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Either Accept All the Miracles, or Reject Them | Challenge Response
Here’s Alan Shlemon’s response to this week’s challenge: “Christians commit a fallacy when they accept only miracles within their own faith.”
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In my dad's defense, he had a serious brain injury right before he became a Christian.
While I agree with what the video says, I'm disappointed with how it was tackled. Rather than talk about why we shouldn't trust the Quran, I would rather have seen Alan turn the question itself around. Honestly, I really don't get how they came to the conclusion you have to accept all miracles. It just doesn't make sense.
This is a little longer than most of my g+ comments but I wanted to tackle a common mistake. I'm not sure if I'll be able to adequately explain all the problems here but I'll give it my best shot.
I'm not sure what this "logical and hypocritical fallacy" is that the questioner refers to, since it's left unnamed. Perhaps they are thinking of special pleading, since Christians accept certain items as evidence that wouldn't be accepted from other religions, such as ancient documents saying when and where this or that miracle took place. You don't accept the Koran's account of Muhammad flying to heaven on a winged horse but you do accept the Bible's account of the Jonah story or whatever. Anyway I'm not going to worry about whatever fallacy you might be committing, but will instead just attempt to address what you've said in this video.
(quotations are approximate)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YZ-loRHog&t=2m20s "I try to show that the Bible itself as a document is the word of God, is a trustworthy, reliable document, and as such, everything it speaks to will also be true."
The Bible is believed to be an inspired document by Christians, but the details of this supposed 'inspiration' of the text varies from person to person. Not all Christians are biblical literalists or inerrantists. Even if we accept that the Bible is 'inspired' in some vague sense, that doesn't mean we can assume that every sentence in the book is 100% truth. Which version are you referencing anyway? Nevermind that, let's go on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YZ-loRHog&t=2m35s "How do you tell if the Bible is a reliable, historical document from God?"
Good question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YZ-loRHog&t=2m38s "I would see if the Bible speaks to historical persons, places and things and about scientific matters accurately"
Since the Bible is the only source of many of the supposedly historical events recorded therein, how can we know if it speaks of those persons accurately? Take Moses as an example, modern scholarship doesn't consider him to be a historical person; the exodus narrative is not taken seriously by historians. If you're judging the Bible based on its historicity, why don't you deal honestly with the Bible's many failures?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YZ-loRHog&t=2m50s "Does it have characteristics of coming from God… predicting the future… facts of science only known in modern times"
Assuming for the sake of conversation that those are the right things to go looking for to discover whether a book is of divine origin or not, no it doesn't have those things. There are many dubious claims of fulfilled prophecy but none of them necessitate a belief in the involvement of a supernatural entity. If you think the Bible does a good job of predicting the future, by that logic Nostradamus must have also been inspired by God, since his predictions were at least as compelling as those contained within the Bible. And no, ancient Hebrews didn't have advanced knowledge of science and if you think they did, name something. Muslims and Christians make claims like this all the time but they never amount to anything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YZ-loRHog&t=3m18s "The word of God… true in all it says… all the miracles would be true by logical necessity."
This indicates that the speaker equates belief in the Bible as 'inspired' with inerrantism. And 'logical necessity'… really? Sounds like a hell of a stretch but let's keep going.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YZ-loRHog&t=5m15s "If the resurrection is true this validates the teachings of Jesus Christ, his ministry and all the claims he makes."
I'm tempted to let this one slide since you can't do anything to demonstrate that Jesus resurrected from the dead. You can't even demonstrate he existed and there's considerable controversy about that fact. I'll set that aside for a moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YZ-loRHog&t=5m40s Jesus endorses "all scripture" and if Jesus is God then when he endorses the Bible you can know it to be true.
The logic you're employing here goes something like this: Jesus claimed to be God. He predicted his own death and resurrection. He endorsed the truth of 'scripture'. If he resurrected from the dead, it would go a long way to validating his claim of being God, which would also validate everything the Bible claims he said and did.
I'll assume for the sake of conversation that Jesus existed and was one historical person, even though I believe the evidence points to him as more of a conglomeration of the wisdom sayings of various mystics of that time. Here's what actually happened: Jesus lived and died. 40-80 years after his death, stories were written about his life. Those stories included Jesus predicting his own death and resurrection. This alone makes the 'prediction' much less impressive, since it was really a 'post-diction'.
When the Bible authors spoke of Jesus, they mentioned him endorsing 'scripture', but so what? Even if Jesus had existed, historians don't believe he would have been literate, since he lived in a time when a peasant such as a carpenter would have had no need of written language. The stories about Jesus being an authority capable of arguing with the rabbis is present in the text only to try to bolster his claims of divinity.
Several claims are being made here, such as: Jesus exists or existed. God exists. Jesus is the son of God. Jesus claimed to be the son of God. The authors of the Bible accurately represented God, Jesus, including the entire history of the life of Jesus. Christians don't seem to recognize that "Jesus is God" isn't the same statement as "everything written about Jesus in the Bible is historically accurate".
The Bible says Jesus resurrected. It also says he endorsed the Bible… not today's Bible, mind you… whatever version of 'scripture' that would have been available in his day is what he allegedly endorsed.
The video then goes on to judge Islam by a different set of rules than those by which Christianity is judged. Any example of an error in Islam is seen to invalidate the whole thing, where with Christianity, one example of a truth was intended to validate the whole thing. This is not a minor transgression, and is an example of the special pleading fallacy. There is also a hint of fallacy of composition but this comment is already too long so I'll stop there.
I personally do not deny miracle stories of all religions even pagan. That is not my debate , my debate is whether it is from GOD or the evil one. it is easy to deceive , for example even the anti-christ, false prophet perform miracles. But the very fact there are miracles proves a spiritual reality beyond the physical therefore proves a spiritual being whether GOD or the enemy. Secondly not only this but the very fact that i can perform the exact same miracles by the will of GOD as Jesus Christ did therefore through the present i can prove the past records regarding them aka the scriptures. Thirdly sense i can prove the miracles presently giving no doubt to my testimony like (Mark 16:20) , i can therefore impose a challenge to the other religions to show forth there proof. like elijah did who was man just like us. (1 Kings 18)