Educated and informed Christians understand the history of the setting of the date of the holiday "Christmas."

I'm concerned by which part of this article you think has a little truth to it.   Can you give some examples?

Something that came to my mind was:

"I feel confident that this man is either suffering from a psychological problem or is hiding his uncooperative, anti-social and anti-government viewpoints under the disguise of religious dogma. Everybody is entitled to a viewpoint but the defining line is statutory criminal activity and possible terrorist threats."

I think this is not so far off the truth in today's world.  In other words, since the supernatural is precluded from even possible consideration today, our age is the worst possible age for God to reveal himself.  For one thing, it would be dismissed as something else immediately.   And so, yes, witnesses would be treated with hostility.   'Miracles' clearly are of no benefit in a society where they would be greeted immediately with hostility and explained away.  Naturally, the counter-argument, implied in this article, is, as it always is, an attempt to try to force Christians to concede that they would quite obviously agree that the story is hogwash, thus exposing their hypocrisy in choosing to accept one story but not another.   

But this is answered easily enough:  it is never rational, it is never honest, it is never logical, it is never sane, to presume in advance what can only be determined by an evaluation of the evidence.   In other words, if you presume in advance that the supernatural does not exist before you even launch your investigation, we need not pretend we are dealing with a rational position.   Of course, it is not rational either to presume in advance that the supernatural does exist.   The honest and rational person will begin the investigation with an open mind.

Now, the other thing that strikes me true about the passage I quoted is the attitude that dismisses such material as uncooperative, anti-social, and anti-government, etc.   This is Dawkins writ large.  He tries to portray teaching certain religious doctrines as being child abuse, even more abusive than the abuse that he himself suffered- and yet- and yet, he does not go the next step and suggest that we should then intervene and call for child services.  But this is not an irrational conclusion to draw, and this good-humored article shows how some would be willing to draw it.

We should all be very concerned and nervous when secularists begin taking it upon themselves to determine what the standards for sanity and morality are.   It may come back to bite them in the arse, and it may be too late at that point to do anything about it.

"You seem to lament the fact that in todays world we are not willing to readily accept claims of supernatural occurences."

No, that's not it at all.   In fact, the truth is that I am probably more skeptical than most skeptics.  The reason is because I am skeptical about everything, and not just things that I have decided to place into a separate class of things.   Here is a good example:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/14042.html

Belgium, like most of Europe these days, certainly do not 'readily accept claims of supernatural occurences,' but this is not really to their credit, is it, because they don't apply their skepticism across the board.   Precisely because the information came through the 'authorized' channels they were duped.   At the very least, it cannot be argued that there is not a cautionary lesson to be learned about even secular people- oh, those enlightened ones- being guillible.  You should not readily accept ANY claims.  Setting up a separate category where you are going to be hyper-skeptical but then walking around in a daft fog in the other areas is a recipe for being manipulated.

"During the last 2000 years and more particularly during the last 150 to 250 years, we have learned a great deal about our environment and the way our world works and things interact. As a result there are fewer and fewer events that could be regarded as serious contenders for a supernatural investigation. This development will by nature prejudice any such test. Its however a bias grounded in fact and based on observation."

I don't really agree.  You are not using words accurately.  Searching for the 'supernatural' within the natural realm is like searching for a dog in New York when you were told it was in Phoenix.   Hardly commendable when you don't find the dog, is it?  What you really mean here is 'paranormal' investigation.  These are different things.

But I was hoping you'd share some examples of things that you thought there were 'truth' to in the article....

"It has nothing to do with a supernatural occurrence."

Exactly.

"As a Canadian I know that such things should not be toyed with. Not too long ago we had a vote about whether the Province of Quebec should secede from Canada. It was a close call and its not a joke to us at all."

Sure, and so maybe a fake news report could trick ya'll, too.  In other words, its easier, wouldn't you agree, to trick someone when you actually play into their expectations?   My point is not that you should not be skeptical about supernatural claims, but rather that if you're going to be skeptical you should be skeptical across the board.  To not be skeptical across the board is to open yourself up to be manipulated in the areas where your guard is down.

"I don't know how the dog came into this but something that claims to be supernatural is paranormal to me."

But not to me.   'Paranormal' powers need not be supernatural at all.  Telekinesis, for example, could be possible in even a strictly naturalistic universe.  It is certainly not any more bizarre than quantum non-locality.  But something that was truly supernatural can't even possibly, by the definition of the term- or at least as understood by Christians in their defense of God- be reduced to naturalistic terms.

"Paranormal: Something that is beyond the normal scope of science or being beyond a scientific explanation
Supernatural: Not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws."

I accept those definitions but do not agree that they can be used interchangeably.  Something paranormal could still exist in nature.   The power to bend spoons may be fraud- but if legitimate need not be using supernatural powers.  It could just be using powers not currently understood by science, as your definition suggests.  You see the show 'Heroes' that's out right now?  This is a good example.  They are bending over backwards to introduce 'super' powers on a purely naturalistic, evolutionary basis.  None of the characters entertain for a moment that perhaps these speak to supernaturalistic realities.  And that is to their credit, really, even if its accidental, because supernatural realities are an entirely different bag.

"The truths I see in this article are the way officials would be dealing with such claims as "This child is a god" or "I didn't touch the girl, she just became pregnant on her own."

heh alright.  Although, in fairness to Joseph I don't think there is any evidence he went around claiming that 'this child is a god.'    There must have been some significant rumor going around, because to be fair to the people of the time, it wasn't instantly accepted at all that Jesus was God or born of a virgin.  That's what's behind the Jewish insults that Jesus was a bastard that we have a record of.

You have to keep in mind that it is not tenable to insinuate that people back then were stupid and ignorant about the laws of nature.  How could they know that it was miraculous and significant that Jesus walked on the water if they did not know that people couldn't walk on water?   Is there something that has come up "during the last 150 to 250 years" that has now cleared this up for the human race?  It seems reasonable to believe that the notion that dead people stay dead was an operating principle in Jesus time, because if it wasn't, the claim that he had risen from the dead would have insignificant.

"Lucy, dear.  Did you hear that that Jesus rose from the dead?"
"Oh Marcia, people rise from the dead all the time, you know that."

People's understanding about the laws of nature have not really transformed in the manner in which you have tried to suggest.   People then understood those laws, or else they could not have been awed by alleged violations of them.  The difference, as I tried to get at in my first response, is that in our time the supernatural is precluded as possible before any investigation is launched, whereas in that time at least people were willing to consider that a person who really walks on water or rises from the dead may really be exerting supernatural powers.  Today, if this happened, the people who witnessed it would be mocked, or, if it was compelling enough, they would simply re-write the laws of nature.

"This is not intended to insult the people who lived 2000 years ago but their understanding of science was considerably limited compared to ours today."

I understand that but that is not really what I'm getting at.  Yes, their understanding of science was limited, but they still knew that people did not rise from the dead or that people walked on water.    If they didn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation. 

"While we may not be able to explain the mechanics, experience has taught us that their performances must follow the laws of physics."

I believe Chriss Angel has explicitly said that he is not using any 'superpowers.'   But I think the key word is 'experience.'    Experience has taught us... yes, experience teaches us much.  However, experience is not the same as a logical truism.  It is not actually a logical fact that their performances must follow the laws of physics, the word 'must' being the key word there.  Experience tells us that it is very likely that their performances will follow the laws of physics, and when they are on the record saying as much, we are probably not being unreasonable to accept that this is the case.   But our experiences are limited.  Neither of us will be able to experience a great deal of things, and so we need to rely on the experiences of others to feed back information to us.   Our 'knowledge' of the laws of physics represents the accumulation of individual human experiences both today and in the past.  However, we cannot assume that when one human at one point in time has experienced what we may call a 'singularity' that this person has not actually experienced what he said he experienced. 

We can't 'assume' it, where 'assume' is the key word.  Sure, we can check into it, and we should.   There are all sorts of examples of this throughout history that have nothing to do with the miraculous.

"It is certainly not the same as a newscast that plays on current and realistic fears."

My point on this is that not being aware that something may 'play on current and realistic fears' makes one open to being manipulated.  The movie 'Wag the Dog' comes to mind.  Some would point to the current President as another example.

"In this light, I could not fault authorities of today, for treating claims of a virgin birth or the arrival of a Messiah with the utmost in suspicion. It is a real puzzle to me and to many Atheists how religious people can readily accept such things as having occurred 2000 years ago while rejecting the same as impossible today."

If it makes you feel any better, the authorities of the time in question treated the claims with the utmost suspicion as well.   I can speak for my own self and say that because I do not assume before I've started my investigation that certain sorts of experiences simply cannot have been real, I am willing to look into the matter in question.  However, if the very thing I'm examining is whether or not something is supernatural or not, it will not do to disqualify the claim as being incredible the moment it appears to be supernatural.  Whether or not it is supernatural was the very thing we were looking into.

Follow?
 

"We disagree on the degree of the critical approach but that is an individual matter based on individual experiences."

I could live with this with some caveats.  I am not in the slightest advocating not employing very strict scrutiny, here.  I was an atheist, however briefly, and my return to theism was not done so haphazardly.  Our difference here to me seems more to stem from the view that you find it self-evident that one must assume that supernatural claims are guilty until proven innocent- and the mechanisms for that proof are more stringent, too, than other claims- and my view that it is self-evident that one must assume any claim, supernatural or not, should be presumed innocent until proven guilty- and the mechanisms for demonstrations if one is to be fair must be the same across the board.  If it really reduces to just an 'individual matter based on individual experience' in your mind, I would be happy to entertain that but would like to point out that you can't exactly ridicule the theist as acting irrationally, either, since as you suggest, its just individual differences in play.

I am speaking generally, here, about how we appeal to the experiences of the whole human race in order to formulate our own judgements about reality and not about particular claims that I may encounter in a given day.
 
"Why would a god, in the sense of an omnipotent being, have to resort to anything that might be questioned, in order to announce his/her presence or existence? One would expect that such a being would be capable of making its existence known to us all, without leaving any doubt in anyone's mind. Anything else, to me, is just playing games."

This is a good question but it is not without an answer.  In my experience, how acceptable that answer to you will depend on a number of factors, perhaps reducing to your notion about individual criteria.  And that's fine, too, but there are people on this forum who are not willing to accept that their objection has more to do with their own preferences rather than the alleged irrationality of the 'answer.'  You are giving me hope that you may be willing to give the 'answer' a fair hearing.

I'm glad you added the definition 'in the sense of an omnipotent being' but I should like to add to that.  So often in discussions like this it becomes a discourse on omnipotence and omniscience, but even as these are characteristics of God ad Christians understand him, there are other 'omnis' as well.  You may have heard this described as an 'omnimax' God.  What are some other things we could omnicize?  Basically, according to the definition of the Christian God, there is no thing* that can exist apart from God.  Thus, if we recognize courage as real, God is omnicourageous.  If we think love is real, God is omniloving (synonymous with omnibenevolent, I guess).  So, let me begin to answer your question simply by suggest to you that merely because this God is omnipotent and able to reveal himself in the fashion you suggest, it may not actually be the most loving thing to do.  What God is able to do must be balanced against what is the most loving thing to do, and if it is knowable, God will know how to do it.

Can you think of scenarios in your daily experience where one might be able to do something but out of loving concern one may abstain from doing it?  Possibly, for example, you could physically lock up an alcoholic forever to keep him from having access to a drink, but is this really the most loving approach?  Does this really resolve the problem?

*I said 'no thing' and this leads to pretty much the only valid line of objection to this argument, and Christians are well aware of it.  In a word, its the problem of evil.  But using our alcoholic man as an example, one may argue that the most loving approach is to have the alcoholic alive and in chains rather than striving and failing, striving and failing, and perhaps injuring himself or others.  The price of 'resolving the problem' rather than just imposing a solution by coercion may seem to you to be too high.   Understandable, but subjective.
 

"Your readiness, to accept the supernatural as a viable option, indicates that your life experiences were rather different."

No, actually.  That is not to say that there aren't people who have had encounters with the supernatural.  I'm not one of them.  You'll have to search elsewhere for the solution to this conundrum in your mind.  I can save you time by pointing out what has been my consistent position:  if the question you seek to answer specifically is whether or not the supernatural  is real, it is question begging to assume in advance that such instances likely did not happen.  And if you're not going to assume it did not happen before you have launched your investigation, and you can't use the claims themselves as ispo facto evidence the claims ar false.

"So you equate the alcoholic with an Atheist"

Ah, no.

"I don

"If, as you say, you had a similar life experience as I, with respect to the supernatural, namely that you have never experienced a single event that you could term as such, you should be able to learn from that."

But there have been many things I have never experienced which are purely naturalistic.  For example, I have never seen the sun from outer space.  I have never been a party to particle acceleration tests.  A small portion of the human race is currently involved in various forms of experimentation and I have nothing but their word that their observations carried forth.  It does nothing to say "but in principle, if you had been there at that moment you would have observed it, too" or, "in principle, we could recreate the experiment and you could see it yourself now," because the same could be said in the first place about supernatural occurrences, ie, 'in principle, if you had been there at that moment you would have observed it, too,' and similarly, 'under similar conditions, you could see it again.' 

That is just talking about occurrences and not even speaking to religious experiences in general.  Probably 5 billion people in the world have had religious experiences, and I would have to say that I probably have had them too though I don't treat my own as supernatural incidents.   My own life's experience is a very short and very narrow measuring stick to apply against the experience of the entire human race today and throughout all time.

"There comes a time where you just have to accept the sum of your experiences."

Sure, and we Christians would call that faith.    But what you are doing is selectively admitting into the 'sum of your experiences' only the accounts from other people's experiences that match your expectations.  You may as well dispense with what anyone else thinks and fly by the seat of your own pants.  I am admitting into my 'sum of my experiences' my own experiences and the accounts from other people, and attempting to carefully evaluate both their accounts and my own experiences.  After all, it may be that my own experiences are being perceived through a particular filter, right?  And if me, why not you?

So, it all needs to be carefully considered, but you can't conduct the investigation by precluding potential explanations before you begin your inquiry.  You certainly can't launch an investigation into the question of the supernatural while simultaneously dismissing all accounts of the supernatural as prima facie evidence of their falsisity, or even by laying odds on it as you are.  In fact, I would think that if we were going to use statistics if would work against you, because the sum of human experiences have been religious in nature.  That would suggest to me that if a person has not had such experiences, it may not be a defect in 5-6 billion people, but perhaps a defect in me.

I say 'defect' not in an insulting way.  I say it in the sense that I think that if we are going to start talking about sums of experiences, there are many, many, many experiences which would seem to speak to something other.  Before I made my own experience the rule and threw them out, I'd see what I could do to evaluate their own experiences in such a way that did not consider them to be false from the outset.

"You got it. I am not asking for some favour or action a god would or should do for me, its about asking for evidence for its existence in the first place."

And that's fine, but then statements like "willful suppression of vital information in this case would be unconscionable and malevolent" are not really relevant.  Whether or not the being is malevolent is important, and it is connected, but it is a different question than its existence.

"No, it

Dicoll.  You are intelligent enough to recognize this as a "joke".... as you stated in the opening of this thread.

I'm with you on this.

You must, though, recognize there are no such "jokes" according to early history??

Dicoll.  You are intelligent enough to recognize this as a "joke".... as you stated in the opening of this thread.

Thank you for your evaluation of my intelligence.

You must, though, recognize there are no such "jokes" according to early history??

I would take issue with you if you regarded the Christian bible as comprehensive early history.
The joke that I am referring to is the transposition of an ancient story, that presents extraordinary occurrences as fact, into today

"The big difference is that