AGC said:
I would just point out that you work backwards from a conclusion, rather than inquiry which you often claim as the principled agnostic. It's not just the claims themselves, but the overt antagonism of people who lived long ago being too stupid (or ignorant) to know better. How would you actually know they were invented, without assuming it? There are so many as you often note, and you can't vet the supernatural if it exists outside the natural.
There's irony in this thread, that the atheists are derisive towards God for not being a genie (psychopath for letting kids get raped), and towards ignorant humans who treat him like one (humanity invented religion).
And of course, we have you comparing mythology between deities with a man among people. Are you asserting that Judeans didn't witness Jesus? Or write the gospels? Of course you are to do such a thing. We have more sources and documentation for one than the other. So why the false equivalence?
And what is my conclusion? Am I intellectually dishonest when I say that 'I don't know'? Now, I have said that I don't understand how anyone can evaluate miracles in an sort of rational and consistent way to conclude that only certain miracles 'count'. My opinion is that to believe in the sort of modern day 'miracles' like healings requires one to have a specific pre-existing belief in the interaction between the supernatural and natural. I have not stated that miracles are impossible or that my worldview excludes the possibility of miracles, however, my threshold for belief is higher in an effort toward consistency. If I believed that every unexplained event was a miracle, then I'd be left believing every miracle claim from every religion. Surely, there must be a better way of evaluating miracles than ". . . . well, this one confirms my pre-existing bias, so I'll believe this one." I'm still waiting to be told how to do this. Like the bolded sentence above says, you can't vet the supernatural. This is a pretty massive problem, no?
I never said that people that lived long ago were stupid. However, I would absolutely call them ignorant (relatively). Not as an insult, but as a matter of fact and through acknowledgment that the dictionary definition of the word absolutely applies. My hope is that in two thousand years, humans look back and think of me as ignorant. . . not as an insult, but as an observation of what little I knew compared to them.
The very first supernatural ideas, gods, spirits, forces, whatever almost certainly were human invention.
As far as being derisive toward God, I think that in the context of this thread you may be conflating my posts with other atheist posters. But, since we are discussing it, are atheists not permitted to disagree with certain interpretations of God that we find problematic? I recognize that there is a polite way and an impolite way to state opinions, but beyond that, I'm not going to ask anyone to apologize if they find something about YOUR interpretation of God to be troubling or morally questionable. Especially since no one can be demonstrated to be actually criticizing God. . . only criticizing one of billions of individual understandings of God, any or all of which are potentially false.
If you meet a Christian who believes that God gives babies cancer because God thinks its funny . . . . are you not permitted to say that you think that is a problematic understanding of God? Are you being derisive toward God because you disagree with someone else's version of God? From their perspective maybe. . . does that mean you shouldn't disagree with a God that thinks baby cancer is funny? Are we all such snowflakes now that we are not permitted to criticize someone else's interpretation of God?
Yes, I am comparing mythological gods with what I feel is the mythology of Jesus. . . In the context of evidence for miracles.
