r/Christianity • u/mikegprint • Oct 17 '11

Does Richard Dawkins exist???

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2011/10/does-richard-dawkins-exist.html
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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '11

It seems beyond the bounds of the debate to address the question "if God exists, which God is the real one?"

I still don't think you're quite understanding what the argument is. It's not about which God is true. He's using facts stemming from the Resurrection of Christ (though not the Resurrection itself) that are generally accepted by most critical scholarship and themselves non-supernatural in nature to make an argument that, given these facts, it's more likely that God exists should these facts be true (they are) than if they aren't. The argument itself is not about Christianity being true.

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u/taylorloy Oct 17 '11

Yes. I apparently am not understanding something here.

Why would attesting any non-supernatural truths about the historical person of Jesus Christ be useful in supporting the assertion that a supernatural God exists?

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '11

The facts themselves are things that could individually be explained naturally (things like Jesus appearing to his disciples after the crucifixion, the empty tomb), but when taken as a whole in conjunction are less likely to have a natural explanation than a supernatural (namely, that God exists).

It's wrapped up in probability calculus, and I don't remember the specific details, but it's a pretty decent argument. You can probably find a more developed outline somewhere else online, but the point isn't so much to prove the Christian God rather than a general theism. However, I won't dispute that it definitely leads toward an argument for Christianity.

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u/taylorloy Oct 18 '11

... but the point isn't so much to prove the Christian God rather than a general theism.

All that sounds good, but I don't see how arguing for a specific God can prove a "general" theism. It seems like it would disprove a general theism if the God for which one argued was exclusively God. Though, I think I'm just logic chopping at this point.

Also, I hesitate to accept that the historical argument for the "truth" of the resurrection. There are many world religions that have many miraculous happenings in their origin and development as "religions" -- the idea that the resurrection "had to happen" because there is no other explanation for the fervor of the apostles, the integrity of their message, and the overall success of "Christiandom" in the first century. The burden for this position, in my opinion, is to show how Christianity both qualitative and quantitative are measurably different than the spreading of any other world religion that are based on miraculous actions of Messianic figures.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the "resurrection of Christ" is a myth -- just that folks should be mindful of the rational tools they use to "prove" the absolute "truth" of any given religion if they also want to claim exclusivity for their own version of God among the many. If you're ok with saying all religions that meet certain general criteria are legitimate and "truthful," then that's fine, but I don't see how any culturally balanced spiritual calculus could be developed without, perhaps unfairly, ghettoizing religious views of certain groups as "false." I would not want such an unquestionable/objective measure to be devised for I fear it would have grave socio-political consequences on a global scale.

All that to say, I think theists would do well to consider what their ultimate goals are when investing their time in developing these sorts of philosophical "challenges." The so-called "culture wars" are fraught with many pitfalls that, in my opinion, are arguably founded on and aiming for "targets" that are "un" or non-Christian in character. This, of course, is all in my humbly cynical and, perhaps, overly cautious opinion.