Babble About Baba

 I got into a discussion with a Christian playing devils advocate. I've been in the game awhile, these Jesus doubles are anything but new. 

Jackson

He basically just repeating Hume's Argument

Although, in his argument that other religions have miracles, I don't think you should just concede that. I think each miracle has to be looked at on its own merit. Christianity's main miracle is unique because it was extremely unexpected.

Lucas

I pretty much agree. However, I grant it for sake of the argument because it is true it’s not a problem for Christianity. He also didn’t give a specific miracle for me to analyze.

Jackson 

Well, someone can make the argument that they could also be performing miracles in God's name, Which would make Jesus' statement that he is the "only way "apparently false. One could argue That if God raised Jesus from the dead to show his divinity, He could do the same for other people doing miracles.

I think the best argument in this would be Sam Harris's example of Sai Baba, who is a modern Indian gurus. He had millions of followers, and thousands of eyewitnesses to his miracles. He was said to be able to make things appear, To raise the dead, to read minds, to be in two places at once, etc. We could do the "liar, lunatic, Lord" trilemma, Although I don't think many would argue that all of his thousands of followers are all just lying.

Anyway, Harris's point is that the evidence for Sai Baba as far as better than Jesus, and that we literally have thousands of witnesses who are still alive, and these accounts are modern and not written decades later. But, according to Harris, If we were to reject Sai Baba's Miracles based on insufficient evidence, then how much more should we reject Jesus's miracles that are less attested

I think that's a much more robust way of articulating what counter apologist probably would have wanted to say. I guess I'm just a better spokesman at it than he is

Lucas

We have the criteria for false prophets in Deut. 13 & 18. Pace Gathercole (2006), Bauckham (2008), Hengel (2007), Loke (2019) et al, the Biblical case for Jesus being God is good. Swinburne (2010) argued, imo, successfully that Jesus behaved and taught how an all loving and powerful God would (treatment of women, Romans/gentiles, and Samaritans, radical love for the weak and forgiveness).

As for Sai Baba, there’s quite a number of issues.

1: Harris is not an historian. You know how well he treats the Bible, not sure you want to cite him here.

2: The evidence is good that Baba was a fraud. Let’s hear what an actual historian by trade has to say. Commenting on Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba, a Modern-Day Prophet by Erlendur Haraldsson, reviewer Brian Steel makes the following observation:

“One aspect of the parapsychological phenomena that might have rewarded investigation is the increasing tendency in the past three decades, under the intense scrutiny of larger and larger darshan audiences and of camera zooms and videocameras, for SSB’s public materialisations to be largely confined to vibhuti, small items of jewellery, and necklaces, as well as the occasional dubious Shiva lingam (and the aborted lingam session caught on camera by the BBC in their 2004 documentary, Secret Swami). Also, is it not worth consideration that there have been no reports of spectacular phenomena like trances, bilocations, or ‘Lazarus-like resurrections’ in SSB’s final decades of life?” JSPR Volume 79.2 Number 919 April 2015.

This sounds an awful like the typical fraud/charlatan to me. Plus, we’re dealing with 2 entirely different cultural contexts here.

Kyle

Well, I think more to the point of Baba is that people can be fooled by a charlatan and not know that's what he was.

Jackson

And they say the same thing about Jesus. Make it argue that people weren't skeptical and were deceived

Lucas

1: I’m fully aware of the argument he’s making. The movement wouldn’t have even gotten off the ground if Jesus was a fraud. Baba (supposedly) had a lot of followers, but did the movement spread like Christianity? Plus, none of that discounts the evidence I presented. You need to factor that in as well.

2: We have evidence for what kinds of miracles frauds or mere magicians performed in the Greco-Roman world. Jesus doesn’t match that. Consult Keener 2011, 68-75

3: Someone like Sabbatai Zevi or Apollonius of Tyana. They are actually used by historians, not hacks like Harris.

Jackson

to be fair, they could argue that if we had biographies That were only written by followers of Sai Baba, They would try to portray him enough more positive light, especially if they were written decades later

Lucas

Then it would be a meaningless hypothetical vs. real world evidence. I think this also would bring us into a discussion about Gospel reliability, which is beyond the scope of this post.

Repetitive Disanalogy

I am going to reply to counter apologist on the resurrection and miracles. See his post here.

He writes "What if I told you that I believed that god raised Jesus from the dead, but that I did not believe that Jesus was the son of god, and denied that belief in his death and resurrection was the path to salvation and eternal life in reconciliation with the one true god, Yahweh.

That would just sound crazy. 

Right?"

In Christian theology, the resurrection is the vindication of Jesus' claims and message. It will be interesting to see how he argues this. 

He writes "The argument for the resurrection comes in many forms, but they all eventually come back to referencing the bible’s stories about Jesus being crucified and resurrected. They all are based on testimonial evidence for a miracle occurring in the past, and unfortunately for Christians"

1: There is a hidden premise in here. Notice he says "they all eventually come back to referencing Bible stories about Jesus being crucified and resurrected'. Well, obviously. Who else is supposed to report that the resurrection happened besides Christians? 

2: Is he not aware that Tacitus and Josephus report the crucifixion of Jesus? 

He writes "testimony can not be used in an evidential way to justify belief in a miracle claim in the world we live in"

There is a lot to say about this little sentence 

1: Assuming event M happened, I would expect someone to claim that it did happen. 

2: I need more background knowledge. What type of person are you? Are you a known liar? Are miracles possible, and if so, do they happen?

3: On naturalism, you should be quite skeptical of miracle claims. However, on Biblical theism, the world is chockfull of miracles. Jesus' ministry is supernatural through and through, you can not separate it from that context. So, if you are a trustworthy source, and you tell me that you have experienced a miracle, I will probably believe you. 

4: In CA's article, there is no mention of the necessary readings on this very topic. To take a few:

Keener, Craig S. Miracles: the Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Baker Academic, 2011.

Larmer, Robert. Questions of Miracle. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997.

_____. Dialogues on Miracle. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2015.

_____. Water into Wine?: an Investigation of the Concept of Miracle. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996.

Coady, C. A. J. Testimony: a Philosophical Study. Clarendon Press, 2002.

5: Suppose you are sleeping, and your roommate runs into your room, screaming "there is a fire, a huge fire in the kitchen!". I never pull pranks, I am not a jokester, and there is very few things in the kitchen that are flammable. Do you say testimony isn't evidence, or do you take my words seriously? 

Continuing: What if I told you that I woke up in my bed in New Jersey this morning, then had lunch on the moon, but then was home here on earth for dinner?"

1: This is not a miracle claim.

2: Is there good reason to think you were able to go to the moon? Do we have evidence of this happening like we do for miracles? I don't think so. CA's argument fails by disanalogy. 

You probably wouldn’t believe me.

I wouldn't believe you because the evidence isn't on the same playing field. You could say that there is testimonial evidence for alien abduction, but from what I have read, these are almost certainly cases of old hag syndrome.

Continuing: "The difference is the background knowledge in each case. In Star Trek, there are transporters that can span an incredible distance in a second, not to mention galaxy class starships that make such a feat possible. In the real world, only a handful of human beings have undergone the training and incredible journey via rocket spacecraft to make it to the moon, a process that takes a lot longer than a day. 

Now what if my statement was about me doing something physically impossible that no level of technology can overcome? How much more unbelievable is that? Our entire lives we build on this background knowledge of how the world works.

Does my moon lunch scenario become any more plausible if I amend it to say “God transported me to the moon for lunch and then sent me back home to Earth for dinner that same day”?

If I were to try and use a defense in a murder trial that my concealed carry gun levitated out of my holster and fired on my hiking companion in the middle of the woods, would the jury accept or reject that claim? Would you want the jury to accept that claim?"

There is a lot wrong here. 

1: We have a mechanism by which the miraculous can happen. Divine Entities. 

2: You are bound by the laws of nature, God is not. As Craig Keener (2011, p. 131) observes: 

 "“One violates a law only to which one is subject, so the language would not be consistent with the theistic premises…”

3: Christians do not claim that Jesus rose by human powers, rather, they claim God raised him (Acts 2:24; 3:15; 10:40; 13:30; Romans 4:24; 8:11).

4: Jesus is not a mere human, he is God in the flesh.

So, again, CA presents us with a disanalogy.

He says: Even if someone was recently convinced by apologetic arguments to be a “mere theist”, why should the regard the 5 pieces of testimonial evidence we have to the resurrection of Jesus over the other pieces of testimony we have for a wide array of miracle claims for contradictory religions like Hinduism, Mormonism, or Islam?

Miracles are only evidence against CA's naturalism. The Bible is full of miracles from non-believers. Take pharaoh's magicians in the Exodus or Satan himself tempting Christ. Examples abound.

He says "The general fact that there are a lot of non-verifiable, implausible miracle claims would seem to support the idea that a supernatural realm exists. However once we look more closely at the data, the specific details of miracle claims that happen in support of contradictory religions undermine the idea that the supernatural exists, or at the very least that miracles can serve as evidence for the truth of a specific religion."

Again, this does not work against Biblical theism, as per above.

He goes after Mike Licona after this, & I don't have a dog in that fight. I am also not going to do his homework for him. The relevant texts on miracles are cited above.

References

Miracles: The Credibility Of The New Testament Accounts. Baker Academic 2011.