"and this isnt arrogant in itself?"

No, it wasn't.  I went on to say specifically what was arrogant:

"That's not the arrogant part. ...The arrogance is in thinking that the rest of us are too stupid to notice that this is what you are doing."

'You,' of course, is Cogito.  And it is arrogant to think people are stupid (or act like it), and it is not arrogant to say that it is arrogant to think that people are stupid.  Its why the word exists, like the word 'pencil' exists to describe a slender writing object that uses lead.

"i'm telling ya, i am not liking this board at all. i think i enjoyed vapor from the carm.org boards calling me a troll 400 times..."

I was talking to Cogito, not to you.  Remember, he thinks we believers are children in adult bodies.  Isn't that arrogant?  Is it arrogant to denounce thinking people are idiots?  You should be bending over backwards in gratitude to me, because who I'm really defending are humans in general.  I think people have the capacity to think for themselves, and when there is disagreement, I don't actually think this disagreement stems from the stupidity or infantality of the other person.  For Cogito, of course, I'm going to start making an exception.  

For the record, even though I do not in the least think what I said was arrogant, I've never argued that I am not arrogant.  In fact, I have never argued that I am a nice person or even a good person.  I do however try to be a truthful person.  Sometimes the truth hurts.  There are plenty of other people on this forum you can talk to besides me.

I haven't said anything derogatory to you at all.  However, if you don't like arrogance, then don't forget to denounce it when you see it in atheists, too.  I suppose you think its Christian to abstain from calling things how they see them.  Only atheists get to do this?

""Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.""

"wow science is a way of fooling myself. tell that to all the scientists."

I'm pretty sure that's not what it says.  Let me put it again:

""Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.""

It was a quote from Feynman.

As for you leaving:  That is obviously your call.   You've actually learned a lot.  For example, you just learned a quote from Feynman.    Hopefully you've read it more closely, this time.  I don't suppose you see the irony in your misconstrual of it?   I agree about one thing, though:  4 forums is a lot to handle.

That is factually incorrect. Christianity spread among Jewish communities almost exclusively for a decade or more.

I agree that the claim you made up and then attributed to me is incorrect. But since the claim that you made up and attributed to me is not the claim that I made, why should I care that your invented claim is factually incorrect?

Near as I can figure, I shouldn't.

Well, actually a lot of Jews do [believe that Jesus is God].

Well, no, actually a lot of Jews don't.

"But no man said anything about him openly for fear of the Jews..."

By Jews they mean Jews. Now, why were the authorities afraid of them? Its not like Jesus had any followers among them.... RIGHT?

You've misinterpreted this passage -- and all this time I've figured that if you know anything at all, surely to God you know the bible. Oh well, guess I was wrong.

Allow me to disabuse you of your faulty interpretation here.

John 7:1 says: "After this, Jesus went from place to place in Galilee. He did not go about in Judaea, because the Jews were looking for a chance to put him to death."

The "Jews" were looking for a chance to put him to death??? But how can this be since you tell us that Jesus was beloved by Jews? Clearly, by "Jews" John refers to the Jewish authorities, dopey, not to the Jewish community at large.

Only six verses later, Jesus allegedly says this (and I say allegedly because no one knows what Jesus' actual words were. Every bit of conversation attributed to Jesus in the bible is made out of whole cloth): "It is not possible for you to be hated by the world; but I am hated by it, because I give witness that what it does is evil."

So Jesus says he's hated by the world. Hmm. Now, we have a true dilemma. Who should we believe? Jesus' unofficial spokesman "snt"johnny or the words that the bible attributes to Jesus? Was Jesus as Jesus allegedly says in the bible, hated by the world or was he in fact beloved by the Jewish community (whose leaders, BTW, were out to kill him at that very moment)? Jesus or johnny? Johnny or jesus? Who is mistaken?

Verses 7:11-13 continue: "7:11 At the feast the Jews were looking for him and saying, Where is he?
 
7:12 "And there was much discussion about him among the mass of the people. Some said, He is a good man; but others said, No, he is giving people false ideas.
 
7:13 "But no man said anything about him openly for fear of the Jews."

Any numbskull reading this, I would hope, can figure out that "no man" said anything about Jesus either positively or negatively, not because they were in fear of the Jewish community, but because they were afraid of the Jewish AUTHORITIES!

You need to step up your game considerably, saint. I know you can do better than this. This was perhaps your worst effort to date. . . and it was on your turf.

I was talking to Cogito, not to you. Remember, he thinks we believers are children in adult bodies. Isn't that arrogant?

No, that's just a lie. I've never said that believers are children in adult bodies. You are really getting a bit out of hand in this thread with your false attributions, saint. You do this a bit, probably, in most threads, but you're just getting carried away with it now.

Is this the only way you know how to play this game? If so, can I play by your rules? Can I attribute words and thoughts to you that you never spoke or thought? It should would make my case a lot simpler (which is exactly what you are attempting to do by making up stories about what I think).

I've written on a number of occasions that the belief in a supernatural god is irrational, but I don't believe that I've ever written that  "believers are children" or even that believers are child-like.

If anything, I may have written that the belief in a supernatural god is a child-like belief.

For the record, even though I do not in the least think what I said was arrogant, I've never argued that I am not arrogant.

That's because if you did everyone on the board would be ROTFLTAO. Your posts drip with arrogance. But since you have no obvious basis for your arrogance, it comes across as comic relief more than anything else.

I do however try to be a truthful person.

You forgot to add the little "wink" emoticon after this, but that's OK. We all realize this has to be tongue-in-cheek.

Yes, exactly. Experience certainly ought to refer to the experience of our 'species.' And not only must we concede that our experiences can be different in the future than they have been to date, we must also concede that 'our' experiences could have been different in the past, too. Thus, you cannot dismiss claims by those in the past to have witnessed deviations from the observed norms simply because we observe norms. You will need to evalute such claims without begging the question. That is, you will have to weigh the evidence not via empirical methodologies, which depend on observing certain norms, but using other methodologies.

That human experience MAY be different in the future or MAY have been different in the past is not the first reason to believe that human experience WILL be different in the future or that it WAS different in the past.

The most reliable knowledge that we have is based on what our overwhelming human experience to date tells us is the case. It is imperative that that experience be consistent. It is imperative that that experience be coherent and not contradictions. If it is contradictory then we know that it is false because contradictions cannot exist in reality; contradictions can only exist in our interpretation of reality.

Thus, if our overwhelming experience today seems contradictory to what appeared to a handful of humans to be their experience 2,000 years ago, we cannot believe that both views of reality are correct. We have to account for the contradiction in interpretations.

This accounting is actually pretty easily accomplished when it comes to the miracles related in holy books such as the Egyptian "Book of the Dead," the holy books of Hinduism "The Vedas," the Christian Holy book, The Islamic, etc.

. . .have there ever been deviations from the norm that can be reliably construed as actual supernatural interventions?

Of course not.

Have there been deviations in the past from what is considered today to be overwhelmingly true? Possibly.

Is it rational to believe that there was a deviation in the past from what is considered today to be overwhemingly true? No.

I say, no, because what is true of the world is based only on experience. Thus, if our overwhelming experience says that x is the case, yet a person or a few persons in the past say that x is not the case in their experience, we have to account for that difference in interpretation of experience.

What evidence, which itself has to be based on experience, can possibly overcome the presumption that overwhelming human experience is correct? There is none.

Thus, even though it is always possible that a person or persons have witnessed an extraordinary event that flies in the face of all human experience, it can never be rational for anyone else to believe that they have.

Not to be pedantic or anything, don't you mean Hume?

No, I mean Kant. Hume raised interesting (probably unanswerable) questions in regard to human knowledge. But it was Kant, in his effort to answer Hume, who first pointed out the limitations of human knowledge.

". . .have there ever been deviations from the norm that can be reliably construed as actual supernatural interventions?

Of course not."  


How do you know? You don't.

I do.

The key to understanding my answer is your phrase "reliably construed."

Physical law is built on human experience. We do not believe that gravity holds because of any "law" that we've formulated to describe our observations. We believe that gravity is a fact because of the observations themselves. We believe gravity holds because every RELIABLE human observation that we've had or that we know anything about says that mass attracts mass. Billions upon billions of observations, both our own and those of other people, have combined to forge our unshakable belief that mass attracts mass.

Does this mean then that it is impossible for some mass somewhere, sometime not to be attracted by mass?

No (despite Ragnar's claim) it doesn't. It's not impossible. It's always possible that at some time in the past a mass was not attracted by mass or that some mass might not be attracted by mass at some point in the future.

But given overwhelming human experience is that a reasonable conclusion for someone to draw in a particular situation? If we see a person hovering three feet off the ground in mid-air should we jump to the conclusion that the person is defying gravity?

No, instead we should believe that we are being deceived; that it is some kind of trick; that it's a dream or a hallucination; that it's an optical illusion; etc. About the last thing we should believe is that a person really is defying gravity by hovering in the air by his own power.

If it is next to impossible for us to believe our own senses when our own senses tell us that an intervention in well-confirmed physical law has occurred, then how can it ever be reasonable to believe someone else's account that he or she has witnessed such an intervention?

It cannot be reasonable.

Is it rational to trust in the experiences that others claim to have had, if you have compelling reasons to trust their claims? Absolutely.

What might constitute a "compelling reason" to take the word of a human being -- a human being who is capable of misinterpreting any experience that he has, who is capable of deceiving or of being deceived -- who claims to have witnessed an event that contradicts the experience of virtually every other human being on the planet?

Sincerity of belief is NOT a compelling reason to believe that such a believed claim is true because we all know people who have sincerely believed false claims. We ourselves have believed false claims.

Any human being can be mistaken. Any human being can deceive or be deceived. No human being is infallible. Thus, simply because a person interprets an experience in a certain way can never mean that his interpretation is absolutely infallibly correct.

You have to say yes to that, or else you'll have to dismiss all sorts of facts about the world you take to be 'scientific.'

Not true. Scientific facts agree with the vast bulk of human experience. If they do not, then they are not scientific facts. A scientific fact above all else is commonsense. A scientific fact takes human observations and interprets them as simply and as coherently as is possible.

Take quantum mechanics, for example. As difficult as it is to imagine that quantum mechanics is an accurate representation of reality, the plain fact of the matter is that that theory agrees with human observation more than any other theory that man has yet to devise. If at some point in the future we make observations that contradict quantum mechanics then the theory will either be altered to take into account those new observations or it will be abandoned altogether.

This is because once a scientific 'fact' (or theory) is disconfirmed by experience it is no longer a scientific fact (or theory) for it has then become falsified.

Thus a 'scientific fact' is the polar opposite of a claim that disputes the bulk of human experience.

I don't doubt you would say yes.

But I don't say 'yes.'

It is only irrational to accept 'deviations' if you don't have compelling reasons to do so.

No, it is irrational every time to believe another person's claim that he has witnessed a person walking on water because there can be no compelling reason to believe that he has witnessed the event that he claims to have witnessed.

It is not rational to reject such claims just because you know "Of course not" that deviations don't happen.

No, it is rational every time to disbelieve another person's claim that he has witnessed a person walking on water because it is about as certain as anything can be certain that the person is mistaken or was duped or hallucinated or is simply lying than it is that he actually witnessed an event that flies in the face of all human experience of the world.

If the person can somehow demonstrate his personal infallibility then the situation changes; otherwise, no -- it's always rational to disbelieve the guy's claim.

If you don't expect all facts of the world to be determined by you yourself, you'll have to be open both to claims of regularities AND deviations.

We each determine for ourselves which facts of the world that we believe. We can choose to believe facts that agree with our own personal experiences and those of the vast bulk of humanity or we can choose to believe facts that we desperately hope are true even if those 'facts' fly in the face of our own personal experiences and those of the vast bulk of humanity.

Especially -- ESPECIALLY! -- should we be skeptical of a belief that we hold based solely on another person's fallible and extraordinarily unusual interpretation of his or her experience when that interpretation just so happens to confirm a preexisting bias of ours.

If you don't expect all facts of the world to be determined by you yourself, you'll have to be open both to claims of regularities AND deviations.

Otherwise, you're begging the question. Sorry, its as simple as that.

This leads me to believe that you don't understand the nature of the claim that I make. I do not claim that the physical laws of the universe are absolutely true. I claim only that we have very good reason to believe that the physical laws of the universe that humans have so far compiled are accurate descriptions of our collective human experience in the universe to date. Thus, we can have no compelling reason to believe that any individual, fallible human's interpretation of his or her own personal experience which contradicts these laws (which, again, themselves represent the epitome of human experience) is correct.