(posted on 22-Nov-2000)
[This message comes from a rather long thread involving Lynn, Russell and many others. This thread discussed many areas that may be seen as "points of conflict" between "skeptic" and "believer" world views. This message is rather representative of Russell's position on the debate, and also of his usual clarity for explaining his ideas.]
Hi again Lynn,
God has produced many miracles.
The bible, which is demonstrably a work of man not god, documents many miracles produced by god but then so do most other religious books while documenting contradictory gods. If the moslems are right the christians are wrong and vice versa. Multiply that by the 100000 or so cults, sects and religions, all with mutually exclusive beliefs, that we have invented to date and where does the bibles documentation of miracles really stand, just one voice in the crowed. Given the conflicting nature of all these claims we must find another method of discerning miracle.
Check out some of the saints documentation in the Catholic Church. They have a body of people whose job is to disprove claims of miracles. Some they cannot. There is no other explanation.
I can't prove that a magician's tricks are not real. As an outsider to the 'trade' I don't have the information necessary to show how they did it. Based on that should I accept that they are really magic? That the catholic church can't fathom what happened in so many cases and so assigns it to miracle does not really prove much. If we assigned to magic and miracle everything we cannot find a mundane explanation for the world would be almost exclusively miracles. And again the Moslems do the same with the same results but in support of a mutually exclusive religious system. Only one can be right but both 'prove' miracles from their god by similar means as do virtually all religions. At the time of jesus, to be anyone you had to do miracles, they were common place, all great leaders did miracles on their own or with the help of their particular gods do you believe all of them as they're all based today on the same evidence, ancient human writings.
I could go into a whole sunday school class, if you wish, but I feel certain you have heard it all and discounted it before - so what's the point?
You are right, as an ex-christian I have probably heard it all before but who knows maybe you'll surprise me. I guess what I would like you to do, if you have the time, is take a step back and see the big picture. Then try to answer the question, how do you recognize a true miracle given that most religious texts for virtually all religions claim miracles for their gods. This despite the fact that these religions are all mutually exclusive and so, at least, all but one must logically be wrong as must the majority of believers be in their beliefs. As I said before if the moslems are right the christians are wrong and vice versa etc etc.
Each person is entitled to choose how they want to life their life, and what they want to believe or disbelieve.
I agree that we each are entitled to choose how we want to live our lives but we are not free to choose what we want to believe or disbelieve. I can choose to lie and say 'I believe' but I can't choose to believe. Belief is not a chose but the consequence of exposing intellect to information.
I'm sure the fact that I feel sad for those that choose to live such a limited life is totally irrelevant to you. You on the other hand, may be thinking the same thing about me. And that's OK.
More or less. I can understand just how tempting it is, the idea that death is not the end, the idea that I will meet my grand parents and my son again after I die but I don't believe for a moment that it is so no matter how much I wish it were.
I don't think Roseweed was trying to be too difficult. I think it is a natural position for a skeptic to take. It always nice to have the other guy bring you the documentation, reference, proof, whatever.
I think you have still missed the point, skeptics (well me in particular) have no problem doing the leg work but logically the evidence must come from the positive side. We can lookup the works of paranormalists and examine their methods for you in building our arguments but a negative case does not have such works. It is not possible to create an experiment to disprove god while it is logically possible to create an experiment to prove god. A negative result does not disprove him but a positive results would be truly amazing support of him baring experimental errors. Of course it's never happened and I don't believe it ever will but who knows what the future holds. That is the point I feel Roseweed was trying to make. The one making the positive claim is the only one who can logically provide evidence for an existential existence claim (i.e. a claim such as "god / souls are objectively real" which is implied by your stated beliefs.).
I have for the most part enjoyed the discussions on this subject, however, it is apparent the drift they all seem to take. I am just one person, and it is very time consuming to try to answer 10 or so others on the board, when posts are directed at you. I have listened to everyone and hopefully you all have heard a bit of what I've said. Now, are we to the point of beating a dead horse, or what?
I for one would like to hear your thoughts on the problems I have raised with your position in this post but if it boils down to 'I have faith (belief without good evidence or in spite of contradictory evidence) and that's that' then yes I guess we are at the flogging a dead horse stage. If on the other hand you wish to explain how your beliefs escape such considerations then we probably have some distance yet to go
Russell