John Platko wrote: Given the number of religions and varied methodology used to gather "religious evidence" (RE) it's hard to come up with a concise and complete definition. But I'll give it a go:

Element e belongs to the set ALL_RE, which consists of all RE, if e is deemed to be RE by any person claiming or considered to be religious.

Note 1: there are subsets of ALL_RE that specific religious organizations(RO), religious groups(RG), and religious individuals(RI) hold to be RE for their organization, group, etc. It's important not to conflate subsets of ALL_RE with the set ALL_RE.

Note 2: Specific RO, RG and RI have their own requirements and processes for determining what element(s) of ALL_RE are included in set IM_RIGHTi (where i is the organization, group, or individual specifier), and where set IM_RIGHTi is the subset of ALL_RE determined (by the required processes of ROi, RGi, or RIi) to be valid RE for that RO, RG, or RI.

'History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom' by Andrew White, 1895
CHAPTER XIII.
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.

We have within the modern period very many examples which enable us to study the evolution of legendary miracles. Out of these I will select but one, which is chosen because it is the life of one of the most noble and devoted men in the history of humanity, one whose biography is before the world with its most minute details—in his own letters, in the letters of his associates, in contemporary histories, and in a multitude of biographies: this man is St. Francis Xavier. From these sources I draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of Protestant origin; every source from which I shall draw is Catholic and Roman, and published under the sanction of the Church.

During his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of letters, which were preserved and have since been published; and these, with the letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly all the features of his life. His own writings are very minute, and enable us to follow him fully. No account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own letters or in any contemporary document.

.............................

Nor do the letters of his associates show knowledge of any miracles wrought by him. His brother missionaries, who were in constant and loyal fellowship with him, make no allusions to them in their communications with each other or with their brethren in Europe.

............

.....to Xavier no miracles are imputed by his associates during his life or during several years after his death.

.................

Until about ten years after Xavier's death, then, as Emanuel Acosta's publication shows, the letters of the missionaries continued without any indication of miracles performed by the saint. Though, as we shall see presently, abundant legends had already begun to grow elsewhere, not one word regarding these miracles came as yet from the country which, according to later accounts accepted and sanctioned by the Church, was at this very period filled with miracles; not the slightest indication of them from the men who were supposed to be in the very thick of these miraculous manifestations.

............................

Nothing shows better than the sequel how completely the evolution of miraculous accounts depends upon the intellectual atmosphere of any land and time, and how independent it is of fact.

For, shortly after Xavier's heroic and beautiful death in 1552, stories of miracles wrought by him began to appear. At first they were few and feeble; and two years later Melchior Nunez, Provincial of the Jesuits in the Portuguese dominions, with all the means at his command, and a correspondence extending throughout Eastern Asia, had been able to hear of but three. These were entirely from hearsay.

....little by little the stories grew, and in 1555 De Quadros, Provincial of the Jesuits in Ethiopia, had heard of nine miracles, and asserted that Xavier had healed the sick and cast out devils.

......

But the letters of the missionaries who had been co-workers or immediate successors of Xavier in his Eastern field were still silent as regards any miracles by him, and they remained silent for nearly ten years. In the collection of letters published by Emanuel Acosta and others no hint at any miracles by him is given, until at last, in 1562, fully ten years after Xavier's death, the first faint beginnings of these legends appear in them.

..........................

At that time the Jesuit Almeida, writing at great length to the brethren, stated that he had found a pious woman who believed that a book left behind by Xavier had healed sick folk when it was laid upon them, and that he had met an old man who preserved a whip left by the saint which, when properly applied to the sick, had been found good both for their bodies and their souls. From these and other small beginnings grew, always luxuriant and sometimes beautiful, the vast mass of legends which we shall see hereafter.

This growth was affectionately garnered by the more zealous and less critical brethren in Europe until it had become enormous; but it appears to have been thought of little value by those best able to judge.

For when, in 1562, Julius Gabriel Eugubinus delivered a solemn oration on the condition and glory of the Church, before the papal legates and other fathers assembled at the Council of Trent, while he alluded to a multitude of things showing the Divine favour, there was not the remotest allusion to the vast multitude of miracles which, according to the legends, had been so profusely lavished on the faithful during many years, and which, if they had actually occurred, formed an argument of prodigious value in behalf of the special claims of the Church.

....

We have the letters of Julius Gabriel to the foremost of these fathers assembled at Trent, from 1557 onward for a considerable time, and we have also a multitude of letters written from the Council by bishops, cardinals, and even by the Pope himself, discussing all sorts of Church affairs, and in not one of these is there evidence of the remotest suspicion that any of these reports, which they must have heard, regarding Xavier's miracles, were worthy of mention.

.................................

So, too, when in 1588, thirty-six years after Xavier's death, the Jesuit father Maffei, who had been especially conversant with Xavier's career in the East, published his History of India, though he gave a biography of Xavier which shows fervent admiration for his subject, he dwelt very lightly on the alleged miracles. But the evolution of miraculous legends still went on.

.....

Six years later, in 1594, Father Tursellinus published his Life of Xavier, and in this appears to have made the first large use of the information collected by the Portuguese viceroy and the more zealous brethren. This work shows a vast increase in the number of miracles over those given by all sources together up to that time. Xavier is represented as not only curing the sick, but casting out devils, stilling the tempest, raising the dead, and performing miracles of every sort.


In 1622 came the canonization proceedings at Rome. Among the speeches made in the presence of Pope Gregory XV, supporting the claims of Xavier to saintship, the most important was by Cardinal Monte. In this the orator selects out ten great miracles from those performed by Xavier during his lifetime and describes them minutely.

He insists that on a certain occasion Xavier, by the sign of the cross, made sea-water fresh, so that his fellow-passengers and the crew could drink it; that he healed the sick and raised the dead in various places; brought back a lost boat to his ship; was on one occasion lifted from the earth bodily and transfigured before the bystanders; and that, to punish a blaspheming town, he caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in cinders from a volcano: this was afterward still more highly developed, and the saint was represented in engravings as calling down fire from heaven and thus destroying the town.

The most curious miracle of all is the eighth on the cardinal's list. Regarding this he states that, Xavier having during one of his voyages lost overboard a crucifix, it was restored to him after he had reached the shore by a crab.

The cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed by Xavier's relics after his death, the most original being that sundry lamps placed before the image of the saint and filled with holy water burned as if filled with oil.

This latter account appears to have deeply impressed the Pope, for in the Bull of Canonization issued by virtue of his power of teaching the universal Church infallibly in all matters pertaining to faith and morals, His Holiness dwells especially upon the miracle of the lamp filled with holy water and burning before Xavier's image.

Xavier having been made a saint, many other Lives of him appeared, and, as a rule, each surpassed its predecessor in the multitude of miracles.

In 1622 appeared that compiled and published under the sanction of Father Vitelleschi, and in it not only are new miracles increased, but some old ones are greatly improved.

....In that warm and uncritical atmosphere this and other legends grew rapidly, obedient to much the same laws which govern the evolution of fairy tales.


In 1682, one hundred and thirty years after Xavier's death, appeared his biography by Father Bouhours; and this became a classic. In it the old miracles of all kinds were enormously multiplied, and many new ones given. Miracles few and small in Tursellinus became many and great in Bouhours.

In Tursellinus, Xavier during his life saves one person from drowning, in Bouhours he saves during his life three; in Tursellinus, Xavier during his life raises four persons from the dead, in Bouhours fourteen; in Tursellinus there is one miraculous supply of water, in Bouhours three; in Tursellinus there is no miraculous draught of fishes, in Bouhours there is one; in Tursellinus, Xavier is transfigured twice, in Bouhours five times: and so through a long series of miracles which, in the earlier lives appearing either not at all or in very moderate form, are greatly increased and enlarged by Tursellinus, and finally enormously amplified and multiplied by Father Bouhours.

....the miracles of healing given in Bouhours were more numerous and brilliant than ever. But there was far more than this. Although during the lifetime of Xavier there is neither in his own writings nor in any contemporary account any assertion of a resurrection from the dead wrought by him, we find that shortly after his death stories of such resurrections began to appear. A simple statement of the growth of these may throw some light on the evolution of miraculous accounts generally. At first it was affirmed that some people at Cape Comorin said that he had raised one person; then it was said that there were two persons; then in various authors—Emanuel Acosta, in his commentaries written as an afterthought nearly twenty years after Xavier's death, De Quadros, and others—the story wavers between one and two cases; finally, in the time of Tursellinus, four cases had been developed. In 1622, at the canonization proceedings, three were mentioned; but by the time of Father Bouhours there were fourteen—all raised from the dead by Xavier himself during his lifetime—and the name, place, and circumstances are given with much detail in each case.

........

But perhaps the best illustration of this evolution of Xavier's miracles is to be found in the growth of another legend; and it is especially instructive because it grew luxuriantly despite the fact that it was utterly contradicted in all parts of Xavier's writings as well as in the letters of his associates and in the work of the Jesuit father, Joseph Acosta.

Throughout his letters, from first to last, Xavier constantly dwells upon his difficulties with the various languages of the different tribes among whom he went.
He tells us how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by signs.

................

In various Lives which appeared between the time of his death and his canonization this difficulty is much dwelt upon; but during the canonization proceedings at Rome, in the speeches then made, and finally in the papal bull, great stress was laid upon the fact that Xavier possessed THE GIFT OF TONGUES.
It was declared that he spoke to the various tribes with ease in their own languages. This legend of Xavier's miraculous gift of tongues was especially mentioned in the papal bull, and was solemnly given forth by the pontiff as an infallible statement to be believed by the universal Church.


....But the legend was developed still further: Father Bouhours tells us, "The holy man spoke very well the language of those barbarians without having learned it, and had no need of an interpreter when he instructed."
And, finally, in our own time, the Rev. Father Coleridge, speaking of the saint among the natives, says, "He could speak the language excellently, though he had never learned it."

In the early biography, Tursellinus writes. "Nothing was a greater impediment to him than his ignorance of the Japanese tongues; for, ever and anon, when some uncouth expression offended their fastidious and delicate ears, the awkward speech of Francis was a cause of laughter."
But Father Bouhours, a century later, writing of Xavier at the same period, says, "He preached in the afternoon to the Japanese in their language, but so naturally and with so much ease that he could not be taken for a foreigner."

And finally, in 1872, Father Coleridge, of the Society of Jesus, speaking of Xavier at this time, says, "He spoke freely, flowingly, elegantly, as if he had lived in Japan all his life."

Nor was even this sufficient: to make the legend complete, it was finally declared that, when Xavier addressed the natives of various tribes, each heard the sermon in his own language in which he was born.


All this, as we have seen, directly contradicts not only the plain statements of Xavier himself, and various incidental testimonies in the letters of his associates, but the explicit declaration of Father Joseph Acosta.

...............

It is hardly necessary to attribute to the orators and biographers generally a conscious attempt to deceive. The simple fact is, that as a rule they thought, spoke, and wrote in obedience to the natural laws which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and legend in the warm atmosphere of love and devotion which constantly arises about great religious leaders in times when men have little or no knowledge of natural law, when there is little care for scientific evidence, and when he who believes most is thought most meritorious.

..................

These examples will serve to illustrate the process which in thousands of cases has gone on from the earliest days of the Church until a very recent period. Everywhere miraculous cures became the rule rather than the exception throughout Christendom.

........

So it was that, throughout antiquity, during the early history of the Church, throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed down to a comparatively recent period, testimony to miraculous interpositions which would now be laughed at by a schoolboy was accepted by the leaders of thought.



'History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom' by Andrew White, 1895
CHAPTER XIII.
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.

II. GROWTH OF LEGENDS OF HEALING.
—THE LIFE OF XAVIER AS A TYPICAL EXAMPLE.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/505
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/505/505-h/505-h.htm

"requested the foundation of the Goa Inquisition, but he never saw it happen; it commenced eight years after his death.
On 16 May 1545, Xavier wrote to the King of Portugal to establish the Inquisition in Goa: "The second necessity for the Christians is that Your Majesty establish the Holy Inquisition in Goa because there are many who live according to the Jewish Law and according to the Mohammedan Sect, without any fear of God or shame of the World."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Xavier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Xa ... nquisition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquisition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquis ... _of_Hindus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquis ... Christians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquis ... _Catholics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquis ... Christians

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

John Platko wrote:

See comment #2305 for a concise and complete definition of religious evidence.

I have, it's neither concise nor consistent.

I look forward to working with you in a collegial way to fix any inconsistencies that may be in my definition.

You could start by:
A. spelling out your abbreviations.
B. Explaining how religious evidence is consistent when it's completely dependant on personal subjective opinion.

John Platko wrote:

Agrippina wrote:John Platko, I've read several books about Lourdes and the history of the early Catholic church is sort of my "thing." Review by subjective management within the church hierarchy is not "objective peer review."

Mgr Nicolas Brouwet, bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes

I'll just lay out the facts from Wikipedia:

Wikipedia

Approximately 35 claims per year are brought to the attention of the Lourdes Medical Bureau. Most of these are dismissed quickly. Three to five each year are investigated more thoroughly, by drawing up a Medical Bureau, comprising any doctors who were present in Lourdes at the time the apparent cure took place (this is the rationale for all members to notify the bureau of their visits to Lourdes).

The Medical Bureau investigates the claim, by examining the patient, the casenotes, and any test results (which can include biopsies, X-rays, CT scans, blood test results, and so on).

If this conference decides that further investigation is warranted, the case is referred to the International Lourdes Medical Committee (abbreviated in French to CMIL), which is an international panel of about twenty experts in various medical disciplines and of different religious beliefs. CMIL meets annually. A full investigation requires that one of its members investigates every detail of the case in question, and immerses him/herself in the literature around that condition to ensure that up-to-date academic knowledge is applied to the decision. This investigator may also consult with other colleagues about the case.

This information is presented at a CMIL meeting. Also present at the meeting are the head of the Lourdes Medical Bureau and the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes (currently this is Nicolas Brouwet). The cured subject is not normally present.

For a cure to be recognised as medically inexplicable, certain facts require to be established:
The original diagnosis must be verified and confirmed beyond doubt
The diagnosis must be regarded as "incurable" with current means (although ongoing treatments do not disqualify the cure)
The cure must happen in association with a visit to Lourdes, typically while in Lourdes or in the vicinity of the shrine itself (although drinking or bathing in the water are not required)
The cure must be immediate (rapid resolution of symptoms and signs of the illness)
The cure must be complete (with no residual impairment or deficit)
The cure must be permanent (with no recurrence)

CMIL is not entitled to pronounce a cure "miraculous"; this can only be done by the Church. The bureau may only pronounce that a cure is "medically inexplicable". A full investigation takes a minimum of five years (in order to ensure that the cure is permanent), and may take as long as ten or twelve years. It is recognised that, in rare cases, even advanced malignant disease or severe infection may spontaneously resolve.

The CMIL board votes on each case presented. A two-thirds vote is required for CMIL to pronounce a cure "inexplicable".

If CMIL decides a cure is medically inexplicable, the case is referred to the Bishop of the diocese where the cured subject lives. It is he who, in consultation with his own experts and with the Vatican, makes the decision about whether a cure is "miraculous". He may, for whatever reason, refute the claim.

Please a monsignor and bishop of Lourdes is hardly going to deny a "miracle" especially since no miracles actually do happen. Imagine if he said just once "honestly I can say that not one single miracle occurred this year!" how many people would arrive for the next round of dunking their bits in the contaminated water.

Your statement is absurd since it takes at least 5 years to determine if a miracle occurred. So the only way for the monsignor or anyone to know that "not one single miracle occurred this year". is if there were no miracle candidates to even begin a serious investigation of.

Also, there are plenty of years where there are no approved miracles yet people still go to Lourdes. Your statement is inconstant with the empirical evidence, which documents the many years in which the Catholic Church does not find that any approved miracles to have happened at Lourdes.

Please take the blinkers off. Think critically. Do some research into what happens to water that is used by hundreds of people. They don't chlorinate the water so that bacteria are killed, for one thing. So if anything, you're more likely to pick up some sort of infection in that water, than be cured of whatever disease you might have.

It's 2013 John, not 113CE. Use your intelligence, and the untold amount of research that's available completely free of charge, here and on the internet in general, learn something from these discussions. I promise you, you won't come to any harm by becoming informed.

I hope this feedback will help you take the blinkers off, think critically, and do accurate research into the matter. I also hope I didn't hurt your feelings in the process- it certainly is not my intent to do so.

John Platko wrote:

Agrippina wrote:I find it extremely odd that people who've been to school, and who've learnt even the most basic mathematics don't understand how the review system works. Your teacher gives you a series of maths problems to solve for homework. You then go home and do the homework, and if it's a good teacher, showing how you arrived at the final result. The teacher will then mark the homework, and if your answers are correct, will check the process of how you arrived at the result, if you haven't shown the working, he/she won't give you full marks for the answer, because you have to show how you arrived at the answer. This is the first time you come across the review process. If your answer is wrong, he/she can then show you where you went wrong. Why is this so difficult to understand?

You then go on to do science, and in learning science, are taught how to do experiments, with firstly simple examples like weighing a balloon before you fill it with air, then again after you've filled it with air. This demonstrates that air has mass. As you progress through these lessons you learn more complex experimentation, and you're made to explain the experiment, how you went about producing the results, step by step. This is the scientific method.

Hell even in cooking class, if you invent a meal, you're expected to explain in detail, how you went about producing the meal, the ingredients, the process of mixing them, cooking them, and then presenting the meal. Without the recipe, your meal cannot be reproduced by someone else. Even this simple process is science.

So why is this so difficult for people to understand?

Homework assignment for Agrippina:

Review the process that Isaac Newton experienced after he discovered that white light consists of the entire spectrum of color, not the absences of all color. The answer to your question is buried in there somewhere. But don't misunderstand, feedback is good, it's just that sometimes it's hard to get "good" feedback.

Regina wrote:I agree, Thomas. The untutored group (UG) needs to get some more assistance from the ASS (Avanced Spiritual Supervisors).

John Platko wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
I have, it's neither concise nor consistent.

I look forward to working with you in a collegial way to fix any inconsistencies that may be in my definition.

You could start by:
A. spelling out your abbreviations.
B. Explaining how religious evidence is consistent when it's completely dependant on personal subjective opinion.

A. I did spell out my abbreviations when I defined them, I thought they were clear but perhaps brackets around them would make it more so. Good thought, I'll consider it- thanks - Or did you mean spell them out every time I use them- that won't do because when we get further into the "math" of it all things would get too unwieldy. And besides, I was going for concise. And I thought this would go down smoother to the "scientific" crowd that hangs out here. No wobbly words. Less words even.

B. There is no evidence (empirical or otherwise) that in general a given element of ALL_RE is in any way consistent with any other element of ALL_RE. That's a major reason why many religious people, e.g. me, find it important to rely on scientific empirical evidence to support their faith.- if you don't do that you end up believing crazy shit.

Agrippina wrote:Scientific empirical evidence? You make me .

You don't even have the vaguest understanding of empirical evidence means. You explain that a monsignor (some sort of higher-up member of the boy-fiddling brigade) and a bishop (an even higher-up member of the boy-fiddling brigade) get a friend of theirs: a member of the medical fraternity who's paid a huge amount of money to attend a meeting of a bunch of gullible morons, who've been hoodwinked into believing that they'll be cured of their amputated limbs (or some other major medical problem), where enormous sums of money are collected for the coffers of the man on the golden throne, is a valid scientific, empirically-proved, miracle. Then you have the gall to expect us, people who've actually spent decades acquiring actual objectively-taught knowledge, to accept this bullshit, simply because it's based on some peculiar obfuscation by the employment of acronyms, in an attempt to display some rudimentary knowledge of the use of mathematics, to validate some nonsense cures in a microbe-infested lake deemed to be miraculous because some peasant girl, who was possibly having a seizure of some kind, thought she saw a vision,in the area around the lake, of the possibly fictional mother (well most certainly her virginity was fictional) of a possibly fictional character in a book written by uneducated, early current era, story-telling oafish proselytisers who "had little or no knowledge of natural law."

Really? Empirical evidence? Pull the other one, it's got bells on!

Regina wrote:I agree, Thomas. The untutored group (UG) needs to get some more assistance from the ASS (Avanced Spiritual Supervisors).

angelo wrote:Anyone trying to lie for god should note that using Lourdes or any other so called miraculous site anywhere in the world is destroying their credibility before they even start.

Cito di Pense wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Regina wrote:No, I don't. I told you I'm too slow.

Yes but I thought that only meant when I use wobbly words.

But since you were talking about religious evidence in the context of religious groups, it seemed obvious that you and I were talking about religious groups.
My sincerest apologies.
I rephrase:
It's very helpful of you to answer Lucid's question by telling her that RE means that all religious groups have their "own requirements and processes for determining" what RE consists of. One cannot be more precise, obviously.
It should be clear to everyone now.
Better?
On second thoughts, though, Lucid also has a reputation of being a tad slow, so maybe you will have to deal with yet more questions.

That's fine. Since Lucid is new I started with the unified theory of religious evidence; my notes covered the general theory of religious evidence. We can get to the special theory of religious evidence if Lucid desires to do so. I must warn though, it gets very complicated, there are many corner cases. And, as in most things, I'm no expert, but I feel qualified to get pretty deep into the application of the special theory of religious evidence as performed by the Catholic Church.

Perhaps you could also expand on the relation of religious evidence to the supernatural, or the relation of supernatural evidence to religion. Would I be incorrect in asserting that religious (or supernatural) evidence is that which is left behind by gods, demons, ghosts, spirits, sprites, kobolds... you get the picture. If so, then we have a problem of defining religion and its evidence in terms of the supernatural, defining the supernatural in terms of gods and demons, etc., and defining gods etc. in terms of religion. Would we, for example, distinguish religious anecdotes from other kinds of anecdotes, for example about the size of the fish that got away?

John Platko wrote:

Regina wrote:I agree, Thomas. The untutored group (UG) needs to get some more assistance from the ASS (Avanced Spiritual Supervisors).

That reminds me of a funny story. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a lot, he was a sort of Advanced Spiritual Supervisor of the 13th century. But for some reason, I have no idea why, he wrote so illegibly that only one other person could read what he wrote, that was Reginald. In the works of St. Thomas Aquinas there are two sets of handwriting, Tommy's illegible "writing" and Reginald's perfect penmanship where he added notes all through the margins. Also in the margins somewhere is a doodle often described as the head of a horse. Know one knows if Tommy or Regie doodled. Since we can make it out - I'm going with Regie. But if I had to spend my life reading the illegible scrawl of St. Thomas's so called "rational" ideas I think I'd be more apt to doodle a jackass in the margin. But that's just me.

Note 1: The moral to our story is one persons hoarse is another persons jackass, i.e. one persons ugly duckling is another persons swan - Hans Christian Anderson.

I'm thinking Advanced Spiritual Supervisor - kind of has a nice ring to it.

Cito di Pense wrote:

John Platko wrote:I feel qualified to get pretty deep into the application of the special theory of religious evidence as performed by the Catholic Church.

Stretch out with your feelings, Luke. Use the Force. Bend a spoon.

John Platko wrote:

MrFungus420 wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Matthew Shute wrote:

Really, John, that's ludicrous. It was Cito who pointed out to you that the phrase "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was Chomsky's work, presumably because you didn't seem to recognize it. Post #2151, to be precise. Now, if Cito was going to plagiarise someone, it wouldn't make much sense for him to post a link to a page citing that someone as the author, exactly to disabuse someone else of the delusion that it was Cito's work.

Really, John, are you so dismally inept at spinning Christian apologetics that you must supplement them with these pathetic side-tracking smear tactics? And do you think that anyone here is downright stupid enough to be swayed by this?

I'm certainly not smearing anyone. Just pointing out how I mistook Chomsky's brilliant words to be Cito's brilliant words because Cito didn't provide Chomsky with an attribution and didn't immediately step in an clear up my confusion in an unambiguous way.

The only "confusion" was when YOU were asked what YOU meant with what YOU said.

Ever since then, you've been dancing around without saying a damn thing.

I think that the simple fact is that you had seen that Cito is treated with some respect here and were trying to incorporate something that he posted in the hope that it would give you some credibility

Where is your empirical evidence of what my intentions for my post was.

John Platko wrote:

John Platko wrote:The result was a lot of wasted time and effort- and I had/have the impression that I wasn't the only one confused by all of this but others can speak for themselves.

No problem.

Nothing that Cito said was confusing in any way.

It appears that the wasted time and effort has been in trying to get YOU to clarify what YOU meant with YOUR post.

John Platko wrote:Hopefully, this can be avoided in the future.

That depends.

Are YOU going to be willing to explain what YOU mean in YOUR posts in the future?

Of course I'll be willing to explain what I mean in my posts in the future, just like I've been painstakingly willing to explain what I mean by my posts in the past.

mindhack wrote:You make me laugh, John!

Thank you for that.

John Platko wrote:

mindhack wrote:

John Platko wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
No, gravity is the explanation, what needed to be explained was, for example, why apples fall from the tree.

Who get's to decide what "needs" to be explained?

That simply isn't the point John. Come on. It isn't hard.

What is needed is verifiable evidence for a set of assertions to ever become something like an explanation.

Explanations and verifiable evidence are closely linked concepts. An explanation is a story backed up by facts from observation. Without that last part, the critical part, a story's author can only hope for it to become a best selling fantasy novel.

I've noticed ( actually fairly recently) that something weird happens when previous comments are quoted, the whole back and forth discussion isn't present in the quote and if you don't go back and look at the original comment what you see is misleading (I'm not accusing anyone of doing anything wrong- this is just the way the quotes seem to work) The net of this is that if someone responds to what actually appears in the quoted quote, the discussion gets confused. That seems to be happening in this "need" discussion, which I have no particular need to continue as I was really just trying to get clarification from someone else about what they said and why they said it.

John Platko wrote:

MrFungus420 wrote:

John Platko wrote:

MrFungus420 wrote:

It's a fictional creation story created by people virtually completely ignorant about anything beyond the little bit of land that they lived on..

When you don't think that it is real, it eliminates every single problem and contradiction with it.

I don't think it's real any more than I think Star Trek (TOS) was real but it still had some good stories.

If you don't think that it's real, then what about it needs a reasonable explanation?

Fairytales, especially religious fairytales, of which the Bible is full of, need to have a moral message that helps people and life grow better, otherwise, using technical language, they are crap. I'm trying to communicate that I've never heard an explanation of the meaning the garden of Eden story that doesn't sound like crap to me. If all the fairytales and historical stories in the Bible were like the garden of Eden story seems to me to be, then the Bible would be full of crap. But that's not the way I find it. There's good stuff in there too.