Catholic church at it again. This time Holland.

[Coito ergo sum]

Why should I bother providing proofs to you, you have abstained from doing so whenever it suited you.

Hypocrisy made manifest. Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum.

You routinely wrongly use labels for logical fallacies where they don't belong.

Here is another example: Ipse dixit.

Ipse Dixit is one of the logical fallacies you commit when advancing the god hypothesis.

Something is ipse dixit when it is a dogmatic statement asserted but not proved, to be accepted on faith in the speaker.

Like - "it says it it in the Bible..."

Or, based on what the Pope, prophets, or apostles say....

Or, they claim something, and they may have proof stashed away in the Vatican Library, but they haven't presented it....

Those are things that are ipse dixit, Seth. Religious claims - claims that "God exists" because of documentary or authoritarian sources, or because of reports of miracles or personal revelations, are quintessentially ipse dixit.

We have to trust Padre Pio when he says he received the stigmata. We have to trust the person in the hospital who says that he saw angels outside the hospital room. We have to trust Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

[Seth]

Why should I bother providing proofs to you, you have abstained from doing so whenever it suited you.

Hypocrisy made manifest. Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum.

You routinely wrongly use labels for logical fallacies where they don't belong.

Here is another example: Ipse dixit.

Ipse Dixit is one of the logical fallacies you commit when advancing the god hypothesis.

Something is ipse dixit when it is a dogmatic statement asserted but not proved, to be accepted on faith in the speaker.

Like - "it says it it in the Bible..."

Or, based on what the Pope, prophets, or apostles say....

Or, they claim something, and they may have proof stashed away in the Vatican Library, but they haven't presented it....

Those are things that are ipse dixit, Seth. Religious claims - claims that "God exists" because of documentary or authoritarian sources, or because of reports of miracles or personal revelations, are quintessentially ipse dixit.

We have to trust Padre Pio when he says he received the stigmata. We have to trust the person in the hospital who says that he saw angels outside the hospital room. We have to trust Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

"Ipse dixit" = Literally, "he hath said it." "Quod erat demonstrandum" = Literally, "therefore it is demonstrated."

"Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum" = In reference to the statement "Why should I bother providing proofs to you..." and the comment by me "Hypocrisy made manifest" means "Gawdzilla's hypocrisy is made manifest and is demonstrated by the fact that he himself has refused to provide proofs of his claims (that Jesus did not exist) when he himself consistently demands proofs from others for similar claims."

[Seth]

Why should I bother providing proofs to you, you have abstained from doing so whenever it suited you.

Hypocrisy made manifest. Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum.

You routinely wrongly use labels for logical fallacies where they don't belong.

Here is another example: Ipse dixit.

Ipse Dixit is one of the logical fallacies you commit when advancing the god hypothesis.

Something is ipse dixit when it is a dogmatic statement asserted but not proved, to be accepted on faith in the speaker.

Like - "it says it it in the Bible..."

Or, based on what the Pope, prophets, or apostles say....

Or, they claim something, and they may have proof stashed away in the Vatican Library, but they haven't presented it....

Those are things that are ipse dixit, Seth. Religious claims - claims that "God exists" because of documentary or authoritarian sources, or because of reports of miracles or personal revelations, are quintessentially ipse dixit.

We have to trust Padre Pio when he says he received the stigmata. We have to trust the person in the hospital who says that he saw angels outside the hospital room. We have to trust Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

You could go to the Vatican and examine the evidence yourself, or you could engage in scientific analysis of a particular claim yourself. The fact that you are lazy, scientifically incompetent or unwilling to do the research does not speak to the truth or falsity of the claim, therefore you have committed the Genetic Fallacy, which is "a line of "reasoning" in which a perceived defect in the origin of a claim or thing is taken to be evidence that discredits the claim or thing itself. It is also a line of reasoning in which the origin of a claim or thing is taken to be evidence for the claim or thing. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. The origin of a claim or thing is presented.
2. The claim is true(or false) or the thing is supported (or discredited)."

In this case, the "origin" of the god-claim (Matthew, Mark, Padre Pio) is presented and you rule that the god-claim is false because of the origin of the claim.

Your statement is fallacy because the source of the claim is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the claim itself. It's an iteration of the Atheist's Fallacy.

It's also a form of the Ad Hominem Tu Quoque fallacy in many cases. Ie: "The Pope says God exist, but we all know the Pope supports child buggery, so God cannot exist."

In the classic form you use ipse dixit, which can be restated as the "because I told you so, that's why" fallacy, the claims made by Matthew, Mark or Padre Pio would only be ipse dixit if the author of the claims expected people to believe the unproven assertion based only on the fact that the claimant made the claim. But that's not what's expected of any of the claims you state. This is because the authors (with the exception of Jesus himself) are not demanding acceptance based on what THEY are claiming BECAUSE they have made the claim, they are relating their experiences and beliefs, and those claims or commands they believe come FROM GOD.

Therefore, the correct fallacy would be the fallacy of "appeal to authority" where someone makes a claim based on what some authoritative figure says about the subject. The thing about the appeal to authority fallacy is that it's only a fallacy if the person being used as an authority is NOT an authority on the subject.

Therefore, "Richard Dawkins says that genes self-replicate in order to perpetuate their structure in a species" is not a fallacious appeal to authority because Dawkins is a recognized expert in genetics.

Now, one might think that the statement "Jesus said 'I am the resurrection and the life, if you believe in me you will have eternal life'" is an appeal to authority fallacy, but that would depend on whether or not Jesus was, in fact, the Son of God who was authorized to make that promise and that claim. One might say that Jesus' claim is an ipse dixit claim in the sense that you use it, but then you would be required to show that Jesus is NOT the Son of God and that he does NOT provide eternal life in return for belief in him.

You might argue that this claim is an "unproven assertion" while trying to label it ipse dixit, but then you would be making an ipse dixit claim of your own because you cannot prove that the assertion is unproven, you can only say that YOU disbelieve the eternal life claim and have no data upon which to claim it's "unproven" because you have not yet died, and therefore you have not tested the claim.

The fact that the eternal life claim is unprovable TO YOU (or to anyone who has not died) without your dying first, does not render the claim to be false. Nor does it render it true.

However, there is interesting evidence from people who have had "near death" experiences that points, however vaguely, towards some sort of after-life that cannot as yet be explained by science.

So, on one side of the balance we have your skepticism, but your skepticism is based on an utter absence of evidence or proof that the eternal life claim is false, and on the other side we have the eternal life claim combined with thousands of near-death experiences by individuals that point towards an afterlife of some sort.

So, on one side we have zero evidence against the eternal life claim, and on the other side we have some scintilla of evidence for the eternal life claim.

Therefore, the preponderance of the evidence that we have at the moment weighs on the side of eternal life, or at least some sort of afterlife, which debunks the ipse dixit claim you make.

[Robert_S]

"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy"

[Robert_S]

There isn't any evidence.

No, there isn't any evidence that you're aware of that you are willing to give credence to. There is, however, evidence.

What is it?

Ask them. I believe the church has archives going back thousands of years documenting their evidence of God.

I have. I've spoken to priests as high as Monsignors, overseeing entire diocese. I've read a great deal of Catholic literature, well beyond the Catholic Bible (which is dramatically different than the Protestant and other non-Catholic versions of the Bible) seeking what they may claim to be their "evidence of God." They make grand claims, yes. But, they don't have evidence. They claim revelation through the man-appointed Pope, and the historical belief in the god-inspired nature of the Bible.

The Catholic Church says this, for example: "History alone allows us to establish the fact that Jews and Christians have always believed in the inspiration of the Bible. But what is this belief worth? Proofs of the rational as well as of the dogmatic order unite in justifying it. Those who first recognized in the Bible a superhuman work had as foundation of their opinion the testimony of the Prophets, of Christ, and of the Apostles, whose Divine mission was sufficiently established by immediate experience or by history. To this purely rational argument can be added the authentic teaching of the Church. A Catholic may claim this additional certitude without falling into a vicious circle, because the infallibility of the Church in its teaching is proved independently of the inspiration of Scripture; the historical value, belonging to Scripture in common with every other authentic and truthful writing, is enough to prove this."

So, the Catholic Church says: (1) folks "always" believed in the inspiration of the Bible, (2) those who first adopted that belief credited the "testimony" of the Prophets, Jesus and the Apostles (and they were deemed trustworthy by experience/history), and (3) it's rational to believe in the god-inspired nature of the Bible because the Church is infallible in this regard and the Church says so.

Now, in no other context would such insipid and trite "logic" be accepted. It boils down to "we believe it because folks have always believed it and authority figures say so and said so." Pure sophistry in the extreme. I've seen you, Seth, hand-wave away better arguments than that with a sniff and a sneer.

This is the "doubt" to which you confer the "benefit."

Remember that Wayback fallacy?

If they get their legitimacy from their long history, then their long history is also grounds to dismiss that legitimacy,

[Seth]

There isn't any evidence.

No, there isn't any evidence that you're aware of that you are willing to give credence to. There is, however, evidence.

What is it?

Ask them. I believe the church has archives going back thousands of years documenting their evidence of God.

I have. I've spoken to priests as high as Monsignors, overseeing entire diocese. I've read a great deal of Catholic literature, well beyond the Catholic Bible (which is dramatically different than the Protestant and other non-Catholic versions of the Bible) seeking what they may claim to be their "evidence of God." They make grand claims, yes. But, they don't have evidence. They claim revelation through the man-appointed Pope, and the historical belief in the god-inspired nature of the Bible.

The Catholic Church says this, for example: "History alone allows us to establish the fact that Jews and Christians have always believed in the inspiration of the Bible. But what is this belief worth? Proofs of the rational as well as of the dogmatic order unite in justifying it. Those who first recognized in the Bible a superhuman work had as foundation of their opinion the testimony of the Prophets, of Christ, and of the Apostles, whose Divine mission was sufficiently established by immediate experience or by history. To this purely rational argument can be added the authentic teaching of the Church. A Catholic may claim this additional certitude without falling into a vicious circle, because the infallibility of the Church in its teaching is proved independently of the inspiration of Scripture; the historical value, belonging to Scripture in common with every other authentic and truthful writing, is enough to prove this."

So, the Catholic Church says: (1) folks "always" believed in the inspiration of the Bible, (2) those who first adopted that belief credited the "testimony" of the Prophets, Jesus and the Apostles (and they were deemed trustworthy by experience/history), and (3) it's rational to believe in the god-inspired nature of the Bible because the Church is infallible in this regard and the Church says so.

Now, in no other context would such insipid and trite "logic" be accepted. It boils down to "we believe it because folks have always believed it and authority figures say so and said so." Pure sophistry in the extreme. I've seen you, Seth, hand-wave away better arguments than that with a sniff and a sneer.

This is the "doubt" to which you confer the "benefit."

Remember that Wayback fallacy?

If they get their legitimacy from their long history, then their long history is also grounds to dismiss that legitimacy,

But what is the origin of that legitimacy? The origin of biblical (Old Testament) legitimacy is (alleged to be) the actual miraculous/divine events that occurred to specified individuals like, for example, Moses and the Israelites. These experiences have been written down and copied, but the claims made regarding events that occurred were experienced by actual people (or so it's claimed) who lived through the actual events. In the case of Jesus, the Gospels come down directly from those (in some cases) who actually experienced the events written of. They claim to have been there and witnessed the events.

Personal testimony is absolutely "evidence," even in court, although the veracity of testimonial evidence is always open to challenge. But the burden of proof when it comes to testimonial evidence is almost always on the one who is challenging the veracity of the testimony, which means that if one disbelieves what Paul said about the events of Jesus' life that he himself witnessed, it's up to the skeptic to provide evidence that the testimony is false or incorrect.

So it's not as if it's Paul saying "Jesus is the Son of God and you must believe me because I say it is so" that would make it the ipse dixit fallacy that CES writes of. Instead, it's Paul saying "Here's what I witnessed during the end of the life of Jesus, and here's what he told me."

Skeptics are free to discount this evidence, but they take up the burden of proving it to be false when they do so. What you and CES are making is in essence a "poisoning the well" argument or perhaps an argument from incredulity. You both discount the first-person claims made merely because they have been documented and repeated down through history, but this is no more credible than saying that all of Dawkins' claims are false merely because you did not hear them from his mouth. More is required of the skeptic who discounts the testimony of those who claim to have witnessed miraculous or divine events than mere incredulity if their skepticism is not itself to be discounted as unsubstantiated.

The Catholic citation above says it quite clearly where it says "Those who first recognized in the Bible a superhuman work had as foundation of their opinion the testimony of the Prophets, of Christ, and of the Apostles..." Whether one can credit the "superhuman" claim or not, the important part of the statement is that those who wrote of the events, and those who came after, were ultimately relying upon actual experience and testimony by witnesses to the events that took place. The nature of the events makes it impossible for science to replicate them as it would do with a "natural" phenomenon being falsified, but that in and of itself does not provide evidence towards the falsity of the observational claims.

Now, it may be that Jesus was a time-travelling con-artist from the 43rd century who performed "miracles" for the credulous and uneducated of the time using advanced methods and equipment that even we today do not know of and cannot create, but cold logic and reason does not permit a rational person to summarily discount contemporary descriptions of ancient events recorded by observers of the time merely because they conflict with present-day beliefs about the nature of the universe, because we don't today understand the universe and all it's physical laws and phenomena nearly completely enough to make that a reasoned judgment.

As I've said so many times, the very best that science can say about the existence of God is "we don't know."

There is simply insufficient information upon which to base a well-reasoned and critically robust claim that God either does or does not exist. But, when we look at what evidence there is, scanty and unbelievable as you might think it is, the preponderance of the evidence comes down on the side of the existence of God, I'm afraid. This is so despite all the claims made by science that God is "unnecessary" to "naturalistic" explanations precisely because the possibility remains, however unlikely you may think it is, that what is "necessary" is not, in fact, always and inevitably the actual mechanism involved.

I reiterate my example of BT corn as proof that, for example, the scientific conceit that "naturalistic" evolution "adequately" explains the complexity and nature of living organisms on earth today and that therefore intelligent design is not "necessary" and that, by fallacious extension of that conceit, neither God nor intelligent design exist because both are "unnecessary," is a false claim. BT corn proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that an intelligence equal to our own is capable of manipulating the genetic structure of the corn plant to intelligently design it to meet a specific purpose.

It is hardly beyond reason to say that an intelligence greater than our own at some time in the deep past would therefore be capable of manipulating the genetic structure of other organisms, from plants to dinosaurs to homo sapiens, using any of a number of methods and techniques we aren't currently aware of, to intelligently design life on this planet...or merely to intelligently manipulate life on earth to guide it down particular avenues of evolution, for reasons entirely unknown to us.

The evolution of the bacterial lancet into the bacterial flagellum has been hypothesized but never replicated by humans in a laboratory. And even if some researcher somewhere manages to mix a soup of protein chains together and manipulates the requisite chains together into both a lancet and a flagellum, all that will have been proven is that intelligent design is a valid possibility as an explanation for the existence and nature of life on earth!

And until some scientist manages to observe a bacteria evolving FROM having a lancet INTO having a flagellum (showing the intermediate steps of evolution that permit it to occur "naturally") there's no more credible evidence that a lancet DID evolve into a flagellum based (as was the case in Dover) on the common protein chains in both mechanisms than there is that a six-cylinder internal combustion engine "evolved" into a jet engine merely because both mechanisms use 7/16th inch bolts and nuts as components.

Dawkins admits that "extraterrestrial" intelligent design is possible (and therefore acknowledges it as being a fully scientific proposition) but blithely discounts the possibility because he prefers not to think of himself as some experimental organism in some advanced intelligence's science experiment. I understand his narcissistic need to feel superior, but it's not a remotely rational, logical or scientific position to hold, and it amply demonstrates the high degree of bias and narrow-minded attitudes he has towards the possibility of intelligent design of life on Earth.

So, your argument from incredulity is not credible or critically robust, I'm afraid.

[Robert_S]

Paul saw Jesus before the Crucifixion?

I thought he just persecuted the disciples?

[Seth]

Paul saw Jesus before the Crucifixion?

I thought he just persecuted the disciples?

Hm...maybe I got my Apostles wrong. Still, the point remains.

[Hermit]

the Gospels come down directly from those (in some cases) who actually experienced the events written of. They claim to have been there and witnessed the events.

No, they don't. Luke explicitly writes that he is relying on the reports of others for his rendition of the life of Jesus. [Luke 1:1–4]. Luke's gospel, along with those of Matthew and Mark, also differs significantly from that of John's, who some claim to be "the beloved apostle" Jesu. Biblical historians, however, have so far been unable to establish a generally accepted covenance indicating that John, the apostle, is in fact the John who wrote that gospel.

Reaching back to the veracity of the old testament, I am sceptical that a reliable witness account can be found for, say, god creating everything there is in six days, making Adam out of mud, fashioning Eve from a rib of Adam, and driving both of them out of paradise because they have eaten from the "tree of knowledge". Evolutionary theory and astrophysics seem to rest on better evidentiary foundations than the bible to base our view of life and the universe.

[Animavore]

The Bible has zero evidence. Don't point to the Bible as evidence. The Bible makes the claim. It can not be used as evidence for itself. Imagine we accepted E=MC2 just because someone claimed it!
Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden may have been real people and places (see BBC's Bible's Buried Secrets). Adam seems to be a king who sold Judea out to the Babylonians. Eve, his wife, seems to have got the blame for the way he went in similar fashion to Courtney Love or Yoko Ono. The Garden of Eden was perhaps a place of worship and there is good archaeological evidence to suppose this to be the case.
These stories were made up by a bunch of Jews trying to find their place in the world and with their god(s). They should be treated exactly as we treat Greek/Roman gods. To take them seriously in this day and age is dumb. Sorry to be a bigoted, intolerant atheist about it.

[Animavore]

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, evenhis eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

This verse epitomises belief. If you swallow that you'll swallow anything. You are a gullible twat. You are dead to me

[amused]

You must believe in order to be able to believe.

I guess that's why they call it a leap of faith, AKA self delusion.

[Robert_S]

You must believe in order to be able to believe.

I guess that's why they call it a leap of faith, AKA self delusion.

No, you only need to think you believe today in order to remember that you believe tomorrow.

[Coito ergo sum]

Why should I bother providing proofs to you, you have abstained from doing so whenever it suited you.

Hypocrisy made manifest. Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum.

You routinely wrongly use labels for logical fallacies where they don't belong.

Here is another example: Ipse dixit.

Ipse Dixit is one of the logical fallacies you commit when advancing the god hypothesis.

Something is ipse dixit when it is a dogmatic statement asserted but not proved, to be accepted on faith in the speaker.

Like - "it says it it in the Bible..."

Or, based on what the Pope, prophets, or apostles say....

Or, they claim something, and they may have proof stashed away in the Vatican Library, but they haven't presented it....

Those are things that are ipse dixit, Seth. Religious claims - claims that "God exists" because of documentary or authoritarian sources, or because of reports of miracles or personal revelations, are quintessentially ipse dixit.

We have to trust Padre Pio when he says he received the stigmata. We have to trust the person in the hospital who says that he saw angels outside the hospital room. We have to trust Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

"Ipse dixit" = Literally, "he hath said it." "Quod erat demonstrandum" = Literally, "therefore it is demonstrated."

"Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum" = In reference to the statement "Why should I bother providing proofs to you..." and the comment by me "Hypocrisy made manifest" means "Gawdzilla's hypocrisy is made manifest and is demonstrated by the fact that he himself has refused to provide proofs of his claims (that Jesus did not exist) when he himself consistently demands proofs from others for similar claims."

I'm aware of what ipse dixit and QED mean. And, what you wrote about Gawdzilla doesn't change the fact that the religious claims we've been discussing are quintissentially ipse dixit.

[Coito ergo sum]

Why should I bother providing proofs to you, you have abstained from doing so whenever it suited you.

Hypocrisy made manifest. Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum.

You routinely wrongly use labels for logical fallacies where they don't belong.

Here is another example: Ipse dixit.

Ipse Dixit is one of the logical fallacies you commit when advancing the god hypothesis.

Something is ipse dixit when it is a dogmatic statement asserted but not proved, to be accepted on faith in the speaker.

Like - "it says it it in the Bible..."

Or, based on what the Pope, prophets, or apostles say....

Or, they claim something, and they may have proof stashed away in the Vatican Library, but they haven't presented it....

Those are things that are ipse dixit, Seth. Religious claims - claims that "God exists" because of documentary or authoritarian sources, or because of reports of miracles or personal revelations, are quintessentially ipse dixit.

We have to trust Padre Pio when he says he received the stigmata. We have to trust the person in the hospital who says that he saw angels outside the hospital room. We have to trust Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

You could go to the Vatican and examine the evidence yourself,

Other than restatements of the claim, or additional unsupported assertions, there is no evidence there. The people making the claim have the burden of proof. If they are too lazy to get the evidence from their own library and show it to the world (they have scanners, and they have a website - the evidence could so easily be posted that it strains credulity to suspect that they have it in the Vatican but find it too difficult or arduous to present it).

Until they present proof for their claims, their arguments are ipse dixit. You seem to acknowledge the validity of that fallacy. One might wonder why you refuse to apply it to the Catholic Church.

or you could engage in scientific analysis of a particular claim yourself.

I do. The god hypothesis fails. If someone can prove me wrong, I'm open to the proof. Saying it is buried in an arcane library in Constantinople or Timbuktu, under a rock in Mecca, or in the basement of the Vatican, is not an answer. It's certainly not one you would accept from anyone else on any other issue, yet you advance it on behalf of the Vatican. It's disingenuous sophistry on your part, Seth. The worst kind of fatuousness, and quite unbecoming.

The fact that you are lazy,

If I'm lazy for not flying to the Vatican and searching their stacks for this evidence that you speculate might exist there, what does that say of the Pope and the Cardinals and all the Bishops and other folks with immediate access to that proof? What does it say of douchebags who HAVE THE PROOF IN HAND and simply do not share it with the world?

What kind of evil bastard would hide the evidence like that? Their stated calling is to preach the "Truth" to the World and save the souls of human beings by bringing them to the One True Church and the salvation that is obtainable only through God Himself in the incarnate form of the Son, Jesus Christ? Think of all the souls they could save by presenting the proof they have right there, cataloged in their own library! They must be content to allow people to live in error and wrong belief, destined to an eternity in Hell, since they apparently are refusing to present the evidence that they know full well is in their own archives.

scientifically incompetent

No, the assertions of priests about gods are false. Their sacrifices on the blood stained and reeking altars were sacrifices to nothings. Their threats of hellfire and eternal torture have been, and always were the sadistic ravings of cynical opportunists, fleecing their "flocks" and lining their pockets in "this" world, while promising a better world to come for those they swindle.

or unwilling to do the research does not speak to the truth or falsity of the claim,

A person who claims to have evidence to support their claim in their basement, but refuses to present it, is committing the logical fallacy of ipse dixit. As a result, their argument need not be taken seriously. Said another way, what is asserted without presenting evidence may be rejected without presenting evidence.

therefore you have committed the Genetic Fallacy, which is "a line of "reasoning" in which a perceived defect in the origin of a claim or thing is taken to be evidence that discredits the claim or thing itself.

You failed Logic in college, didn't you?

The claim is asserted without any basis. Therefore, it is baseless. It is not rational to support baseless claims. Saying there might be evidence in the Vatican basement somewhere is not evidence, and it is up to the party making the claim to support it. They haven't. Therefore it is unsupported. The fact that they have absolute control over the situs of the claimed evidence (the Vatican library) indicates that if the evidence exists, they refuse to produce it by choice (for undisclosed reasons) which indicates that the Church would rather billions of people remain ignorant of the so-called "Truth" than undertake the easy and simple task of presenting the evidence. Alternatively, and more likely, is the fact that they don't produce it because it doesn't exist. Until they do produce it, I am justified under basic principles of logic to assume it doesn't exist.

Moreover, I haven't committed the Genetic Fallacy. The Genetic Fallacy is where a conclusion is suggested based solely on something or someone's origin rather than its current meaning or context. Example, "Is he hysterical? No, of course not. He's not a woman." This is the Genetic Fallacy because it suggests that a man can't be hysterical because the word was based originally on the Greek and meant that a woman's uterus was traveling around her body and causing her to act all crazy-like. That isn't the current meaning, though, so to conclude that a man can't be hysterical because the word originally applied only to women is the "Genetic Fallacy."

That has fuck-all to do with the fact that those advancing the god hypothesis have not advanced any evidence besides ipsi dixit, argumentum ad populum, and argumentum ad verecundiam.

It is also a line of reasoning in which the origin of a claim or thing is taken to be evidence for the claim or thing. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:

1. The origin of a claim or thing is presented.
2. The claim is true(or false) or the thing is supported (or discredited)."

In this case, the "origin" of the god-claim (Matthew, Mark, Padre Pio) is presented and you rule that the god-claim is false because of the origin of the claim.

That's not an example of the Genetic Fallacy. See above. The origin of the god claim is not Mathew Mark Luke John or Padre Pio) -- those folks are MAKING the claim. Their claims are presented ipse dixit.

Your statement is fallacy because the source of the claim is irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the claim itself. It's an iteration of the Atheist's Fallacy.

Bollocks. What you suggest there is that any claim made by any person is itself evidence of the claim. Padre Pio is a person. If he makes a claim that "I got these miraculous stigmata on my hands" then it's up to him to prove how they got there. If he doesn't, it's ipse dixit. If he goes further and says "God" put them there, then again, it's his burden to prove it. Since he hasn't, it's a bare claim offered ipse dixit.

It's also a form of the Ad Hominem Tu Quoque fallacy in many cases. Ie: "The Pope says God exist, but we all know the Pope supports child buggery, so God cannot exist."

Ad Hominem and Tu Quoque are two different fallacies. The former attacks the person, not the argument, which I haven't done. And, the second says "you do it too" which I also haven't done.

I never said that god doesn't exist because the pope supports child buggery. Straw Man.

I said the Pope can't and hasn't proved that any god exists, and his claims are mere ipse dixit, argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad verecundiam. That's not an ad hominem. That's an accurate assessment of the snake oil that Popes have sold and continue to sell.

In the classic form you use ipse dixit, which can be restated as the "because I told you so, that's why" fallacy, the claims made by Matthew, Mark or Padre Pio would only be ipse dixit if the author of the claims expected people to believe the unproven assertion based only on the fact that the claimant made the claim. But that's not what's expected of any of the claims you state. This is because the authors (with the exception of Jesus himself) are not demanding acceptance based on what THEY are claiming BECAUSE they have made the claim, they are relating their experiences and beliefs, and those claims or commands they believe come FROM GOD.

They believe, without evidence, that they come from God.

"Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." - John 20. They most certainly do want people to just believe because I say so.

It's recast today as:

Therefore, the correct fallacy would be the fallacy of "appeal to authority" where someone makes a claim based on what some authoritative figure says about the subject. The thing about the appeal to authority fallacy is that it's only a fallacy if the person being used as an authority is NOT an authority on the subject.

Ipse dixit was only one of the fallacies they commit. Argumentum ad verecudiam, as I have previously said, comes up a lot too. And, of course the argumentum ad populum, to appeal to "tradition" and "everyone has believed it for a long time" nonsense.

Therefore, "Richard Dawkins says that genes self-replicate in order to perpetuate their structure in a species" is not a fallacious appeal to authority because Dawkins is a recognized expert in genetics.

No, it's because Richard Dawkins' assertions are backed up by evidence which can be verified by others. He doesn't hide the evidence in an obscure library in Cambridge and ask Seth to go conduct a research expedition to dig it out.

Why don't you apply your own logic consistently? You ought to accept what Dawkins says, right? After all, he makes the claim and believes he has evidence to support it. You just don't think the evidence is sufficient to meet your need for proof. However, you don't have universal knowledge, and therefore unless you've gotten your lazy, incompetent ass off your couch and read everything in the libraries at Cambridge, you can't possibly say anything discounting his argument. Right?

Now, one might think that the statement "Jesus said 'I am the resurrection and the life, if you believe in me you will have eternal life'" is an appeal to authority fallacy, but that would depend on whether or not Jesus was, in fact, the Son of God who was authorized to make that promise and that claim. One might say that Jesus' claim is an ipse dixit claim in the sense that you use it, but then you would be required to show that Jesus is NOT the Son of God and that he does NOT provide eternal life in return for belief in him.

I would claim it as hearsay, within hearsay, within hearsay. Jesus isn't here, so we have a report written by someone other than Jesus, reporting on what Jesus said. We aren't sure whether the person writing the original document was actually there to hear what he said, but even if he did, the reliability of ear-witness accounts of what someone said in a speech is always suspect (at a minimum). Unless someone is transcribing the entire speech, inevitably there is paraphrasing and misattributions and other mistakes in reporting what Jesus actually said. Then there is the fact that the copies of the Bible we have today are copies of copies made hundreds of years - centuries - after the original copy was written down, and they were done by hand back then, and so we not only have to trust Jesus, but we have to trust the original reporter, and then the copiers of the documents and all the translators.

Then there is a question as to what Jesus even meant by that. What does it mean for him to "be" the resurrection and the life? Literally? He "is" resurrection? He "is" life? That seems to me to be metaphorical. He isn't really, literally resurrection, he isn't really life itself. It would seem to me to be more likely him claiming to be the means to effect human resurrection and human life (after death). He says that "if you believe in me you will have eternal life." ONLY belief? There is another clause in the Bible which states that "belief without works is dead." So, we are left wondering whether Jesus meant that literally either, and whether mere belief gets you eternal life. And, then we don't know whether eternal life or resurrection is literal or metaphorical - some interpretations have posited a bodily resurrection (which was why the church traditionally frowned on cremation and it was important to try to preserve the body after death because the dead would LITERALLY rise and be resurrected). That isn't so literal anymore.

So, what we have here is:

1. A very ambiguous claim, subject to a broad range of interpretations.
2. Which is CLAIMED to have been made by someone named Jesus
3. The people who wrote the Bible CLAIM that Jesus said he was the son of god and/or the way to eternal life and resurrection
4. There is no evidence for the truth of the assertion that Jesus said what is written in the Bible - we are trusting the original reporter and the subsequent copiers and translators.

It's ambiguous hearsay, within hearsay, within hearsay....

You might argue that this claim is an "unproven assertion" while trying to label it ipse dixit, but then you would be making an ipse dixit claim of your own because you cannot prove that the assertion is unproven,

It's axiomatic that all assertions are unproven until they are proven.

Your sophistry is showing. With your logic no assertion is EVER unproven.

you can only say that YOU disbelieve the eternal life claim

I don't believe it, that is true. I don't believe it because it is offered without evidence. Your claim that there might be evidence somewhere in the Vatican basis is specious.

and have no data upon which to claim it's "unproven" because you have not yet died, and therefore you have not tested the claim.

The absence of proof is, by definition, unproven. Unproven: Not demonstrated by evidence or argument as true or existing.

Until it has been proven it is unproven.

Like M-Theory in quantum physics. it's unproven. I don't need to have universal knowledge to know that it is unproven. It is unproven. There is no evidence for it, there is only mathematics which may or may not reflect what actually happens. Might it be possible to prove it. Sure. But, it's still unproven. And, it is the job of someone advancing M Theory as true to present that evidence. To make the absurd claim that Stephen Hawking has the evidence in his basement and it's Seth's job to break in and find it is stupid. And, that's the argument you've made relative to the Vatican Library.

The fact that the eternal life claim is unprovable TO YOU (or to anyone who has not died) without your dying first, does not render the claim to be false. Nor does it render it true.

I never said it was false. I said it was unproven. Lots of things in the universe are unproven and yet are true. It is unproven how many planets are in the Milky Way galaxy, but there is a true number that can be known.

You changed the argument. I did NOT say that Jesus' claim was false. i said it was unproven, ipse dixit, offered without proof. It is hearsay within hearsay within hearsay, and is fatally ambiguous. Is it "true?" I don't know. I do know that I don't believe it for the same reason I don't believe in the Dragon in Carl Sagan's garage. Is it "true" that there is a dragon there? I don't know.

I think you have a problem focusing on what words mean sometimes. Unproven doesn't mean false. And, just because something might be true doesn't mean one is logically justified in believing in it.

However, there is interesting evidence from people who have had "near death" experiences that points, however vaguely, towards some sort of after-life that cannot as yet be explained by science.

Much of near death experience can be recreated in the human mind, and can and has been explained or is explainable as a function of the brain. There are, of course, many things about the brain and human functioning that science has not yet explained. However, all that means is that we don't know something. The failure of science to yet explain a phenomenon is not evidence of a god cause. Just stop at "I don't know," and that's enough. Adding arbitrary factors doesn't help, and it's not logical.

So, on one side of the balance we have your skepticism, but your skepticism is based on an utter absence of evidence or proof that the eternal life claim is false,

I never said it was false. I said it was unproven, and offered without proof. It is. I also said there is no reason to believe it. There isn't. It might be true though. It's just as silly to believe in eternal life, however, as it is to believe in reincarnation, or that we're all become gods for other planets in the universe. They all might be true. None of them has been proven.

and on the other side we have the eternal life claim combined with thousands of near-death experiences by individuals that point towards an afterlife of some sort.

It is going to far to say they "point toward an afterlife." Saying that people see a white light or something in their minds is a far cry from "pointing to an afterlife."

You said it yourself - science hasn't explained it yet. So, we don't know. It's not proof of an afterlife. It's proof that the mind does some unexplained things. I don't know what is true, though.

So, on one side we have zero evidence against the eternal life claim, and on the other side we have some scintilla of evidence for the eternal life claim.

There can never be evidence against an eternal life claim, because the claim is unfalsifiable rhetorically. There is no evidence for eternal life - there is evidence for the mind creating images under certain conditions.

Therefore, the preponderance of the evidence that we have at the moment weighs on the side of eternal life, or at least some sort of afterlife, which debunks the ipse dixit claim you make.

Pure sophistry, the kind with the intent to deceive, I suspect.

You know it isn't evidence of an afterlife. You don't know what it's evidence of of. It could be evidence of an afterdeath, whereby the mind endures a second death and the imagery is a result of that. It might be evidence of reincarnation. It might be evidence of images the brain creates when deprived of oxygen, or otherwise in its death throes.

When you say that science hasn't explained the phenomenon yet, it's not license to attribute anything you want to it (which is what you're doing). When you do that, it becomes sophistry, and that's dirty pool.