If you can't figure out what's wrong with #2, you are not thinking or engaging in good faith.
— Lionino

You should state what's wrong with it. — Hallucinogen

(2) If some observation corresponds to some Bible-specific proposition, then it is evidence that Christianity is true. — Hallucinogen

:roll: Well, this is like saying

'If some observation corresponds to some Star Wars-specific proposition, then it is evidence that Jediism is true.'

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/903808

Many people have had experiences of visiting Heaven or Hell, or seeing an angel during prayer. Others still, see visions of Christian-specific events or symbols. This is an argument that proceeds on this basis, that they serve as evidence for Christianity. — Hallucinogen

Too subjective, you need some objective way to verify that the experience is veridical.

If some observation corresponds to some Star Wars-specific proposition, then it is evidence that Jediism is true. — 180 Proof

Do you think there is something wrong with that?

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Sure, I agree. That's a good point, but one @180 Proof didn't make. There were a number of things that @180 Proof could have meant, I was just wondering which one it was. I respond to 180's posts quite a lot because his style is ambiguous, and when people miss his point, he invariably blames the reader, something no good writer should ever do. And 180 is a very good writer some of the time.

:up: :up:

Too subjective, you need some objective way to verify that the experience is veridical. — Sam26

This would be the fact that many people have them, along with a logical model (theology) that provides rational support for any given claim.

Well, this is like saying

'If some observation corresponds to some Star Wars-specific proposition, then it is evidence that Jediism is true.' — 180 Proof

I don't see a problem with this. If we observed midichlorions, it would indicate Jediism is true.

The Bible says the Sun sets on the West. We see the sun sets on the West. Is that evidence of Christianity? Of course not. — Lionino

This isn't a response to what bert1 was responding to, though.

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The fact that you and 180proof are on the same side doesn't mean your reply to bert1 addresses bert1's reply to 180proof.

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You are aware, I suspect, that as far as Islam in concerned, Christianity is false, right? Jesus is not god and and the Crucifixion story is a myth. So an Islamic person who has the experience of Allah and Mohammad is confirming his/her belief that Christianity is not the true religion. That is certainly what Muslims I have met have told me. Conversely, the Christian vison confirms that Islam is not true and Jesus is God. How do you resolve this psycho-cultural conundrum? — Tom Storm

The existence of doctrinal differences does not mean that other religions are wholesale "false". There are also doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants, or even between Lutherans and Calvinists. Does a Lutheran consider Calvinism wholesale "false"? I don't think so.

Especially concerning Christology and Mariology, the Chalcedonian view has never been the only alternative in existence. Is Mary the theodokos ("mother of God") as the Chalcedonians want it or the christodokos ("mother of Christ") as the Nestorians insist? Are the religious persecutions over this by the Byzantine empire going to recommence again in all earnest? The number of people that were hunted down and put to death by the Byzantine secret police over just this doctrinal difference, is astonishing. Islam is compatible with the Ebionite-Nestorian Christology and Mariology. It was definitely not new.

In my opinion, people just have to learn to agree to disagree concerning doctrinal differences.

(3) If praying induces experiences for a biological reason, then prayer-induced experiences are not observations of reality but hallucinations.

I don't get this one. When I look outside my house I experience seeing my car for "biological reasons," but this doesn't undermine my claim that my car is "really there." Presumably when God makes people have visions God would interact with their biology (barring some sort of dualism, but the Bible doesn't lean in this direction).

It is comical that God intentionally bothers to mysteriously appear to random people at random times and yet stays quiet when a little Nepali child is being ripped to shreds by a Bengali tiger. Curing children from cancer is somehow a violation of free will, but turning a little lump of blood into liquid like in the "miracle" of Saint January doesn't violate free will at all, does it?

If cancer and tigers didn't exist couldn't you still make this same argument? What ratio of ills would need to be eliminated from the world to make it "good enough?"

Anyhow, I am not sure what life looks like without suffering, what natural selection looks like without disease or negative mutations, or what the evolution of Earth looks like without earthquakes, volcanoes, or floods.

At any rate, I'm not sure if the disappearance of tiger attacks and cancer from the world would constitute good evidence for God. If they did, would a 50% reduction in cancer rates work as well? Only 10%? Providence seems to have taken care of the tigers since are tending towards extinction in the wild.

If we observed midichlorions, it would indicate Jediism is true. — Hallucinogen

:roll: These are not the droids you are looking for.

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Did we not have free will in the Garden of Eden?

I've always found it interesting that in the past, when life was a great deal more violent, brutish, and short when compared to prevailing conditions today in much of the world, and where slavery, hunger, and disease were endemic, this—not the question of suffering—was the big question that kept people up at night.

The problem of prominent early views like that of Origen of Alexandria is that, if man can fall away from the divine once (resulting in a "fall into materiality"), then it can presumably happen again. But then how can there be any final beatific return, apokatastasis, the accomplishment of exitus and reditus in salvation history? Won't people always just turn away again eventually?

The problem of the Fall and prelapsarian sin is: how can anyone truly "freely" choose evil? Wouldn't choosing evil imply either ignorance of the fact that it is evil or else "weakness of will/incontinence?" There is no rational reason to choose the worse over the better. Therefore, if someone chooses it they are either unable to choose the Good, mistake the worse for the better, or else their actions are arbitrary and determined by no rationality at all. And this would seem to imply that the Fall must be explained in terms of some sort of fundemental weakness of will or ignorance, in which case the question is "why was this imperfection included?"

This was still a live issue when St. Anselm was writing De Casu Diaboli, which focuses on how Satan and his demons could fall (essentially the same question). In that work, the student asks the teacher what benefit the angles who stayed loyal to God gain. He replies: “I do not know what it was. But whatever it was, it suffices to know that it was something toward which they could grow and which they did not receive when they were created, so that they might attain it by their own merit." The idea here is that a higher good (and for man full conformity to the image of God) requires a sort of self-transcedence and not merely the fulfillment of what is desired by nature. Thus, while Plato differentiates between relative and absolute good, Anselm looks to the good we are drawn to by nature and the super abundant good sought only in the transcendence of our nature.

The "man fell at creation," of St. Maximus makes more sense in this light. A created being, a "moving image of eternity," cannot transcend itself in a fixed moment.

Here it's worth noting that what Eve and Adam are tempted by originally is the promise to "become like God," which is itself the promise offered up by Christ: illumination, theosis, union, and deification.

I think this is an interesting solution/analysis of the problem at the least.

Anyhow, many of the Church Fathers looked at Adam as "all of mankind," (e.g., St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus, etc.). A simple reading of a man eating a piece of fruit and then being punished does bring up many issues, but then "the Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing" (John 6:63) The Patristics weren't so much opposed to "fleshly" literal readings as "false," as much as they think they miss the point. The material itself is but a sign of its cause and so of the higher reality. Likewise, they tended to think of salvation in corporate terms, whereas today it is almost always framed in anglophone contexts as primarily about the individual (Calvin vs Arminias just assumed this must be true).

Then in De Concordia, Anselm gives us the idea of perfected freedom as the soul "willing to will what God wills for it to will." This is a conception of freedom as only recognized interpersonally long before Hegel, and I think there is a sense in which Anselm's version includes as well "the free will willing itself," of Hegel in that the free will wills its own freedom to acquiesce to God (beyond natural desire) as its own content (and this can be taken at both the individual level and at the level of Global spirit).

At the very least, I don't think such a view is straightforwardly contradicted by suffering. Modern views tend to flatten out the role of man. But if the Church is truly the immanent "body of God" in history, man is (eventually) supposed to be relevant in his own right, mankind a finite moving image of infinite eternity, continually transcending its own finitude (St. Gregory). I.e., John 15:15 "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."

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Is this much suffering really needed for self-transcendence?

I don't know. The same sort of question would seem to crop up elsewhere. How absurd does the world need to be for us to become existentialist overcomers? How meaningless does it need to be for us to become self-generating overmen?

My inclination would be to say it requires the maximal absurdity and meaninglessness that still allows one to overcome.

Though this might work as the basis of a useful fiction to solve the above trouble for Christian eschatology, is self-transcedence permanent? Can't one fall back into imperfection?

On most theologians views, no, definitely not. Because the goal is deification and once deification has occured the will is not corruptible. As St. Augustine puts it, the soul facing the beatific vision has become fully free and is thus incapable of sin. Sin requires some sort of deficit. The question then is explaining this initial deficit.

At the same time, given apokatastasis is not orthodox, I don't give it much merit.

Well, universalism was at its most popular in the first five centuries of the church, and was most popular where people were more literate and could read the Bible in their native language. Several Church Fathers affirm it or heavily imply it.

It was not the majority opinion, which was annihilationism, the destruction of unrepentant souls. Infernalism, the belief that the "second death," in Revelation actually means "eternal life, just really unpleasant" is virtually absent from the earliest centuries and only gains ground later. Straightforwardly universalist phrases are everywhere in the New Testament, in all four Gospels, in almost all of St. Paul's letters, in St. John, and in St. Peter. Annihilationst language is also common, but less so. Infernalism has Matthew 25:46 and that's about it.

Universalists don't deny Hell of course, just that it is everlasting and purely punitive instead of corrective. Early views had essentially all souls headed for purgation (generally justified using the same Scripture used to justify Purgatory today).

I'm not sure exactly what is "orthodox" here. The Eastern and Oriental view of Hell differs dramatically, and you can find Oriental sources proclaiming apokatastasis as matter of fact well into the Middle Ages.

Plus, Catholic theologians dance around this issue quite often. Just off the top of my head, Von Balthasar, Pope Benedict (hardly a radical), Thomas Merton, and Pope Francis. They never decidedly go this way, but they leave the door open for "hope" as Von Balthasar puts it.

All of your premises are wrong except for number 1. — Lionino

And even if they were right, the conclusion does not obviously follow - indeed, it is very unclear what the structure of the argument is.

SO I supose one question is, can such an argument be constructed?

In general today we understand evidence as scientific evidence. Scientific evidence depends entirely on repetition in controlled environments where particular experiences composed of beliefs, desires, motivations and various subjective phenomena are neutralized.

Subjective experiences and scientific evidence are not the same thing. In subjective experience that which validates a belief does not escape the particular subjective experience. In scientific evidence that which validates theory necessarily escapes particular subjective experience. At least scientific evidence is intersubjective. And to say "intersubjective" is an understatement.

When we compare both types of validation we realize how poor is the validation of beliefs on the religious plane, since their "evidence" is nothing more than testimonies and inscrutable subjective experiences.

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The Catholic Church also declared giving the Blood to the laity—utriquism—anathema and launched a crusade over it in Bohemia. And yet now Catholics take the blood at Mass every week. Which is orthodox?

Alright. Don't Mormons too believe they will become godlike themselves — leaving aside the whole planet thing?

I believe so, but I am not super familiar with Mormonism. In some ways this seems more like a return to traditional orthodoxy than the flight from tradition that some Protestants make it out to be. Theosis is a Catholic and Orthodox doctrine and is front and center in parts of the Catholic catechism. Certainly the Orthodox put a greater focus on deification, but it is core Catholic doctrine too.

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There is a phenomenon referred to as Christianity.

Are you saying anything else other than this? I cannot see that you are.

The problem of the Fall and prelapsarian sin is: how can anyone truly "freely" choose evil? Wouldn't choosing evil imply either ignorance of the fact that it is evil or else "weakness of will/incontinence?" There is no rational reason to choose the worse over the better. Therefore, if someone chooses it they are either unable to choose the Good, mistake the worse for the better, or else their actions are arbitrary and determined by no rationality at all. And this would seem to imply that the Fall must be explained in terms of some sort of fundemental weakness of will or ignorance, in which case the question is "why was this imperfection included?"

This reminds me of the biblical idea of God hardening hearts. But yes, man can willingly and deliberately choose the worse over the better. And a choice may not be rational but that doesn't necessarily make it arbitrary. I'm reminded of the Doesyoevsky quote that men are not piano keys, but I don't want to romanticize man's capacity for these types of destructive choices. Man can lose sight of himself/his place in this world/his role in this world. Sever man's divine understanding and see what fills its place.

You said address what bert1 was responding to (180proof's post), not bert1's reply to 180proof. — Lionino

Yes, your comment would have to support what 180proof was arguing, for it to be an effective reply to bert1. Like I said, agreeing with 180proof isn't enough for this. What I'm trying to draw your attention to is that the comments by 180proof and bert1 copied the pattern of argument I presented, while yours deviated from it. So it failed to either support what 180proof was saying or to address my side of the argument.

Anyhow, not only that but bert1 himself said he agreed, not just 180proof. — Lionino

This doesn't mean that what you said addresses the argument, even though theirs did. Simply agreeing with them doesn't add up to that.

And it is not like what I said has any room for disagreement, it is something obvious. — Lionino

You could point out a wide range of obvious things that don't address the argument.

There is a phenomenon referred to as Christianity.
Are you saying anything else other than this? — I like sushi

I can't answer that question without knowing how broadly you mean "phenomenon".
The argument discerns between observations and hallucinations, and concludes there is evidence for Christianity consisting of the former.