Know your Hume: Amazing Claims require Amazing Evidence

[hensatri]

Which is more likely, that the Laws of Nature should be suspended, or that a person should tell a lie or be mistaken?

Doesn't that just about do it for the miraculous claims in the Bible? It doesn't seem like it at first, but really consider the message:

We know that young women caught in a shameful circumstance can lie. We have an uncountable number of examples of this, well document, personal, anecdotal, going back through human history. There are no verified cases of virgin birth. Which is more likely?

We know that followers of cult leaders will often embellish stories about their messiah after their death, leading to amazing claims. We have countless examples of this. We have no examples of men preforming supernatural miracles. Which is more likely?

We know that people are willing to persecuted and killed for things they believe to be true, but that we later know to be false. There are numerous examples. We have no examples of a man rising from the dead and appearing to masses of peasant. Which is more likely?

We have an entire history and libraries of examples of other cults, movements, and religions which make the exact same claims as Christianity, but which we all understand to be pure fantasy and mythology. What we don't have is a single example of one of these religions' supernatural claims being verified as true.

Which is more likely?

[Senor Hoint]

Which is more likely, that the Laws of Nature should be suspended, or that a person should tell a lie or be mistaken?

We all know people are never wrong!

[Questatement]

These are simply leading questions and don't amount to a hill of beans.

For instance, if I were to ask why Juluis Africanus (221AD), quoting from what is presumed to be the lost writings of Thallus (52AD), attempts to dispute the miraculous darkness, earthquake, etc. at the time of Jesus' death with...

"On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun." (Julius Africanus, Chronography, 18:1)

Yet, when retracing astronomical movements, no eclipses were possible at the time described...

Which is more likely, that an unbeliever/non Christian (Thallus) living at the time was eye witness to these miracles or that Juluis felt the need to refute a non existent historically document not written by Thallus?

[Jack]

An explanation for the writings of Thallus and Julius Africanus...Thallus: an Analysis

[Questatement]

An explanation for the writings of Thallus and Julius Africanus...Thallus: an Analysis

My point was that anything can be made to sound correct if the question is properly framed to give the one answering no other logical options. I could have just as easily done a treatise on why the early Christian martyrs were distinct from all other know martyr groups throughout history (which I have done here in the past) in response to hensatri's...

"We know that people are willing to persecuted and killed for things they believe to be true, but that we later know to be false."

... but the way it is worded is nothing more than a leading question.

[finder]

We know that people are willing to persecuted and killed for things they believe to be true, but that we later know to be false. There are numerous examples. We have no examples of a man rising from the dead and appearing to masses of peasant. Which is more likely?

We do, Christ was raised from the dead. We have his disciples, the majority of whom met premature, suffering and death. If they knew Jesus was a fake because they pulled off some elaborate hoax to promote Christ they would not have allowed it to cause their martyrdom. Just because you don't believe doesn't mean you know.

[Questatement]

An explanation for the writings of Thallus and Julius Africanus...Thallus: an Analysis

And if you were so interested in a rebuttal to Carrier - Thallus by Two

Also, I have been to a atheist church meeting pastored by Carrier and found his refusal to respond to any of my questions, during question-answer time mind you, disingenuous.

[hensatri]

We do, Christ was raised from the dead. We have his disciples, the majority of whom met premature, suffering and death. If they knew Jesus was a fake because they pulled off some elaborate hoax to promote Christ they would not have allowed it to cause their martyrdom. Just because you don't believe doesn't mean you know.

We have numerous claims that a man rose from the dead that are either never substantiated or definitively disproven. All such examples are mythical or fraudulent. What we don't have is any example of a man rising from the dead that stood up under examination.
Which is more likely?

Oh and no, in fact we do not ave an example in Jesus. Any direct evidence has long since perished to the sands of time, there were no detailed medical records of the event kept, and the only surviving accounts are second and third hand stories written down a quarter of a century or more after the evenT and codified in a heavily editorialized book assembled for explicitly stated propagandistic purposes.

We have mythologized stories about stories about the example.

[LetThereBe]

It isn't a question of the laws of nature being suspended, but rather if a being exists with such capabilities.

For example, I could ask you what the odds are that this box will suddenly lift off of the ground, accelerate, then smack into the wall.
Well, the odds of that happening without intervention are basically zero. The odds of me, a conscious being with the ability to exert a sufficient force, doing so are relatively high.

[Thanatos]

Any argument in the form of "come on, people aren't THAT stupid" is very, very weak.

I must say that even if anybody voluntarily martyred themselves, people martyr themselves over much stupider things in modern times. They will drink your Kool-Aide, they will shoot at the ATF agents, etc etc.

[Yarn]

Hume also said we can't really know anything because for all we know the world was created 5 seconds ago and that therefore all of the experiences that we use in order to predict the future and determine how things work are useless because they could just be implanted memories.

The idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is merely intuitive. At the end of the day, radical skepticism demolishes the idea that we can know anything at all.

[theophilus]

Which is more likely, that the Laws of Nature should be suspended, or that a person should tell a lie or be mistaken?

If someone buys a lottery ticket, which is more likely, that he will win the jackpot or that he will simply be wasting his money? I think everyone would agree that it is much more likely he is wasting his money, but we know that some people do win jackpots. Unlikely events do take place.