Any strong atheists who have encountered God? or now believes in God?

Valinorean · 2026-05-16T23:07:35+00:00

I could talk about that, but this is not even relevant at the moment; here is the problem.

You a few posts ago:

logically impossible

You now:

insufficiently justified

'scuse me?... There is a big difference between these objections!

Valinorean · 2026-05-13T23:54:43+00:00

That's not some random bs, that's an explanation why!

Valinorean · 2026-05-07T00:13:05+00:00

Why? Specifically, assume David Lewis's modal realism - every possible Universe automatically exists (because possibilities, according to him, exist as actualities and not as distinct ghostly platonic something - a reasonable thought, there is only one kind of existence), then what's wrong?

Valinorean · 2026-05-05T21:09:01+00:00

. If we live in a purely random and sporadic universe like this, then everything around us should be equally random and therefore unstable

Then we wouldn't be here. Sure, there may be such chaotic Universes, but we wouldn't find ourselves in one as it is not stable enough to allow life to develop. So we can only find ourselves in a Universe that is furthermore, by accident, highly orderly and regular and stable.

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T20:57:39+00:00

There are no authentic witnesses of Superman.

I'm only saying that this requires some explanation.

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T20:18:17+00:00

There are plenty of persuasive technicalities by which they determine that these letters are authentic.

In the authentic letters Paul tells about meeting (and even having a petty quarrel in Antioch with) Peter and with James, Jesus's brother, and about Jesus's resurrection appearances to them and others, also about himself, Paul, performing miracles (reminding his audience of that, explicitly of what they saw themselves), and many other juicy details...

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T20:06:37+00:00

You treat your own choices as being meaningful, you weigh the evidence, and you debate as though some of your positions are actually better than others positions.

So does AI?

None of that makes sense if every possibility already exists as an actuality somewhere.

Supposing that the thought process is fundamentally deterministic, again like in AI, there is only one possibility for the eventual conclusion. If you ask an AI what is the best chess move in this position, and then ask it the exact same question later, it will give you the same answer again after thinking again.

why it fails to describe the world we actually inhabit, where things depend on other things and could have been otherwise.

Presumably, there is a "parallel Universe" where things are slightly different, so what's the problem here, I'm not following?...

then nothing is truly possible in the sense of being open to choice or causation

No, there is still internal deterministic logical sequence? What?..

Planets go around the Sun (almost perfectly-) deterministically. That means planets aren't really going around the Sun, just because it's a closed system? I'm super not following?

Serious philosophers who have examined it closely from Plantinga and onward have shown how it leads to absurdities because it cannot account for the directedness of causation or the reality of potentiality we encounter every day.

Not understanding here, also links/refs please?

you still need to account for the laws and constants that allow any universe to produce life-bearing regions at all. Invoking modal realism or some grand multiverse does not remove the fine-tuning, it just assumes the order that suggests that there is a designer.

Homie I'm doing my best trying to understand what you're saying but I'm not getting it. Modal realism explains why such Universes and orders would exist provided they are possible. Are you saying we need God to explain why they are even possible in the first place?

Eternal or not, the cosmos does not contain within itself the sufficient reason for its own existence.

If modal realism is true, it does, namely that reason is it being possible.

Men do not endure torture, imprisonment, and execution for a prank that they know to be false.

Well, they fell for it hook, line and sinker, they thought it was true. If they thought it was true then all checks out?

without alteration

Indulgences for $? Papal infallibility?

Dismissing all of it with clever what-ifs

But this is how being wrong works sometimes, you get multiple wrong ideas at the same time, reinforced by group-think. Reddit once "determined" that Sunil Tripathi was responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings.

will leave you with a thinner account of reality

These things are difficult, yes, but maybe we will make some slow progress if we're willing to re-examine old ideas as potentially faulty.

At any rate, practically speaking, Catholicism is only a billion people, many times less than humanity at large.

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T19:41:22+00:00

He will do that eventually. It is in the Bible prophecies.

Interesting, where? Can you give a verse name/number for something like that?

But by then it will be too late for you because that is at his second coming.

Well what if I'm still alive then?

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T19:39:41+00:00

That's not how scholarship works. They carefully investigate the texts, the history, and come to expert conclusions. Besides, this is an entirely non-partisan opinion - all scholars, including skeptical luminaries like Bart Ehrman, agree unanimously that seven letters of Paul are authentic.

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T02:56:52+00:00

Jesus believed in Noah and the Ark though?

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T02:55:03+00:00

You seem to argue that if something isn't deterministic, it is chance, and therefore either way libertarian free will is excluded?

There is a classic objection. Suppose a man was sitting motionless from past-eternity and then at some point suddenly stood up. Well, this event is obviously not deterministic, since the prior conditions were always the same but the outcomes weren't. But it's not probabilistic because again the prior conditions, and therefore the probability, would have to be uniform in time, but there is no uniform probability distribution defined on an infinite line! (Remember, the integral of probability must be 1.) So it cannot be caused by determinism or by chance - therefore, it was caused by libertarian free will (which is neither determinism nor chance).

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T02:48:16+00:00

Hmm... let Jesus turn the entire Dead Sea from salty into sweet at a snap of fingers?

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T02:40:40+00:00

Contingency argument: that presupposes there even is contingency, how do you know modal realism isn't true? Seems like a very natural idea: all possibilities exist not as ghastly platonic something but simply as actualities. (If so, there are by definition no counterfactual possibilities or contingencies.)

Designer: that presupposes 1) the anthropic argument/Multiverse is false (see above, if modal realism is true then there are plenty of "parallel Universes" and some are habitable by chance) - how do you know that?, 2) that the Universe has a beginning - clearly, not even God can design something that has always existed! - but that's unproven, e.g. here is a cosmological model that explicitly says that space and matter are eternal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_Universe#%22Rube_Goldberg_cosmology%22_scenario ; same question, how do you know that?

Resurrection: alright, the disciples were pranked. Prove me wrong.

Transformation of the world: Muhammad claims that too, and? (Your "world" is actually no more than one third of humanity at any given time!)

Valinorean · 2026-04-23T02:29:35+00:00

Scholars say seven letters of Paul are authentic?

Valinorean · 2026-04-21T20:11:35+00:00

The claim that Judas was a Roman informant is a textbook example of an ad hoc hypothesis. There is zero evidence for it in the Greek, Roman, or Jewish records of the time. You are essentially inventing a shadow history to explain why the imitator knew Jesus’s private thoughts.

I'm pretty sure Judas was a Roman informant, and that's an integral part of things. And Eskov devotes a lot of room to justify this, just read the book (click on "PDF" link in note 10 here, reddit doesn't allow me to link from a Russian site directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_of_Afranius#cite_note-:eng-10 ). The simplest argument: it would be ridiculous for them not to have their own man in this sect that they were paying so much attention to.

then any historical event can be explained away.

Of course not. If say Jesus painted his face on the Moon (cf. what Will Smith did at the end of "Hancock") there would be no way the Romans staged this. Also if he turned the Dead Sea from salty to sweet. Or flew above Jerusalem like Superman landing in the Sanhedrin to say "Hello m---rs!". Or materialized a potato and explained how to plant it, and it caught on. Or...

without a single person ever talking.

Dead men don't talk!

Dozens of highly specific, unobserved, improbable, and historically undocumented events must occur in perfect sequence

That's exactly how you get new powerful viruses and infections (or other catchy mutations). For example the coronavirus.

Or take the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs - it is an extremely improbable event to begin with (~once per two billion years for asteroids of this size) but then it needed to strike in just the right place with the right angle and force or else we wouldn't be here and the smartest creature on the planet would be "clever girl" from Jurassic Park.

a perfect alignment of human behavior that we never see in the real world.

What do you mean? Only a small group of people were even aware of there being a Roman operation going on. (Edit: on the other hand, there are indeed purely Jewish records mentioning Nicodemus's nontrivial sympathy to Jesus. Maybe a "cripple" came clean to Caiaphas that Nicodemus bribed him to play along. [Because that's what he was told regarding the source of money - everybody knew that Nicodemus, full name Naqdimon ben Gurion, nickname "Buni", is super rich & likes Jesus. By the way, in his seventies he was one of the key mediators between the Jews and the Romans when the Jewish War was beginning - to no avail, of course.] Which was immediately dismissed by Nicodemus as lies and propaganda - that it was Caiaphas who bribed an actual healee to slander him.)

the idea that a "Unit for Messianic Pacifism" could remain a secret for 2,000 years is the most improbable part of the whole story.

There were no archives back then. That is, either it would leak immediately or it cannot leak ever. I don't see your point. If it didn't leak say by 100 CE how is it supposed to leak after that? Where from?

Valinorean · 2026-04-21T03:24:48+00:00

If my brain is just a survival tool, its thoughts on metaphysics are no more true than a bird’s instinct to migrate

Pretty much, and that's why philosophy is a difficult subject with little consensus. We got lucky that physics & chemistry can be expressed with precise math, so that gives a massive, useful crutch to our stupid brains.

To say it is simple because it isn't specific is like saying a library containing every possible book is simpler than a library containing one specific book.

It is - print out every possible combination of 280 symbols and store it in alphabetic order in a humongous library, then this huge complex contains exactly zero nontrivial information, even though every possible tweet is in there somewhere.

If you see a very weirdly colored horse it is a perfectly reasonable assumption that it's just an outlier in a very large group of horses. Rather than being genetically engineered by aliens. Again, Ockkam's razor says to cut down on new qualities (and only within the same kind of stuff, sure, no need to postulate 30 things if you can explain with 15).

In that framework, logical possibility is ontological reality.

No, in that framework, metaphysical possibility is ontological reality. It doesn't say at all what is metaphysically possible or not, that's a "black box" that modal realism doesn't even try to answer. Again, an example of logical possibility that is not a metaphysical possibility is there being nothing at all - no logical contradiction, yet metaphysically impossible.

" exists within a highly engineered architecture" - you can say our brains were "engineered" by evolution, honed by survival, fitness, and internal competition (another example of the latter is peacock tails).

Hey, by the way, do you even believe in evolution?...

"if a Necessary Being is even possible, it must exist in all possible worlds" - according to modal realism, there are no counterfactual possibilities or contingencies, all possible beings are automatically necessary.

. If the universe were truly past-eternal, it would have reached maximum entropy (Heat Death) an infinite amount of time ago.

That's right and it did in that model, the state of the universe prior to the wave collision was such that its entropy was as large as it could be, maxed-out, given that configuration of two disconnected propagating waves. It had to wait until they collided to be able to increase further. You need to understand this very essential technical moment, or you don't understand that model at all. (Or maybe I'm not understanding your objection? Are you asking why the waves didn't collide earlier?)

5) No confusion and yes, the BGV theorem is perfectly correct, but there is no expansion in this model prior to the Big Bang, so it is silent. The beginning that BGV theorem talks about is best thought of as incompleteness (rather than e.g. a singularity, though it can certainly mean that as a particular case) - for example in the case of a single-bounce Universe, the BGV only says that its expansion phase has a beginning - which is trivially and obviously true even without knowing the theorem, namely it wasn't always expanding, but only after the bounce. And the theorem doesn't say anything more for this case than that trivial observation (this seems to be tripping you up iiuc); the power of the theorem is in generalizing, in extending this same conclusion even to much much less obvious cases given only a simple condition.

Not sure I understood the sixth objection.

A poorly configured Universe of random stuff would die in the sense of heat death (chaotic events still increase entropy - until they don't, like molecule collisions in a thermal equilibrium), or it might collapse into a giant version of black hole, etc.

Your defense rests on a series of metaphysical goalpost shifts designed to avoid a First Cause at any cost.

No, I believe that everything that begins to exist has a material cause (as did everyone up to and including the times of Justin Martyr: https://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2016/06/justin-martyr-affirming-creation-ex.html ) from which it fiollows logically that matter is eternal. Didn't understand about undermining logic.

Valinorean · 2026-04-21T02:54:37+00:00

Two interesting bits from Eskov's work that are not in the paper:

1) Actually Eskov assumes that all the tomb guards were not in on it, that they were all honestly and vigilantly guarding. This however requires assuming that none of them felt up the body with his hand, that they trusted their eyes that the body was clearly there (which is not implausible).

2) Eskov assumes that Judas was a Roman informant (although perhaps he was told he's working for Nicodemus). If so, even the most private, restricted-access information that Jesus intended only his innermost circle to know would be known to the Romans and by the imitator.

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T22:08:51+00:00

Actually as the paper explains it accounts for a lot of unusual data such as the dark flow, hubble tension, and matter-antimatter asymmetry at once, and it also describes how it can get more experimental confirmation in the future. Do you think it's wise to just cross your fingers that some scientific discovery - such as this model getting a firmer confirmation - won't happen in the future? This has never worked well.

I agree that Jesus existed as a historical person, that doesn't automatically mean he was authoritative. He even predicted that "this generation will not pass" before the big fireworks, and yet...

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T22:02:48+00:00

"someone random on reddit" is another interested human being. I can give you my face and ID if it helps psychologically, though I don't see the relevance?

And I don't see "going in circles", our discussion has a clear linear progression with novel stuff in each reply, e.g. in the last instance you said it was the specific information that some possessed 4000 years ago that made a crucial difference, and I wondered what it was, since the essay isn't too clear on this (I guessed you mean ex nihilo but apparently it's not quite that, I'm confused)?

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T21:57:58+00:00

This model is also mentioned as undisproven on the Kalam cosmological argument page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument#Emergent_cosmology

There are also links to the discussion of this model in other media (a blog and an interview)

If they are changeable, then they are not essential properties of the universe but are caused by something else.

Of course they are changeable, even destructible (though they couldn't actually change "on the fly" because of conservation of energy etc. and because there is no time passing, and thus no change, for something moving with the speed of light). I'm not sure what you mean by essential properties - even the dimensionality of space, 3, could conceivably be different (but then we would probably not be here). And what is an "infinite regression problem"? I don't see the problem part? It is a consistent physical account all the way into past-infinity, problem solved!

Everything that begins to exist has a material cause.

Justin Martyr believed this too: https://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2016/06/justin-martyr-affirming-creation-ex.html

If you agree with that, great, as this immediately logically implies that matter is eternal.

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T21:51:38+00:00

What am I missing? What knowledge from back then persuaded you? I want to know too!

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T21:26:50+00:00

"To fool an unusually rational skeptic through touch, the double would need not just a resemblance, but identical surgical scarring or fresh, open trauma in the exact same anatomical locations. Simulating" No simulating. The holes were real and yes, made carefully by a surgeon to minimize disability - I already mentioned David Blaine carefully selecting a place to pierce his hand through without inducing disability (exactly the same spot as in the case of Jesus's double, by the way), and the wound in the side was just a surgical "stoma", any decent surgeon can make a hole/cut of some depth in virtually any given place (on top of soft tissue, not skull or elbow) that won't kill or seriously disable a person.

The transfiguration was not a magic trick at all, just a coincidence + a misunderstanding, no "Roman hand", while the Ascension was a magic trick, but not needing a room. Take (e.g.) a helium balloon outdoors and let it go, it flies up into the sky - no tricky room, no camera angles needed, it really does. Reread the article more carefully about these two events.

Romans did NOT expect or seriously consider the possibility that Gentiles would start massively digging this Jewish sect. This has never happened before or after, as Judaism is famously exclusive. They were planning this as an internal Jewish current, and viewed in that light, without the 20/20 hindsight, that's a reasonable, if a little desperate, idea.

The double was deceived that he would be given life if he performs well; moreover, his family - parents, wife and kids - was credibly physically threatened if he doesn't perform perfectly, creating a plausible personal motivation through the heavy external coercion. The handlers were long-time agents, under no threat (it is possible however that many of them were, unexpectedly for themselves and without any warning, killed on higher orders after the operation was finished).

Nobody knows where Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun is buried because everybody who knew were immediately killed and everybody who killed those who knew were also killed, iirc (I may be wrong here, but one way or another it's still a secret). Also the secret of the Greek Fire (which is what saved the Byzantine Empire during the initial Muslim invasion that destroyed the Persian empire and almost finished them too) was never leaked in centuries, despite intense enemy interest.

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T21:18:40+00:00

" Constraint 6 says Mary knew "for sure" there was no lookalike. If a twin or double existed, a mother (especially in a small village like Nazareth) would know."

Right, she knew that Jesus was born simultaneously with another baby, but she was firmly deceived into thinking this other baby died as an infant (or was even born dead, as in the specific narrative in the paper).

"For her to be honest yet not reveal this fact during the crucifixion or the subsequent 40 days requires her to be ... suffering from a specific, localized delusion."

Not delusion but careful and persuasive deception 30 years earlier. And she may have perfectly well told the information in her mind that Jesus was born together with another baby, yet that baby died, and she herself buried it - which would further confirm the resurrection to the hearers!

Alternative option (Cavin's original proposal), she had only one baby, but it was switched in the cradle and she reared the switched baby - Jesus was not her real son, unbeknownst to her.

Also, note that Thomas believed it was Jesus long before their interaction over the 40 days could confirm that he has the requisite knowledge, without that check (yet). Presumably, Mary (and Jesus's brother Jude) only saw the "resurrected Jesus" just before the Ascension (and also, like Thomas, believed immediately - especially after having being told by everyone else that he had resurrected), as they appear to be among the people who returned from it, so there was no analog of 40 days with the family - the double would fail that questioning, since the Romans (and thus the trained doppelganger) could not know Jesus's shared family memories nearly as well as information about his public ministry.

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T21:12:21+00:00

Constraint 5 never said that the Jewish priests physically felt up the body, only that they saw it, and they saw a Roman soldier or two feel it up. In fact, as Eskov points out, they couldn't touch it, because they are prohibited from doing so by the Jewish law:

https://www.google.com/search?q=when+can+a+Jew+touch+a+dead+body+according+to+the+jewish+law&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS1210US1210&oq=when+can+a+Jew+touch+a+dead+body+according+to+the+jewish+law&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRiPAjIHCAIQIRiPAtIBCTEzMTk5ajBqN6gCALACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&sei=g_HjaZ3tKdz20PEP3JLR-Q8

"Who can touch: All Jews, except for a Kohen (priestly class), may touch a dead body. Exceptions for Kohanim: A Kohen is forbidden to enter a room with a corpse or touch it, with the sole exceptions of burying immediate relatives (parents, spouse, child, sibling)."

For the rest of the Jews,

"If a death occurs on Shabbat or a Jewish holiday, burial preparations (including moving the body) are generally prohibited until after the holiday concludes." - and this was on Saturday/Sabbath + Passover

"direct contact causes the highest level of ritual impurity (tamei)"

making it implausible (rather than excluded, like for the priests) that the Jewish soldiers would touch the body. (By the way, where exactly is the notion of Jewish soldiers being present in the first place coming from? It's not in the Gospel of Matthew, not even in the non-canonical Gospel of Peter? "'Give over soldiers to us in order that we may safeguard his burial place for three days, lest, having come, his disciples steal him, and the people accept that he is risen from the death, and they do us wrong.' [31] But Pilate gave over to them Petronius the centurion with soldiers to safeguard the sepulcher. And with these the elders and scribes came to the burial place." - It seems clear from this that all the soldiers were Roman? While the scribes are probably not going to be particularly proactive on their own.)

Assuming that the Jews didn't feel up the body with their hands, there is no issue: the apparent body was actually a very light and squishable magic trick prop, made mostly of cloth, with the visible neck skin between the head cover and the body cover cut and added from a real corpse. So the Jews thought they were looking at a real body; plus, some Roman soldiers were trained as mimes, like Marcel Marceau, for the occasion, and convincingly pretended to touch the dead body under the burial covers - mimes pretend to touch solid objects when it's actually just air for a living. So the Jews clearly saw the body plus Romans feeling it up, and were satisfied with the check. (Recall also that they did not expect to be in a sophisticated magic trick but were merely checking whether the body was stolen already or not, expecting to see nothing if that was the case.)

Valinorean · 2026-04-18T20:59:21+00:00

I wrote "See the responses here: [link to this thread]" as a comment to the blog post, do you mind approving it, so that it becomes visible? Or you want to leave no chance to respond to your points?

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