Judah, you said “if the redactors wanted to make Jesus’ deity undeniable” (a while ago, I know) – but that wasn’t what I meant. I don’t believe Erhman (or anyone else?) would claim that those who transcribed and translated the bible INTENDED to alter the text, but rather to “correct errors” of earlier transcriptions (which, may or may not have actually been errors).

As for the implicit theist oxymoron – I’m struggling to put this into coherant words (without simply saying “it just is”), but I’ll give it a shot – perhaps someone might explain it better?.

Knowledge or belief requires some action (i.e. thought), whether it be conscious or otherwise – therefore, this knowledge or belief is explicit (by definition). If, say, you were to argue/suggest that babies are born with knowledge of God, then I presume you would have to claim that God placed this knowledge there? (perhaps there’s another option, but I’m not sure what it would be). This, too, would necessarily be an explicit process. Another suggestion, perhaps, might be that a child has a tendency to see knowledge of God – but a tendency to seek knowledge of God is not theism, however.

Implicit theism would require belief, without being aware of the concept of which one believes (I hope that’s clear!)

Regarding “extrordinary evidence”, perhaps an example from your own belief structure may help. Assume, for a moment, that the biblical accounts of Jesus are accurate. Pretend you live in the time of Jesus, and you hear him say “I am God” (or, “I am X, and God is X”). Would you believe him? Perhaps, like the others who knew him, after seeing him perform miracles, you would. In this case, these “miracles” were things that could have only been performed by God, and were “extraordinary”. If, perhaps, you saw him “change water into wine”, but then later discovered it was a trick, clearly you’d have doubts. This is an example (although I would argue a fictional one) of an extraordinary claim being justified by extraordinary evidence.

Now take another (fictional) example. Let’s say, you hear a story from a guy at the bar about how his wife’s best friend’s dentist once saw not only a UFO, but helped fix the teeth of the tall green man inside. What evidence would you ask for to justify this claim? A book written by the dentist? By the Wife’s best friend? By someone who claims to have seen the dentist working on the alien? I doubt it. I imagine, like me, you’d at least want: 1. the tooth (or, more importantly, a reproducible analysis which showed it to be unlike any other tooth we’d ever seen), and/or 2. video or photographic evidence (and, of course, evidence backing up their authenticity), and/or 3. a multitude of independent witnesses. Without this (extraordinary) evidence, you would dismiss this (extraordinary) claim.

Anyone can write a book. I’m not saying the bible is not a highly significant historical text, but it cannot be the sole justification for some of the extraordinary claims that it makes. Most of it’s just hearsay (where’s the Gospel of Jesus?).

I appreciate the time you’ve taken to comment on my blog – it’s good to have some people around to help me justify what I write. I realise you might not reply to this, but I hope you stick around and offer your 2c every now and then.

Richard.

Regarding my philosophical conclusions “…yours are entirely conditional on your brand of Theism.” I took that we were talking Christianity for granted, since that seems to be the primary form of theism ridiculed on this blog. My conclusion was a response to your insinuation that the only conclusions we could come to about the Creator in the case you outlined would be unfavorable. I was offering a hypothesis where this would not be the case.

Also, you had said: Philosophically, what conclusions can we draw about our “Creator” if his “Creation” intentionally forgets the “Creator’s” existence?”
Your “if” implied we were addressing a situation where this Creator/Creation relationship was the case. Therefore your accusation of Confirmational Bias was unnecessary, I’m well aware you and the majority of the popuation don’t share my belief. I was responding to your statement within the framework allowed by your “if”
This form of accusation is called “Overeagerness to label people you don’t agree with with buzzwords” and is a condition of pretty much anybody who reads Richard Dawkins, and an easily recognized breach of etiquette. Or, we could just be nicer to each other and leave off the buzzwords particular to our respective polemics.

I have considered some of those “alternatives” and a few less outlandish ones, such as atheism before coming to the conclusion I currently hold.

Regarding the gullibility of children, I’m glad we found something to agree on!

I shouldn’t have used the word chaos, “destruction” is the word the bible uses.

You said that the “overwhelming” adult human desire for God’s existence is a sham-well, considering your following statement Popularity is insufficient.- it shouldn’t really make any difference then either way, should it? In which case it’s unnecessary to point out the “significant minority” of atheists in america, or the aftermath of the enlightenment in europe.

Regarding the “meme” – I personally find it puzzling how Dawkins can coin a synonym for “tradition” and be hailed as a genius for it. Plus, his definition is very unmaterialist for a materialist, and his use of the word smacks of propaganda to me. I could just as easily say “Your use of the meme and pretty much all of your other attacks on theism are memes particular to your brand of atheism delusion.”

You said: I fail to see how the Bible (containing numerous deficiencies) is sufficient to support the claim “God Exists”. in case that was a reply to something I said, I don’t really recall saying that the bible is sufficient for that claim, but perhaps you were just making a statement.

It sounds like your definition of “Extraordinary Evidence” includes anything but the bible. That’s very generous of you! I suppose I could quote authorities and studies that agree with my position and offer explanations for the seeming lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus and the rest, but I’m sure you could just as easily look them up in your library if you were interested. I have to say though that a scientifically verified miracle seems an awkward thing, since at least with my understanding of miracles (being hardly repeatable, and harder to repeat in any sort of environment which would lend itself to a good experiment) I think historical/legal evidential support would be a better tool for examination. I could point you to the Resurrection in that case, but I’m sure a widely read guy like you has read Gary Habermas etc. already and remained unconvinced.

There are hundreds of sects of Christianity, the only thing they agree on is a very tiny portion of the Bible centered on Jesus. Three major religions and tens of thousands of sects base their beliefs on the old testament, yet these groups are historically intolerant of each other. I’m not sure what this proves…. I could make the same sort of statements about atheists/agnostics and their core doctrines/disagreements.

Okay, and with that, I am done. I’ll read your response, but I don’t think I’ll write anymore, this is taking too much time I could be spending my wife. Even though it’s been fun.

Thanks.

Rather, the focus should be in testing the hypothesis that a god is active in the modern world. As Dawkins says, a world in which there is a supernatural being intervening at will is going to look a lot different than one where everything happens through natural process. If nature is being changed in some way, that change is observable, and thus scientifically testable.

Now, the evidence so far is that there is no sign of an interfering creator. Prayer does not work. There are no dragons (other than the Komodo).

Even if it was proven that there was a higher power interfering, there would be a long way to go to show that it was the Christian God. I would honestly be more inclined to guess aliens if it were the case that creation was being altered. Either that, or we’re in a computer program.

Simply put, the definition of Theist is one who claims a belief in God. The definition of Atheist is one who lacks Theism. Theism requires a positive claim, a positive statement “I believe in God”. Lacking that positive claim, that belief, a person would be an Atheist. Think of Native Americans before Europeans arrived – They were Atheists with regard to the god of Abraham.

Regarding your philosophical conclusions – Yours are entirely conditional on your brand of Theism. If we were to ask other Christians, we’d just as likely get a challenge to your hypothesis as we would your conclusion. For that matter, (taking the giant leap that your hypothesis has even a tiny shred of the truth within it) we couldn’t make any conclusions as to God’s will. All we have in front of us is that we alledgedly knew and now we don’t know. We can form any range of hypotheses: God doesn’t want us to know about his existence. We’re cosmological lab rats in a maze. We’re like toy guns fashioned by a child. We’re in a zoo. We’re Sims, and the game player thought it would be cute to wipe our minds at birth. The very idea that we’re looking for God’s existence could be displeasing. We might be an experiment, corrupted because we have become cognizant of the test. Since all the stories of God were written by people who had forgotten about God, we’re really just worshiping a concept of our own minds.

That you have made the conclusion you did is called Confirmational Bias. Your mind is closed to any of these possible alternatives. You only see what you want to see. Confirmational Bias is a condition of Religion, and an easily recognized fallacy.

“I could probably convince them that the moon is a big white cracker in the sky. ”

My point exactly. Kids are gullible and can be convinced of anything if they hear it from someone they trust and the explanations are never challenged. Surround a kid with a family that thinks “God Hates Fags” and you have the Westboro Baptist Church. Surround him with Muslims and you’ll have a kid who believes in Allah.

“Plus, the bible says that children left on their own will tend towards chaos, they are meant to be taught truth by their parents, just as they are taught to speak.”

Have you ever watched children play? Chaos isn’t the word – they build elaborate mental constructs to their games. Their imaginations gloss over the physical rules, sure. But within their own systems, there is a lot of order. Even a “chaotic” system like Calvin Ball shows a propensity for order and discipline: Make up a rule and follow it. The older they get, the more elaborate the constructs, leading to team sports, organized or “sandlot”.

The “overwhelming” adult human desire for God’s existence is a sham, as evidenced by the significant minority of Atheism in America, and the ~40% of the European population that claims to be atheist.

An alternative theory to the “god gene” is the concept of the meme, a packet of information that replicates itself when introduced to a new host. Religion is among the oldest of these.

The phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” should be taken as “For a claim to be considered plausible, the evidence must be sufficient to demonstrate that claim” – One would not believe the extraordinary claim “There is a teapot in orbit around pluto” based on the ordinary ‘evidence’ “It says so in this book”.

I fail to see how a the Bible (containing numerous deficiencies) is sufficient to support the claim “God Exists” let alone the elaborate farce of “Christianity” that has been woven from that basic claim.

As an example of those deficiencies, there is no evidence for the Exodus: Anthropologists have located nomadic campsites where 20 people stayed for a few weeks. Yet 3 million people (equivalent to the entire population of Rome at that time) allegedly wandered the desert for 40 years and we can’t find real-world evidence to support this. Don’t even get me started on Genesis.

What evidence would I accept? Anything that could be demonstrated to be valid. The bible is insufficient to meet those claims, and as far as I know, there are NO sources for Christian beliefs that do not rest primarily on the Bible.

Popularity is insufficient. Yes, the ENTIRE population of the planet CAN BE WRONG – it’s happened numerous times before.

A scientifically verified “miracle” might be sufficient.

There are plenty of things I would accept, but I will not accept the Bible as valid. It is too demanding of interpretation. There are hundreds of sects of Christianity, the only thing they agree on is a very tiny portion of the Bible centered on Jesus. Three major religions and tens of thousands of sects base their beliefs on the old testament, yet these groups are historically intolerant of eachother.

In my experience, young children (including my own) have no difficulty in forming a conception of an invisible God, although I personally think this doesn’t prove much. I could probably convince them that the moon is a big white cracker in the sky. Plus, the bible says that children left on their own will tend towards chaos, they are meant to be taught truth by their parents, just as they are taught to speak.

I think the overwhelming adult human desire for some sort of God/creator/higher power, as recognized by attempts to explain it away via alternate theories (e.g., the psychological need for god theories of Freud, or the hypotheses of “god genes” http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7147)
and the persistance of this desire/idea throughout human history is about as close as we’re gonna come to proof for implicit theism for humanity

I would also like an explanation of what you mean by “extraordinary claims”, and how & why they differ from “ordinary claims” by what definition of “ordinary”, and from assumptions derive that definition. Also, an explanation of what you mean by “extraordinary evidence” would be helpful. It sounds a lot like “any evidence other than the evidence we have” which sounds suspiciously like “I’m not gonna believe it no matter what you show me”

And all of this ends up sounding a lot more hostile than I actually feel.

By definition, “implicit theist” is an oxymoron – even if we were to consider your hypothesis as true.

Philosophically, what conclusions can we draw about our “Creator” if his “Creation” intentionally forgets the “Creator’s” existence?

Regardless, IF your hypothesis is true, there is still a period of time where the child possesses no knowledge of even the concept of God. He is an implicit atheist and agnostic.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Feel free to write up your hypothesis as a work of your own mind, but if you wish to pass it off as reality, you’ll either need some real proof, or enough charisma to start your own cult.

We can demonstrate that babies have some concept of number, and can differentiate between 2-3 objects (If I remember 1st year psychology correctly) – so it’s not impossible to find out what an infant “knows”. You just need to come up with the right experiment.

While you, it seems, have a very “advanced” (if that’s the right word) understanding of God , in my experience, children (not infants) seem incapable of really understanding this concept. Given that children struggle with “knowing” God, I think you’d have a very hard time demonstrating that infants are even capable of “knowing” such concepts.