Meanwhile, in other news ...

If God exists He is by definition beyond our ability to understand all His thoughts and His ways.

Actually, all the precedents that have been set thus far, have taken an entirely different form. Namely, that the moment we are able to obtain data informing us that an entity exist, that data allows said entity to become comprehensible. The data may tell us that an entity exhibits properties and behaviours that are different from entities encountered in the past, and an analysis of said data may lead to postulates about that entity that are counter to past intuitions, but that's the beauty of data - it provides substantive knowledge in a manner mere mythologies can only dream of emulating.

Of course, one of the reasons that supernaturalists prefer mythological assertions to data, is that mythological assertions have a habit of spawning absurd fabrications, which are then treated by supernaturalists as purportedly being "superior" to evidentially supported postulates. Data, on the other hand, imposes constraints upon assertions, to the effect that some assertions are manifestly wrong when the data is brought into play.

To those of us who paid attention in classes devoted to proper discourse and proper evidential standards, mythology is only useful as entertainment.

So you want me to write a systematic theology of all the doctrines in Christianity?

No, just the ones you regard as being the purportedly "correct" ones, as you asserted when this subset of the discourse was launched. Or is that too much effort for you?

A clue for you - it helps if you read the words I actually write, not the ones you think I've written.

If by data you mean information, then data can be obtained on a supernatural being.

How is this done, exactly?

I'd like to see something resembling a methodology here. Which does not mean "fabricate whatever I think will hand-wave away or evade inconvenient questions".

You are the one asserting here, that it is possible to gather data on a supernatural entity, I want to see the details.

If by data you mean only scientific information that can be gathered in the natural world, then you are making a category error.

This assumes that the "supernatural" category is something other than the figment of the imagination of supernaturalists. Which is why I'm asking you to provide your data gathering methodology, precisely so that this hypothesis can be subject to test.

@ AJ777

What was it you said about me that is actually better suited for you?

"You say a lot, but no substance."

rmfr

And once again, it's time to step in and take a look at this.

What kind of test? A scientific test?

I didn't specify the nature of the test. Once again, if you bothered to read the words I actually wrote, instead of your own misrepresentations thereof, you would have known that I left the nature of the test up to you, and did so specifically to see if you actually had something resembling a test to present. Your evasion on this matter is duly noted.

Is there another acceptable type of data you’re willing to consider?

So long as you actually have data, that's what matters. I'll ponder the matter of whether or not what you have to offer actually constitutes proper data afterwards.

What scientific data or experiments have you conducted to determine that nothing supernatural exists?

Well since supernaturalists repeatedly insist that their magic entities are purportedly untestable, it's a bit difficult even for a Nobel Laureate to work with assertions of this nature. Though I'll address the interesting spectacle of you suddenly concentrating upon scientific evidence in a moment.

What scientific data or experiments have you conducted to determine a particular religions historicity is mythological?

I personally haven't conducted such tests, but others have. For example, one of the well-known principles extant in archaeology, is that much of the material found during an excavation, consists of the garbage people left behind and discarded during their daily lives. Even the most mundane pottery fragments arising from tossing a broken pot into the bin, is useful to a trained archaeologist, because those fragments can be informative about the sort of culture the previous owners belonged to, and, in cases where those fragments bear wrting marks, the language of the previous owners, etc. The appearance of discarded items in archaeological excavations is so ubiquitous, that it's practically regarded as a sort of operational law among professional archaeologists.

Now, whenever a text contains statements that humans were occupying a given part of the world, the garbage left behind by those previous occupants is the first thing that archaeologists look for. Because we are a garbage producing species, and a particularly fecund one at that. We and our hominid ancestors have been leaving garbage behind in our wake for 3 million years or so - the stone tools left behind by hominid ancestors are an example of that garbage, either lost or discarded when something better emerged to take its place. The Sumerians left behind them plenty of garbage, along with rather more monumental evidence of their activities, and the same is true of every civilisation that has existed since the dawn thereof. Indeed, we are now starting to leave behind our garbage on other bodies in the Solar System - Mars now has a nice complement of dead spacecraft on its surface, as does Venus and Mercury. The Moon currently plays host to several tons of discarded hardware. We've left a space probe on Titan, that in the fullness of time, will become more of our interplanetary garbage, and the Voyager spacecraft, once they finally shut down and become dead hardware, will be our first pieces of interstellar garbage.

So, whenever a text contains claims that humans were occupying a given region for a significant period of time, the garbage they left behind tells archaeologists a lot about those people, their activities, and their culture. Garbage is, to a trained archaeologist, wonderfully informative. Equally informative, is the absence of garbage, telling the same trained archaeologists that purported "accounts" of human activity in a given region were mythological, not factual, when that garbage fails to materialise despite diligent searches for it.

Now, this is apposite here, because one of the tales that is contained in your mythology, is the tale that a large number of Jewish people spent 40 years wandering around the Sinai Desert. If one delves into that account, and calculates the numbers involved, then that account claims that the best part of a million people were active in that region during this time. As a corollary, if this claim were true, archaeologists can easily verify that claim, by digging up the garbage, examining it in detail, and comparing that garbage to other garbage known to have been left behind by similar people belonging to the same culture, in other places where their presence has been archaeologically verified. Quite simply, a million people active in a given geographical location will leave behind them a lot of garbage for archaeologists to sift through.

Guess what? There's no garbage present in the Sinai Desert dating to that time.

On that basis, we can safely conclude that the purported account in your mythology is precisely that - mythological. The hard evidence that this event happened is quite simply, conspicuous by its deafening absence. If any such garbage had been found, the peer reviewed archaeological literature would have documented this in exquisite detail. Instead, what hasd been found there, is evidence that the Ancient Egyptians sent out parties intermittently to mine turquoise in the region, details of which are presented here. Indeed, so hostile and inimical to permanent human life, are the conditions in that region, that during the Ptolemaic Period, Egyptian civilisation used the Sinai, specifically the outpost fortress of Tjaru, as a banishment and exile location for criminals, evidence for which was presented as long ago as 1906, by James Henry Breasted, in his monumental documentation of known Egyptian archaeological material at that time. A part of that material is the stela upon which is inscribed the Great Edict of Horemheb. Confirmation of Tjaru's usage for this purpose, as well as a military outpost, in accordance with modern standards of data provenance was provided in 2007, as documented in this scholarly work.

Then, of course, there's the whole "global flood" fantasy, which has been debunked by dozens of different lines of independent evidence. If you want to claim that this was a historical event, then allow me to begin pointing and laughing right now, because I'm aware of at least five lines of evidence, including evidence from marine biology, that tosses this fairy tale into the bin.

Moving on ...

It seems by assuming all religions are mythological

No "assumptions" involved. See the above account of the sort of evidence that establishes this.

you’re a bit biased in your assessment of the possibility of obtaining data or a message of supernatural origin.

Oh, this is seriously hilarious.

I really love seeing supernaturalists accuse me of "bias", because I prefer methods of investigation that clearly and manifestly work. Which is even more hilarious, because your attempt to misrepresent my proper concern for evidential standards as "bias", is steamingly hypocritical. I know this to be the case, for one simple reason. Quite simply, if a scientist announced tomorrow, that he had alighted upon hard evidence for the existence of your mythological magic man, you and thousands of other supernaturalists would be engaging in smug, self-satisfied crowing about this for weeks after the announcement. You would be abandoning apologetics and all the other puffery that has been a staple of supernaturalism overnight, if this happened. The oozing of smugness from your ilk would be a torrent of Niagara porportions.

That's before, of course, we factor in to the equation, the manner in which scientific investigation has alighted upon vast classes of entities and phenomena, that the authors of your mythology were incapable of even fantasising about. The authors of your mythology knew nothing about the existence of entire continental land masses on the planet, and if you happen to be residing upon one of those land masses, then this on its own should be a serious source of embarrassment to you. Likewise, the assorted pre-scientific nomads who wrote this mythology, were so ignorant of the biosphere that they couldn't even count correctly the number of legs that an insect possesses, a task that can be accomplished successfully in the modern era by any reasonably astute five year old child. The authors of your mythology were unaware of the existence of entire phyla of living organisms, and were surpassed with respect to astronomical knowledge by the Babylonians.

So, do you have something other than pomposity and bombast to bring here? Because if so, its appearance is long overdue.