Falsifying God? (Agnosticism)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 30, 2014, 17:37 (3616 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: There are parts of cellular intelligence that you can not ever prove, so you would have to rely on indirect observations.-Agreed. My “intelligent cell” hypothesis is just that - a hypothesis, not a belief. I extrapolate from scientists' direct observations of intelligent behaviour the possibility that under certain conditions cells might be able to innovate as well as adapt. This has nothing to do with prophecy!
 
TONY: Archaeology has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the vast majority of the bible. It has been confirmed and reconfirmed, over and again, with hard, physical, undeniable evidence. Your problem with the Bible is that you still view it as 'fiction' despite the evidence.-Like David I have been to Israel and seen many of the historical sites. But unlike yourself I don't know how many biblical stories are actually true. For example, I have grave doubts about the existence of Adam and Eve and the serpent and Satan, and about Noah floating around in his ark with all those animals, and about Jonah sitting for three days and nights in the belly of a fish, and I'm suspicious of all the narratives written by unknown omniscient narrators precisely reproducing dialogue they could never have heard describing events they could not have witnessed. Authors invent. Historical novelists seize on real events and then put their own slant on them. So do historians, particularly when they have their own agenda. The existence of a place does not confirm the stories said to have happened in that place.
 
TONY: I find it ironic that you have no trouble taking the testimony of people that were drugged up or dead(or nearly so) as evidence for NDE's, but find the testimony of hundreds of first hand accounts of living people beyond credence.-I have a great deal of trouble trying to explain NDE testimonies, but I don't reject them when their testimony has been verified by living, independent third parties. In relation to the ancient tales of the bible, please explain what you mean by “first hand accounts of living people”. Which living people have given us first hand accounts of the serpent speaking to Eve, or of Christ dying, coming back to life, and floating up to heaven on a cloud?
 
DHW: ...unlike yourself, David, and Richard Dawkins I have great difficulty giving credence to any theory. 
TONY: Except for those you are already predisposed to believe. After all, nearly all of your hypotheses are centered around evolution which gives a fairly strong indication as to what you actually believe.-I am indeed convinced that all forms of life except the first have descended from earlier forms. I'm far from convinced by random mutations and gradualism. However, like vast numbers of monotheists (not to mention agnostics like Darwin himself), I have no difficulty reconciling common descent with the existence of God, though it appears to contradict the alleged authenticity of the bible - one reason for doubting that the bible is the word of God.
 
DHW: ...I still don't see how you can argue that a failed prophecy will falsify the concept of God, rather than falsifying the concept of the bible as the word of God.
TONY: I don't claim that, the bible does. Explicitly it states: 
Deut 18:22 21"You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?' 22"When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.(Also Jer 28:9, Eze 33:33. 
dhw: I'm sorry, but this quotation is making precisely the point that I am making: if a prophecy is false, it doesn't falsify the concept of God, but the authenticity of the prophet who makes it. If a failed prophecy is recorded in the bible, it will therefore be the bible's claim to be the word of God that is falsified and not the concept of God.
TONY: The statistical chance that Christ (or anyone) could have fulfilled just 8 of the prophecies is 10^27th power... -Once more you emphasize the accuracy of the prophecies and refuse to answer the point which made me open this thread and which is fundamental to our very different approaches to the question of God's existence. Ironically, I am actually fighting FOR God(s) in this discussion, because your approach necessitates acceptance of the infallibility of authors I do not trust. I will try to respond to the rest of your comments on the prophecies, but before I do, I'd be grateful if, in the light of the passage you have quoted from Deuteronomy, you would now accept that a failed prophecy would not falsify the concept of God, but would falsify the concept of the bible as the word of God.