythologized or the intentional object of God could be a pure myth with no referent to the real world. Given the process of the development of various theistic doctrines, the "pure myth" view is a better explanation than "real figure who was mythologized".



The argument was mainly based on why an omnipotent entity who desires the salvation of humanity conditional on believing in him would ensure a large subset of humans find him too implausible to believe in. It's an argument based on what's close to a verifiable fact (many people disbelieve in God) with objective implications (God isn't that good at publicizing himself, hence there is room to doubt his omnipotence, omniprescence, or desire to "save" hummanity through making his existence apparent).



So? Philologos asked for arguments against the existence of God here, not last week, and I provided them. I also don't think you did that good of a job in the other thread either.

I think I will just respond to everything in one go.

Well the teleological argument supports a stronger statement than that. Take the strong force (as) for instance: if as were increased as much as 1%, nuclear resonance levels would be so altered that almost all carbon would be burned into oxygen; an increase of 2% would preclude formation of protons out of quarks, preventing the existence of atoms. Furthermore, weakening as by as much as 5% would unbind deuteron, which is essential to stellar nucleosynthesis, leading to a universe composed only of hydrogen. It has been estimated that as must be within 0.8 and 1.2 its actual strength or all elements of atomic weight greater than four would not have formed. This is clearly a discussion not of other forms of life, but of whether of not atoms will exist or not.

Moreover, life depends upon the operation of certain principles in the quantum realm. For example, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which states that no more than one particle of a particular kind and spin is permitted in a single quantum state, plays a key role in nature. It guarantees the stability of matter and the size of atomic and molecular structures and creates the shell structure of atomic electrons. In a world not governed by this principle, only compact, superdense bodies could exist, providing little scope for complex structures or living organisms. Or again, quantization is also essential for the existence and stability of atomic systems. In quantum physics, the atom is not conceived on the model of a tiny solar system with each electron in its orbit around the nucleus. Such a model would be unstable because any orbit could be an arbitrary distance from the nucleus. But in quantum physics, there is only one orbital radius available to an electron, so that, for example, all hydrogen atoms are alike. As a consequence, atomic systems and matter are stable and therefore life-permitting.



I invoked the free will defense here for a reason, that being for any evil to exist God must have a sufficient moral reason for its existence. Using your example of Tsunami’s, they are essentially seismic events, are you going to argue that life on Earth would be better off without plate tectonics? Every single natural disaster event, volcano, earthquake, tornado have a positive attached to it. Seismic events are a byproduct of plate tectonics which are a byproduct of the magnetic field that keeps us from all dying from cosmic radiation. Tornados and hurricanes exist as extreme representations of natural weather patterns. Without rain and wind, life on Earth would not exist.

As to the better world designed by God, I think philologos has sufficiently answered that question in your discussion with him.



An argument can be made in relation to logic that is the same as that of morality. Within Christian theism morals exist because God is good. A classical theist can also make the argument that logic exists because God is logical. Flint and Freddoso's definition of omnipotence. Key to their definition is that God cannot actualize logically impossible states of affairs, such as making a round square.



It does not matter how you shape this response, you are still committing the genetic fallacy of attacking the origin of the belief rather than the substance.

Example: "Smith's belief in God stems from a subconscious need for a fatherly figure and is thus a total joke." (The psychological link may in fact be true and may even shed some light on the personality of Smith, but is nevertheless irrelevant to the truth/falsehood of his belief.)


From ‘Taking the Fight to the Real Issue’


The evidence you have put forward is from 1998, this was five years before Borde, Guth and Vilenkin disproved this concept.

It seems Voltaire's Professor Pangloss has an ardent admirer.

Voltaire's Professor Pangloss is the cynic's ultimate straw man.

'Cynicism is the humour of hatred.'
Herbert Beerbohm

No, it really DOESN'T look like it has been designed for life. I mean, I think we are both aware that the amount of space in the universe that can support life is easily less than 1%, easily less than 1% of 1%. Now, we are proposing that an all-powerful being created a universe with 99+++% of both time and space being irrelevant to living life, and that this proposed creation was "designed for life"? I apologize, but what we see is so far from optimal that attributing it to God, a being we could only justify through evidence of optimality, is just quite absurd.

Even further, chance is certainly a great deal more plausible than the absurdities we engage in by saying that the perfect God with fails to satisfy his intentions in the most sensible manner. After all, the latter seems like an outright internal contradiction.


Problems:
1) Free will does not appear to exist. If there is evidence you wish to submit, then please do so, however, the non-existence of free will is very much secured by the lack of accord we have between reality and "conscious decision" as demonstrated with the Libet experiment, along with other neuroscience that undercuts essential-ness to human behavior, as well as the highly successful proposition of the uniformity of nature. (If you want to deny the uniformity of nature, then do so, but realize that it undermines cosmological arguments more than it supports free will)
2) It does not seem morally justifiable to have free will of the libertarian variety in existence. The reason I state this is because there is nothing more morally sacred about having human actions attributed to randomness, but rather as Hume pointed out "Actions are by their very nature temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the characters and disposition of the person, who performed them, they infix not themselves upon him, and can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor infamy, if evil.", and given other intuitions like this, and the strange nature of free will, the "free will defense" does not seem plausible on the ground that it requires we find the supposition that free will is a morally justifiable reason for evil to be correct. I mean saying "oh, free will must exist for moral good" does not seem plausible, especially given that the greatest source of moral good in theism is God, and God is necessarily good, meaning he cannot perform evil acts. So, not only is this implausible given other intuitions, but it seems to have outright contradictions in the justification.
3) Even if this argument is POSSIBLE, it does not mean it is PLAUSIBLE. The real issue with the problem of suffering is not whether some person can just make up a lame answer, but rather what view is more plausible given the data on suffering. Given that most answers about justifying the suffering are deeply questionable, outright unintuitive, and require levels of skepticism that are unlike what is otherwise considered, it is hard to honestly say that theism has good answers. It is OBVIOUS that God could prevent all of these sufferings, it is NOT obvious that God has a good reason for not preventing each suffering he fails to.


I'd bet that omniscience is a bigger issue.


The argument is not a fallacy. If we show that our basis for believing X is questionable, then one has justified a reason to doubt X. One hasn't proven the statement "X is false", but one does not need to do that.


The problem is that the relative nature of a lot of these subjective experiences makes the entire affair of subjective experiences just a difficult approach. After all, many ideas seemingly incompatible with the notion of God have been subjectively experienced, even mystically experienced.

The whole point on "obviousness" is also kind of dumb. Your religion relies on people witnessing an actual resurrection of a man from the dead in fulfillment of what they considered to be prophecy. Doubting Thomas was even the man noted for demanding near absolute proof of God rising and receiving it(remember, he wouldn't believe until he had TOUCHED a resurrected man). Adam and Eve were in God's presence in the Garden. Miracle stories abound in the scripture, including the plagues sent by Moses, which had to be very coercive in order to persuade a hard-hearted Egyptian ruler to let the Jewish people go. How about Elijah, the Baal worshipers and the fire burning the altar. Scripture makes it clear in that case too that Baal obviously was false and Jahweh was obviously real, as Jahweh burned the altar on Elijah's command, while Baal failed despite all efforts tried.

Even further, it is not clear that being rationally coercive is a denial of free will, nor is it clear that free will is necessary or valuable. Neither God nor Jesus have a choice in believing in God, but Jesus was wholly man and the person to imitate. How can our role model, who suffered as we did, also lack moral choice on the matter if the most important element here IS moral choice? Surely for Christ to play his role in Christian theology, his knowledge must be compatible with human virtue, and if his knowledge of his own existence is acceptable, then surely the moral choice element must just be a failure.

Look, I'm going to still hold my ground and call a spade a spade, and say that most of these arguments appear to be rationalizations more than solid reasons.

And none of this is logically necessary. If it isn't logically necessary for the good of "life", then in what sense do we have sufficient moral reason? We both know that even the rules of physics can go out the door if God decides to override the standard rules of physics with a perpetual miracle. Frankly, I don't see an overriding reason not to have this. Even further, we still have a good reason to believe a lack of optimality in these situations. As such, I don't see how M_P's rebuttal fails.


The issue is that the genetic fallacy is an informal fallacy, not a formal fallacy. This becomes a further issue given that unless M_P is making a deductive argument, there is no grounds for rejecting these kinds of considerations. Smith's belief in God being driven by an artifact of Smith's psychology is certainly relevant in considering Smith a source of knowledge on the issue, which might even also be relevant in the entire evaluation of evidence. If this were a court-case, or even a historical study, would we consider Smith's psychology relevant when considering him as a witness? Sure, and we would be very sensitive in trying to create a view of what actually happened by trying to adjust for distortions likely caused by Smith's psychological profile. How is this different?


And of course, given that any such disproof is in part a matter of metaphysics, and likely beyond the ability of anybody here to evaluate at length, I don't really see much reason to trust any such citation. Anybody knows that academics is full of debates, where the next person might disagree with whatever is presented.

First of all, I actually did try to track down any background literature on the study you mentioned. I didn't really get as far as I wanted. I found something, and was too lazy to go further:
http://debunkingwlc.wordpress.com/2010/ ... -vilenkin/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmi ... rse-start/

Basically, here are the issues:
1) It does not appear that a beginning is proven, just that the whole matter is odd.
2) We don't have an absolute proof of anything. The extrapolation taken is pretty far, as the argument relies upon theories that we know are somewhat false, and on issues where we cannot evaluate the matters empirically.
3) Even if we did have a proof of something, we still have enough unresolved issues with the entire mess that the Kalam isn't proven, something that the study authors have stated themselves, even proposing other possibilities as ideas.

"A Witty Saying Proves Nothing"
-Voltaire.

That being said Pangloss is more of a mockery than a strawman. Strawmen are constructed for arguments. Pangloss was constructed for satire.

You have simply presupposed what universe God should have made as a way of trying to undermine the evidence that this universe clearly is designed. God might have a reason for this universe existing as it does, the fact that you claim he could not is clearly disproven by the teleological evidence that shows design. Moreover the absolute incompatibleness of your argument entails a massive burden of proof, since you are supposing that the universe must exist in a certain way, I see no reason to believe this to be the case without you making a case the explains both the design we see in the universe and demonstrating that God must have made the universe in the way you have described.

A lot of what you are saying shows what you think God should be like. I see your view of God to be more like the classical artist, everything has its place and no energy is lost, this seems to be your view of perfection. However, efficiency is only something that is beneficial to something that is limited. You only need to be efficient if you have a restraint on what it is you are trying to do. I posit to you, if you’re omnipotent, what is so great about being efficient? What if God is more like an extremely creative romantic artist and he delights in having things of as many different kinds as possible?



Here we go again, presupposing the lack of free will. When discussing the problem of evil we are discussing what is essentially an internal argument. In philosophy and theology an internal argument allows the introduction of evidence that presupposes the existence of God. The reason I continue to assert that your presupposition is wrong is because you continue to use it within an internal argument context. There may be an argument against the existence of God using free will, no philosopher worth their salt so far has been willing to make this argument due to the fact that the free will debate is still open and therefore the argument could not be made with any degree of certainty. In order to defeat the argument against God from free will one only has to state that the argument fails if free will exists, the present research does disprove this, therefore one is justified in assuming it to exist. However, due to the fact you are using it in an internal argument setting, I really have no reason to base my argument on this alone. I am free to argue under the assumption that free will exists because my conception of God is logically compatible with free will and on that ground your argument fails for certain.



Well, no the free will defense entails that God has sufficient morally justifiable reasons for wanting us to have free will.



Will it is true that we cannot see many of what God’s reasons for permitting evil are, or its true that we cannot see in many cases what those reasons are. It is hard to see why this is a reason for it being unlikely that God has such reasons. God’s circumstances and nature is totally different than our own. It does not follow from our own limited understanding that God does not have reasons; it does not even really follow that he could not have reasons. It just is not the case that if God had a reason, that you and I would be the first to know.



Well actually it is a fallacy, It is the genetic fallacy of attacking the origin of the belief rather than the substance.

Example: "Smith's belief in God stems from a subconscious need for a fatherly figure and is thus a total joke." (The psychological link may in fact be true and may even shed some light on the personality of Smith, but is nevertheless irrelevant to the truth/falsehood of his belief.)



The problem with the William Lane Craig debunk website is that they are questions absent refutation. I can list some response to each of the possibilities raised by the link if you like?

Also I did not see your double post so I edited this part in later. As to the idea that God exists to provide x as raised by yourself and MP. It does still fall under the fallacy. If you want me to discuss the matter of why we believe I will argue that the reasons for wanting to believe in God fall as part of an evidence for his existence and a conformation the fact he wants us to believe in him.

Last edited by 91 on 10 Dec 2010, 2:46 am, edited 2 times in total.

Ok sand I'll give you that one.

AG makes a good point about just how small the area for carbon-based life is. I'd also comment that the fact it took billions of years makes it a vary suboptimal design, because even if God is constrained by the laws of logic he need not be constrained by the "laws" (observed regularities) of physics. He could've made physical laws in any logically possible way.

On a, perhaps embarrassingly speculative and uninformed note, I'd also comment that I personally have know idea on what an atomless Universe could be like and physicists and physical cosmologists and perhaps even Quantum biologists might. But I am not really sure if differential self-replication is utterly contingent on atoms, and given billions of years of thoughtless trials & errors, I do wonder what the outcome would be.



Yet if all (logically coherent) things are possible with God, he could have designed the laws of physics in a way where such tradeoffs were unneccessary.



His point only works if you assume a sub-omnipotent God or assume that human beings aren't a priority. Since you assume both points (as a devout Roman Catholic you're beholden to the viewpoint humanity was created in God's image), his refutations don't work for you (and I don't really find them that convincing anyway).



Okay, so your conception of God is "omnipotence - ability to contravene the laws of logic".



I am not making a deductive argument here. The general form is:

P1: The Smithertons believe in X.
P2: There is deep research on the sociological, anthropological, and historical development of X, attributable to various factors external to contact with X.
P3: There is no evidence of contact with X.
C: Thus, it is more reasonable to assume X is purely an intentional object with no strongly resembling external world referent.

Anthropologists go through a similar process with the various entities postulated by Cargo Cults. Sure, there may have been some historical figures or a patchwork of martial figures who "John Frum" was based, but assuming a stronger sense of John Frum more in line with the mythology of the Cargo Cults is ruled implausible on the basis of abductive inference. Could a John Frum who would spread wealth to the Islanders had they rejected colonial rule and really be able to bring this about existed? Sure, but it's bloody implausible and the pure myth theory explains the data better. If we have a set of psycho-social cultural explanations that can explain the development of grand entities without the existence of strongly associated real entities, then it is by definition more parismonious to accept the "pure myth" hypothesis.



I don't have sufficient knowledge of physical cosmology or quantum mechanics to really judge this issue, but from my understanding physical cosmology is still in a rather anarchic state, not quite settled on any concensus or paradigm. I don't think the Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin thereom is as definitive as you're making it out, though I'd LIKE TO HAVE SOMEONE ON WP INTERESTED AND TRAINED IN COSMOLOGY TO WEIGH IN HERE.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH5s6HqOLEs[/youtube]

Roger Penrose, still a professionally respectable figure, has came out with a cyclical model. While not accepted by most Cosmologists, at least yet, (and also having sustained less tests), it shows an alternative in that highly speculative field.

I think I have refuted this position in my previous post. Why should the universe be efficient if it was created by God? Only a limited being would need to value being efficient.



I am not sure how you are establishing the use of the world could here. It does not seem to follow that if God has sufficient reasons for the universe existing the way it does, then he should have designed it differently. I am not sure we are in any position to tell what an omnipotent being could or should do when he do not have any grasp of many of the reasons such a being would have. What your argument does wrong is that it presupposes to know what both what God is like and what his intentions are.



I think I have just addressed that above.



Sure anthropologists do, but you are arguing a meta case against the existence of God. A lot of these sorts of explanations can and should be dismissed because of the fallacy they commit in relation to attacking origin rather than substance. This reminds me a good deal of the ‘wish fulfillment’ argument of Freud. If there is such a thing as God, then belief in God will have warrant, he would create us in a way that would be able to know about him. It seems to me perfectly plausible to think that God has used these means in order to get us to know him. As we can see from this, explaining the cause of the belief is its own discussion and profits nothing really in making it impossible for God to exist. Also, I do not really know how you could go from understanding a belief and then rendering it logically invalid it seems that you want to take the two together, in which case you will need to have a much better argument against the origin of Christian beliefs than almost anyone I have ever read. This is due to the fact that the origin of the Christian religion does not render belief implausible, Jesus did exist, he died and a Christian can make a pretty good case for his resurrection and I did just that the other day.



Jim Sinclair and Dr Craig are presently in the process of publishing a detailed response to Penrose. However this much can be said in relation to Penrose’s position; Loop models do not require an eternal past, and trying to extend them to past infinity is hard to square with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and seems to be ruled out by the accumulation of dark energy, which would in time bring an end to the cycling behavior. Quantum Gravity models feature an absolute beginning of the universe, even if the universe does not come into being at a singular point. Thus, Quantum Gravity models no more avoid the universe’s beginning than do purported Eternal Inflationary models. (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=6115)

Well, no, you stated the purpose of the Universe is X. There are facts that do not make much sense given that purpose. This causes design propositions to be quite questionable, because while there may be oddities, if there are facts that do not make sense given a creator, then the idea of a creator is just questionable.


God might have a love of platypus porn. The issue is that there is no reason we should expect or believe God to have a love of Platypus porn. At the same time, there is no reason we have to believe that God should be expected to create a universe like this. All else equal this is evidence against God's existence because this does not make much sense given God.


Given that my statement was that basically of the nature: "There is no reason for a perfect being to create an imperfect universe". I will stand by this, there is no justification I can see for a perfect being to create a universe that is not imperfect. Even further, if we do not see optimality, we have reason to suspect that whatever created reality isn't God, God being by definition perfect. This means that other ideas such as the universe being created by a large group of fairies, the universe being created by a demiurge, the universe being created by warring deities of some sort, etc, make more sense in context, even if we say the answer has to be supernatural.


What if God has a love of platypus porn? We do not see evidence of optimality, but rather we have evidence against it as noted by the "waste". This waste makes very little sense under a theistic hypothesis, as noted by the ad hocness of your justifications. It makes a lot of sense under naturalism. Therefore naturalistic originations of reality make more sense. (And given that the design argument is mostly a big argument from ignorance anyway, my argument ends up being more effective)


You know, you don't look any smarter for claiming that everything I do is "presupposition". I mean, we all know what your presupposition is, and we know how much you try to warp and distort basic sense in doing this.

My point on free will is one about empirical reality. We don't see it there. It doesn't make sense in our reality. Even further, the problem of suffering as M_P presented it, is not entirely internal. One can read it as if he is criticizing a theory. Basically, he says "Your theory holds to these properties. These properties do not seem to be compatible." You say "well, this is a reasons that they actually could be compatible". I rebut "but that rationale makes no sense given our evidence, as your rationale seems to be false". It is pretty simple.

As for "philosopher worth their salt".... umm.... that's basically just an appeal to authority. Even further, the free will debate is mostly a US debate, not one of other countries. Additionally, compatibilism is mostly the victor of the free will debate, and compatibilism does not seem to be sufficient to make your defense, as a God can interfere with such a reality without "denying free will", given that free will is not centered around choice in such a metric, but underlying characteristics. Finally, in philosophers dealing with the mind (such as cognitive science and well... philosophy of mind), no free will existing is more popular than libertarian free will. All that I feel I have to reject in this instance mostly centers around the Dennett idea of free will, that is "competence at avoiding", and I find that notion to not really be sufficient for what I would call "free will", which in my understanding centers around intentional behavior, but even further, even if a Dennett compatibilism is correct, or likely any other form of compatibilism, it does not justify your position with any ease. As such, I still attack your position.

I don't see why I should have to make an entirely internal criticism here, because frankly, "I can assume any implausible thing I want is true", is not a good way of finding truth, and because everybody knows that, it is a piss-poor way to justify an idea. An idea being logically consistent is interesting, but unimportant.


You mean it states this. The issue is that the assumption is implausible in my eyes.


Not really addressing my side of the issue here though. My point here really goes back to our knowledge of reality. YES, anything logically consistent might actually be the state of affairs, however, we upgrade or downgrade the possibility of this based upon plausibility. Most of the justifications for God justifying evil are wildly implausible, if not internally problematic. This means that we need to downgrade the possibility of God strongly if we are to be intellectually honest. It might really be that there is some rationale we have not discovered, but nobody expects perfect proof from any philosophical argument. If nobody sees a good reason for X, then this is evidence against X, just as nobody seeing unicorns is evidence of their absence.


I addressed this and your comment later on. The genetic fallacy is not a formal fallacy. Even further, given that M_P is not making a deductive argument, it becomes less relevant.


Um..... they don't need to "refute". If you'll note they actually point out that refutation isn't necessary by pointing out that a beginningless past is still possible, and also that notions of "This paper, ergo theism" are still premature.

I don't really care why you believe. I think you get a fuzzy feeling about this, and so you blindly pursue it. You must recognize that I am a deconvert, so you talking about your Christian experience bores me. I am unlikely to learn a lot.

The problem is that if the universe could be designed better, then he does not have sufficient reasons for the universe existing the way it does.

Even further, God's nature is usually made very clear, God is defined by his loving nature. How is it most loving to create a world with earthquakes if those are not necessary? I don't see a reason. If there is no reason, then why is your idea credible? The mere possibility of a reason doesn't make something rational. Additionally, given that God is invoked as a purposive agent, and one that has already known objectives, various facts that do not make sense given this are evidence against such a being. Coherence without ad hocness is highly valued when looking at an idea. A God that desired earthquakes when they were not necessary does not appear loving, this is evidence against such a being. A God that creates large stretches of space for little or no real justification is also questionable given the purposive nature of such a being.

A major point in this entire issue is the criterion of optimality. Optimality is necessary if we are told theism as a serious explanation. If "God" is just compatible with most sets of data proposed, which your notion seems to be, then he is justified by no set of data. What you propose really seems to be a being that could never be pushed to the side, regardless of the empirical reality observed, as such the use of such a being to justify any set of data seems ad hoc.


Well, right, but M_P's point is really about our justification for belief/non-belief. If God's existence is not credible, then we ought not believe in the existence of God, despite the logical possibility still existing.

You confusing M_P's point with a refutation of God is not valid. It also suggests that you are not being charitable.

Honestly, given that we only have one or two sources of a miracle that is not found in any other source, we have reason to be skeptical. Given that our sources have multiple miracle claims that are not backed up by any other source, we have further reason to be skeptical. Given that our sources have statements that seem to be historical falsehoods, justifying something as extreme as a miracle is not plausible. Finally, given that Jesus is not the fulfiller of prophecy many think he is, but many of these prophecies are post-hoc justifications, the Christian religion is outright undermined. At best, we have a trickster demon, which I don't think anybody is willing to believe.


Eh, the issue is still that the article given is not as strong as you are promoting. This still undermines your argument greatly. Just the fact that there is ongoing academic dispute seems sufficient.

You are simply restating the same points, I have already refuted these points, twice in one day. I see no reason to continue unless you present me with something new. The intellectual dishonesty of your recent statements is shocking.

I think that intellectual dishonesty is unintentional. I think that somehow mental barriers are built to make it so that what is already accepted remains protected, subconsciously, and all things to the contrary are then perceived as necessarily false.