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Vaniver comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong
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No, it's not. Nowhere even close. You seem unable to distinguish between 'claims that are bold and daring' with 'claims that are important to my faith'. Claiming some guy came back from the dead for a couple of days, then disappeared again, but we totally have witnesses is not a bold claim.
The entire population of Earth being wiped out in a flood is a bold claim.
Two entire cities getting destroyed by supernatural means is a bold claim.
An entire world power getting torn asunder by a series of supernatural plagues is a bold claim.
Jesus' resurrection isn't a bold claim. The other claims require unfathomable property damage and loss of life on the multiple-world-war scale. Jesus' claim requires about as many people who went to my High School Prom all agreeing to tell a lie. That's what Eliezer means about the difference between large and small miracles.
To claim Jesus resurrected is a bold claim, especially since Jesus was a public figure who received a public execution within a very hostile and skeptical environment.
Let me illustrate with two scenarios. For the purposes of this example, let's say I'm from a small town and both scenarios involve me making a claim to a miraculous event.
Scenario 1:
I tell the people in my town that all of Israel's modern day enemies (Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.) just miraculously got wiped out by hail stones and fire from heaven. Yes, that is a bold claim.
Scenario 2:
I tell the people in my small town that the Sheriff they all know and all recently witnessed getting gunned down in public and whose funeral they all attended and saw his dead body in the casket, is still alive because he rose from the dead with 500 town folk (who I mention by name; Jess, Billy, Tom, Sarah May) who witnessed him ascend into heaven.
Without such a thing as the internet, which one of these claims is easier for the town people to verify or discredit? Which claim is really bolder?
Now, imagine if the town people were the ones who murdered the Sheriff and are eager to tie up any loose ends.
Anyways, one thing I'm sure you haven't done is actually read the Bible without the presupposition that it's lying. Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I have yet to see any skeptic really do that.
Um... I read the Bible as a child, as I would expect most skeptics who were raised by Christian parents did. I actually turned against Christianity because I did not like the God depicted in the Bible, which happened because I took the Bible at face value. It wasn't until later that I built up the materialistic worldview which sees the Bible as a piece of literature rather than a collection of historical claims.
If I had just treated the Bible as clothing that my family and friends chose to wear, it would have been easy to continue wearing that clothing, while not actually holding the implied belief system. (I like my family and the friends I grew up with!) Instead, I treated it as actually constraining my expectations of God and the universe, and the resulting beliefs clashed against each other until they were destroyed. (My materialistic beliefs work together much more nicely.)
Just because you find the God of the Bible unpalatable to your personal tastes of what God should or should not be, doesn't make it any more true or false, does it?
Your claim was that you had not met a skeptic who read the Bible while expecting it to be true. I provided evidence that I am a skeptic, and that I had read the Bible while expecting it to be true.
You are, of course, free to take the No True Scotsman route and declare that I didn't really presuppose that the Bible was telling the truth, but I might as well declare now that doing that would end this conversation.