Curious, in that although I was made quite aware of the "correct" punctuation in school here in the U.S., I refuse to use it as it is the absolute antithesis of "logical".
The end-quote ends the sentence's subsection of the word or phrase quoted, the period indicates the end of the entire sentence.
The "correct" punctuation is the logical equivalent of doing this in code...
if (instances == 0) IncrementInstances(;)
Which is entirely illogical. Surely someone could throw together a formal argument for this on the basis of Set Theory. The small box goes inside the large box--it shouldn't be "correct" for it to need to protrude out one side.
And, retraction: The evidence I stated was presented to you without challenge or acknowledgement, was actually presented via links to Black Parrot as the next respondent to my original post.
I suppose this calls for refinement of my stance of empirical perception being the absolute bedrock of all knowledge...
I'm saying that you can't use observation X as evidence to support your explanation of observation X.
Yes, you can, in this and every topic. If my explanation is that gasoline burns when ignited, and I observe burning gasoline, that is support of the premise that it is doing so because I ignited it. You'll have to clarify what weird twists of logic make religion a special-case contrary to what everyone does with everything every day.
How does one keep score on fulfilled prophetic claims? Like, how does, say, the Bible stack up against Nostradamus or the Koran?
Pretty-much exactly as your own brain says it does when you aren't typing the opposite of what your own brain says. You have a link giving specific prophecies and approximations of the very-remote likelihood of the occurring by chance. Again, if you assert there is something comparable in other religions, start with the very basic step of providing something to compare with. I have to assume you aren't because you know yourself you couldn't produce anything from every other religion that is comparable. I do not have to give you an algebraic equation to calculate a "prophecy score" for it to be heuristically valid that it is not comparable.
To answer broadly, though, the bible is much more specific and more accurate that Nostradamus could be claimed to be by the most charitable assessment. The Koran is largely the same prophecies by the same prophets, so it is much closer (and no, two things having some correct things does not mean they are equally correct). I would say that the predictions regarding the control of monetary transactions and the political alliances between Islam and what is now Russia and China currently put it ahead by this metric.
The fact that people believe in something hard enough to die for it also isn't really very strong evidence that it's true. Are we saying that Islam is getting more plausible by the day?
This is why I specified "contemporaries". If you were actually around to know the events first-or-second-hand, you would know whether you are intentionally dying for what you know to be a lie. Most would choose not to under those circumstances, if they in fact knew one way or the other. That is what differentiates it from Islamic martyrdom. If 100 Muslims claimed that Mohammed showed up personally at the Dome of the Rock a month ago, and would willingly die rather than deny it, with no apparent gain if they were lying, that would indeed carry considerable argumentative weight.
Your argument would be plausible if what one experiences after death were the -sole- line of evidence for theism. It is not. Fulfilled prophetic claims are another. Willing martyrdom of contemporaries is another.
Given that, I suggest a simpler explanation.
What the religion says one experiences after death, and people experiencing what religion says they will after death, are explained by the fact the the religion is -true-.
Hmm... yes, a Godelian argument. The long-form response to this is that it actually isn't a statement about reality, it is an example of the limitations of the formal system of language.
Similarly, "Bill is asdferrgcoarh" is not actually a statement about reality, it is an incorrect use of language. It is neither false nor true, not because there are things in reality that are neither false nor true, but because the assertion in meaningless (or otherwise self-contradictory, such as your statement).
fortune: No such file or directory