Unjustified Skepticism
The roots of skepticism are well known. Arising from the common Neo-Platonism of the early church (with the allegorical interpretation of
How Many Children in Bethlehem Did Herod Kill?
A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the innocents. Therein, I argued that some of the skepticism about the account was unjustified. One argument I made was that the number of children killed in Bethlehem would likely have been no more than 20. Though obviously an act of great evil, the killing of 20 children would be much less likely to be noticed by historians of the time than the slaughter of thousands as later traditions speculated. In response to the post, Peter Kirby asked a few questions. He has patiently waited my response, continuously delayed by work, family, and the completion of my Acts article . Two of the questions had to do with how the amount of 20 was determined. Others with the omission of the account by Luke and the reliability of the tradition recounted by Macrobius. Peter also mentioned that there were other reasons to doubt the story's historicity beyond just the silence of other sources. I
Comments
Why is it wrong for sceptics to demand evidence that life-giving spirits can exist?
But even if (but he's not) Paul was trying to prove the existence of spirits (or whatever), your comment still seems untenable. It's clearly laced with Platonic thought in its task at accomplishing absolute certainty. However, historical matters aren't capable of reaching this Platonic bar. No matter what the evidence is for something, it is doomed to fail, at least as far as the Platonic dialectic is concerned. Historical evidence, such as the empty tomb or post resurrection appearances, is based on probabilities, not certainties. It is simply bad historiography to dismiss the whole (the cumulative evidence for the resurrection) because the parts (any particular piece of evidence) don’t give historical proof.
Still, we sceptics must not let things like that stop us believing, must we?
Meanwhile , he reveals that he works on the principle that if he is right, then other people must, by definition, be wrong.....
The trouble with Christian Apologists attack on sceptics is that sceptics simply do not recognise the people being attacked. They will think 'He must be talking about somebody else' and just ignore what is being said. It is a waste of time, from a point of view of persuading sceptics that they are wrong. But apologetics is not about reaching out to the lost, but about stopping the saved turning into the lost.
Maany sceptics are willing to admit the existence of black holes, 11 dimensional space, quarks, superstrings and all sorts of things.
Why? Because people make out a case for them that the sceptic finds coherent (rightly or wrongly)
You can see why Christians want Christianity to be exempt from the demand to produce a coherent case for Christianity.
Plantinga for example, claims that God really has created beings with free will that have never chosen evil, yet other Christians say that it is logically impossible for God to create beings with free will that never choose evil.
So much for consistency....
The fact that there are some Christians who may say that it is logically impossible for God to create beings with free will that never choose evil (I have never met any such Christian, but I will take your word that they exist) does not somehow show that Christian thought is incoherent. If disagreement on some matters means that the basis ideas are incoherent, then you may as well admit right now that the claim that life arose on earth naturalistically is incoherenet because there is a great deal of disagreement on how it could possibly have happened.
And with God's foreknowledge, he knows in advance that they will never choose evil.
Naturalism does not suffer from the inherent self-contradiction of people who believe both that their senses are reliable and that their senses might well be under constant attack by evil demons.
Only a foundation of naturalism removes the possibility of a deceiving creator who has hoodwinked Christians for his own malicious amusement.
As far as your effort to take the Des Cartes approach, I suggest you consider how Occam's Razor may affect that logic.
http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2005/01/rene-descartes-and-bible-centered-mind.html
He is, of course, begging the question of whether demons are affecting his reasoning. His worldview is clear - demons exist which attack his reasoning and sense.
Why then should we believe somebody who cannot even show that his reasoning is correct?
BK supposedly refutes me by giving a link which says 'I also think Descartes is wrong because by positing a evil, malignant demon, he is violating Occam's Razor.'
Positing the existence of Satan is not a Christian thing to do? What nonsense is this?
As for BK's claim that Craig has shown that God can create beings with free will that never choose evil, his inability to give a link to where Craig says that God can create beings with free will that have never chosen evil is telling.
Certainly that would be an evil.
But how does CA know that God does not allow evil?
Can CA say that God allows some evils , but not others?
Why would God allow a Holocaust, but not demon-possession?
As far as pure logic and the reliability of the mind, both sides acknowledge the reality of irrationality (particularly when you get to bio-psych evaluations of insanity, misperception, & kin). Both sides have to acknowledge that the mind can be led astray; both sides still have to trust the basic reliability of the mind in general.
The two cents that I'd throw in are:
1) God certainly tolerates evil. Let's go ahead and make the Holocaust and the latest natural disasters show for the small potatoes that they are: everybody dies. Not just 6 million Jews, but 6 billion of everybody that are drawing breath at the moment, plus forefathers and descendants while we're on the subject. Why isn't that a problem for trusting that God is good? Because God raises the dead. (Logical next next move: judgment day. I've responded before about the supposed unfairness of heaven.)
2) As far as the "which religion shuffle", I'd invite anybody to lay the founding documents of the major players side by side and make up their own minds. Lots of worthwhile "wisdom" insights from most of the major players, but only one who healed the sick, raised the dead, and rose from the dead.