Mikey,
Things have not panned out this weekend like I hoped and my reply to you on this thread will be delayed yet again. additionally, Dan went the direction I was headed (albeit with slighty different arguments) so much of my next post would have been repetious anyway. The sum total of this circumstance is that I will be replying with something different in the coming days. Sorry for *more* delay. You have been endlessly patient; one day I hope to reward it with a philosophically brilliant argument.
In the mean time, I want to quickly make some corrections, or clarifications as it were (regarding your post titled "the cake is a lie"):
#1 - This is the Scotsman fallacy to which I referred in my title. You are defining a term to such a degree that nothing will qualify (premise: miracles MUST violate the law of nature; observation: this miracle has a logical, natural explanation, however unlikely the condition is; conclusion: this miracle is not a miracle), thus the entire argument is moot. There is no evidence to suggest that miracles WILL violate the law of nature, only an assumption that they must. Thus, your premise is wrong, therefore your conclusion will be flawed, but you will hold to the premise nonetheless. Nothing that anyone could offer for consideration could ever meet your standards (since there is nothing to suggest that a miracle MUST violate nature, likely no miralce WILL violate nature) and therefore we have no ground to gain, in either direction, with this line of argumentation.
#2 - The arguments regarding death row as an aside, I am not making an appeal to popularity here; you are correct that if something is true it is true no matter how many people believe it or not. That said, it wouldn't matter if a million people said you had no cake in the box; if 2 people saw you do it and could testify that there was cake in the box, all the people in the world couldn't make such a thing untrue by not believing it. There is simply cake in the box and someone besides you said there is. Now whether or not people want to believe your eyewitnesses is a different story, and clearly this is where we are reaching our impasse. But as you explained to Dan, you would take the eyewitness testimony if it were on your behalf and meant the difference in your freedom (as I suspect we all would) but would argue the eyewitness testimony if it were against your case. In either situation, the more people there are who can testify of a truth, the higher the likelihood is that whatever thing they are testifying of is true so far as others are concerned. Really the more pertinent question is: what is the credibility of the witnesses? What is the crediblity of the source? These are the things that bear discussion, not the value of eyewitnesses themselves. But that is another post and another direction entirely, one that I intend to take up at some point in the future.
#3 - As for the Bible as a credible piece of historical literature, you have hashed this out with Dan fairly well. I hope to readdress your arguments within my own post, as I think there are a couple places that are being overlooked and/or over-generalized regarding the Bible and its credibility. Also (and I know we have tried to keep this religion-nuetral but I see no way around it - Christianity is what I know best as well and it's beginning to look like we'll have no alternative but to discuss it in more detail) much of my upcoming argument will rely on Christian works and authors as evidence (read: not proof) for the divinity of Christ and thus the existence of God (if we can prove Christ is who he said he was, it follows that God exists - there's my coming argument in a nutshell). Thus much of what I have to say parallels what you and Dan have discussed and will therefore be somewhat repetitious. But we'll see where we end up when we get there. My only point within this context is that the bible has more credibilty than you appear to be giving it credit for - even in light of certain discrepancies.
Nice work on your recent posts, btw. You have been holding out on me; I had no idea you were so well versed in Christianity.
This has already gone on too long. Good night.
Cory
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