03-07-2018, 05:17 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-07-2018, 05:19 PM by jaybreak.
Edit Reason: clarity
)
Ed - With your comments and Iain's, it reminded me of some fallacy of reasoning. I don't remember the name of it, or if it even has a formal name. Skeptics presume that if you can demonstrate that a religious belief system was synthesized from the belief systems of (usually) geographically surrounding cultures, that somehow "explains" the synthesized belief system in material terms. And being able to explain it in that way, it's presumed, is a way to defeat the metaphysical aspect of it. So the underlying assumption is that if material causes can explain how something came about, there can be no metaphysical cause.
I (and I assume, all of us here) don't see it that way. Material causes don't exclude metaphysical causes. Just about everything can be explained materially; the presumption that it defeats supernatural causes remains just that: a presumption. That someone can prove Christianity is a melting pot of other religions only acts as "further proof" to other skeptics, who have already rejected the idea of a God a priori (and to nominal Christians who hold a cultural belief in Christianity, who would take such a proof as acceptable).
Ed - you mentioned in a blog post before that prophecies always leave a aspect of deniability to non-believers. I feel like that idea is along these lines as well: the prophecies makes sense to us as believers because we already believe in the first place. The prophecies aren't convincing enough to non-believers if they can trace it to material causes.
I (and I assume, all of us here) don't see it that way. Material causes don't exclude metaphysical causes. Just about everything can be explained materially; the presumption that it defeats supernatural causes remains just that: a presumption. That someone can prove Christianity is a melting pot of other religions only acts as "further proof" to other skeptics, who have already rejected the idea of a God a priori (and to nominal Christians who hold a cultural belief in Christianity, who would take such a proof as acceptable).
Ed - you mentioned in a blog post before that prophecies always leave a aspect of deniability to non-believers. I feel like that idea is along these lines as well: the prophecies makes sense to us as believers because we already believe in the first place. The prophecies aren't convincing enough to non-believers if they can trace it to material causes.