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> This sort of thing is addressed in the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke 16

IMO that passage only addresses it in so far as to make up an excuse to explain the silence. If even a modest amount of the supernatural claims in the Christian Bible are true then at least one of them should be reliably repeatable. And despite years wasted looking I'm not convinced.




>at least one of them should be reliably repeatable

The entire idea is that a conscious mind is controlling things. The only truly repeatable aspect of a conscious being is their reflexes, and you can't hammer God in the shins. There are no predictions that you can draw from theism, so it can't be falsified or supported. The idea that you should look for ideas that yield predictions, although it is obvious to us now, took thousands of years to develop.


> There are no predictions that you can draw from theism, so it can't be falsified or supported.

Which eliminates any significant benefit besides some placebo effect. Therefore I won't be wasting another second fearing unprovable claims about eternal .


This was the scariest decision I ever made to be honest.


>If even a modest amount of the supernatural claims in the Christian Bible are true then at least one of them should be reliably repeatable

If it were reliably repeatable, it wouldn't be supernatural. That's tautological.


OK, just keep doing different miracles each time. Keep it fresh.


What you're getting at is actually a profound paradox in philosophy of science: the statement "no miracles occur" is itself unfalsifiable, and thus (at least in the Popperian sense) not scientific. It's unfalsifiable because to repeatably falsify it would be tantamount to repeatably producing miracles!

Here's an interesting paper on the subject: https://philpapers.org/archive/FROTNA-2.doc (Greg Frost-Arnold, 2010, "The No‐Miracles Argument for Realism: Inference to an Unacceptable Explanation", Philosophy of Science 77(1))


What an incredible display of navel gazing (the paper you link). I'm well aware that modern science was born from philosophy, but much of what is left in the realm of philosophy seems to me so incredibly useless.

Logic, reason, critical thinking, ethics, these are all valuable things. But anti-realism? I challenge anyone to tell me something useful that has come from the study of "anti-realism".

Not that everything has to be useful. Far be it from me to try to control anyone's hobby. But I, for one, don't want any of my tax dollars to go toward supporting that fruitless pasttime.


It's too early to expect real-world applications of anti-realism. Instead I would redirect your attention to a similar pattern in the foundations of mathematics.

Mathematical foundations were once very shaky, but real-world mathematicians didn't care in practice. Bertrand Russell showed that an early mathematical foundation attempt was inconsistent. At the time, to a working mathematician, this would have been about as airy-fairy as anti-realism seems to us today. A mathematician back then could well and rightly have said: "Proofs, equations, solutions, these are valuable things. But Russell's paradox? I challenge anyone to tell me something useful that has come from the study of Russell's paradox." Indeed, the paradox was actually known to Zermelo before Russell, and Zermelo didn't consider it important enough to make a fuss about!

Now in hindsight, we know that foundational work DID pay off in practical ways. It was a crucial step toward the development of, for example, automated proof verification software like COQ, which has extremely important real-world applications and whose importance will only grow in the future.

Here's my speculation: things like anti-realism are equivalent to Russell's Paradoxes which seem like navel-gazing today. In a hundred years' time, they might have proven to be a crucial step toward formal science verification software. Just like fixing mathematical foundations was a crucial step toward formal mathematical verification software.


> If it were reliably repeatable, it wouldn't be supernatural. That's tautological.

Then let me rephrase, If even a modest amount of the unusual claims in the Bible are true then at least one of them should be reliably repeatable.


What I get is that, at some point, Yahweh (perhaps aka El, consort of Asherah) got tired of believer support, and declared "trust me or burn".

Maybe three thousand years ago, priests invoked aspects of Yahweh in the usual way. Burning incense and lamb's blood in charcoal braziers, chanting, wards for protection, and so on. If you were pure, he'd smite your enemies. If not, your people would suffer.


It's telling just how anthropomorphic every concept of god is, in all of known history. The Christian bible especially so, telling the story of a grumpy and largely ineffectual narcissist with lots of really weird fears and fetishes.


What you’re referring to as “The Christian bible” is roughly 77% the Hebrew Bible (referred to as “the Old Testament” by Christians). There are a lot of stories in the Hebrew Bible about The Lord “choosing” one people and bringing about the destruction of another. It sounds brutal and unjust (which, to me, are intriguing qualities to attribute to God—as opposed to a simplistic, purely benevolent God that a child might believe in) but the stories themselves are wonderfully interesting (e.g. Exodus).

As someone who read the Bible as an atheist, I strongly believe that faith is not required to appreciate, and even be guided by, the Bible. Much in the same way one does not need to believe in orcs to appreciate and learn from Lord of the Rings.


Matthew Stover is just about my favorite fantasy writer. He's arguably best known for the Star Wars prequel novels. But in his second novel, Jericho Dawn, his heroes go up against Yahweh, in defending the Canaanites against the Maccabees.

He characterizes Yahweh as fundamentally unknowable. Too complex, multidimensional, etc, etc. The whole beyond good and evil thing. That's not at all an unusual perspective. But what is unusual is his argument that how Yahweh shows up is determined by what his believers expect him to be.

His Caine series explores similar ideas. But in a far more complex plot. And with much better writing.


Well, it's like reverse anthropomorphism, or whatever you'd call it. We were created in god's image, so most of the stories go, so of course god is anthropo


I have the power to create an entire universe exactly as I want it, so I made one with many humans that worship fictional Gods, which makes me jealous. Then I'm going to fill it up with delicious shellfish and tell them not to eat it.

Reverse anthropomorphism—sounds okay until you realise that even we humans recognise how utterly rubbish we are at most things and strive to be better than our true selves. Our puny minds have recognised countless limitations of our humanity and we struggle to barely rise above them. Whereas these proposed gods suffer all the same pathetic failings while declaring themselves perfect.




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