Recently I had a new visitor to the blog where I promote my book (EscapeFromReligion.wordpress.com) and this person left a rather lengthy comment. Since the remarks were primarily directed to non-believers rather than the merits or failures of my book, I decided to publish it on this blog instead. I felt certain my readers and/or followers would enjoy offering their perspectives on what this person had to say (plus, I have some feedback of my own 🙂 ).
Hello Nan. I read your article on “Why I left Christianity”, (NOTE: I believe this person is referring to the “sticky post” on this blog.) and saw how your Christian faith was dismantled. My goal here is to destroy your new paradigm, I hope that’s OK with you.
Upon reading it, it’s evident that beyond all your problems of history, psychology of religion, etc, etc, etc, the biggest problem you had with Christianity that you stressed is the lake of fire. “Truth hurts”, as they say. The truth is that the price of sin is death. The truth is that sin is so inexplicably evil, terrible, that the only conceivable just punishment for it is death. That is how evil it is to a holy God. The truth is that you and I don’t realize it’s that bad, we don’t think it’s nearly that bad, and therefore, we cannot possibly understand why such a punishment can be given for something as small as lying!
But lying is not a ‘small’ thing, it’s inconceptually evil. We however, are no longer aware of its evil because we ourselves are sinners. We’ve become so used to sin that we no longer see the evil in it. A mass murderer no longer sees why murder is evil because he has been doing it for so long. The mass murderer cannot possibly contemplate why something as small as killing another sack of chemicals on this irrelevant planet we call Earth should warrant him going into prison for the rest of his life. But we can see exactly why murder warrants such a punishment, because we’ve never murdered and so we understand how evil it is. Likewise, God has never sinned and understands how evil sin is.
Another thing to notice is that the sources you espouse, for example, this one for addressing the history of Christianity;
https://infidels.org/library/modern/james_still/jesus_search.htmlAre completely ridiculous and hyper-biased to unbelievable levels. As I read this source, I found that it was even sympathetic with the arguments of the Jesus Seminar, a group of crazy people that determine the historicity of what Jesus said by voting on it. These sources are all invalid, extraordinarily misrepresentative of the scholarly view, and hence you need a complete rewashing of your brain. You need to start looking at the positive case again to get the full view instead of just examining the arguments of one side. In this case, I’d recommend you start with this video right now:
Once you’ve started, we can begin once again examining the historicity of the New Testament literature and what scholars really think. Perhaps we can even have a debate through our blogs on whether or not the Gospels are reliable.
Yes indeedy. A debate is most definitely in the works. 🙂
Nan's Notebook 
I’ve started watching for when preachy commenters show up on non-religious blogs, and counting how many comments it takes them to get to THE THREAT™. I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of distribution there is. Well, I have a new data point for my collection from this: one comment. They went right to the threat on their first post, no pussyfooting around with trying to push the nicey stuff first.
Do you have a commenter name for this one? I’m collecting where I got each example, and when I have enough of them, I’ll write a post about it. Thanks.
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He goes by the name, ‘Scientific Christian’. He lavished his wisdom on my site several days ago.
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Can’t wait for the post, Ubi! 🙂
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I’ve just started collecting, so it’s going to be awhile before I have enough examples to see any patterns. But at least it gives me something to do about godbots other than just be annoyed with them.
I’ll have to be sure not to bring up hell if I get in conversations with them, it might bias my data. I want to see when they bring it up on their own.
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Ubi, going immediately to “THE THREAT” is eerily reminiscent of the 1930’s — 1940’s German Gestapo and SS, yes? Using the fear-tactic is as old as all living species on the planet since the beginning.
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Hey Taboo. Nan (for some reason) closed the comment section on the page ‘Reliability of the New Testament’, so I need to move my responses and stuff here. If you’d like to see my response to Arkenaten’s question I also posted it here —
— but this is about something different. With your permission, I’d like to re-post my entire discourse with you on my blog. I think my readers will enjoy it, and I’d like to document the discourse, but I wanted to get your word on it before I do it. Thanks again for the great debate.
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That’s an interesting concept, but realize “the threat” as you call it, is a part of Christian theology. As such, it has to come up sooner or later. People are not trying to threaten you, they are trying to educate you about a danger they believe is real. For them, it’s all “nicey stuff.”
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Of course it’s part of their theology. But they still usually start out with how wonderful their religion is, how true it is, how much better it will make your life, etc. etc. Because I do think that many of them realize that it’s a threat, and they mostly are trying to sweet-talk us into their religion first. That’s why I’m going to be watching for how long it takes these people to get to that point. Some years ago, it took my fundagelical brother-in-law about three emails to my spouse filled with apologetics before he gave up and threw down the “threat”. When that didn’t work, he gave up, shook the dust from his shoes, and flounced off with an “I’ll pray for you”.
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What can you tell a person who already has their mind made up (on both sides)?
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@ Chicagoja
You mean someone like you, who thinks Intelligent Design is where it’s at, right?
What a Silly Person you are.
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Whoever this person is, they’re certainly full of
shthemselves! 🙂LikeLiked by 4 people
Hi Ubi! Interesting collection. 🙂
This person goes by the handle of “Scientific Christian.”
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ha, ha. Not surprised by his tone. I’ve run into him before. Methinks he’s trying to attract attention to his blog. He has hardly any traffic. Over-the-top fundy arrogance coupled with fully-indoctrinated youth. 😦
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“he hardly has any traffic”
My blog has received tens of thousands of hits since I launched it about a year ago, and I have well over a hundred people following it. I don’t post much anymore though since I became amazingly bored with being a blogger. Anyways, I’m sure this more then qualifies as beyond having “hardly any traffic”.
I was further never indoctrinated in my youth, so that should throw out yet another one of your claims.
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Thanks. That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one!
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Don’t worry, Nan. As soon as he detects a verbal arse-kicking in the works, he’ll be gone. . 🙂
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SC, I hope you have read my email by now and have found your comment on this blog. As I indicated, I do have a couple of responses to what you wrote.
First, you wrote/claimed the biggest problem you had with Christianity that you stressed is the lake of fire. I’m truly confused as to where you got this idea. In my book (which I don’t think you’ve read), there is only one chapter devoted to this topic. On this blog, there are no more posts devoted to this subject than any others. But more to the point, I’m not at all concerned with the “lake of fire” — primarily because it does not exist (contrary to popular Christian belief). This non-belief is based on considerable research related to the origin of this doctrine.
You referred to the Jesus Seminar as “a group of crazy people that determine the historicity of what Jesus said by voting on it.” I daresay they are far more sane than many people I’ve met in the blogosphere. At least they spent YEARS studying and discussing the scriptures (from the early translations) before they made their claims. That’s more than most defenders of the faith do!
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And of course the Westar Institute spent almost eleven years on the Acts seminar.
Bunch of fly-by-night atheists I tell ya!
Burn the buggers.
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This reads to me like an admission that the belief doesn’t make sense, even to this believer himself.
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Ah, well, “The truth is that sin is so inexplicably evil, terrible, that the only conceivable just punishment for it is death.” These people just keep making shit up. When people sin, they do not die. We even have a saying that only the good die young. When “sinners” do die, then they are dead. And what has this to do with the Lake of Fire? Disobeying god in any trivial way results in eons of despicable punishment … and more eons … and even more eons, billions of eons. Since there have been many, many sinners (According to people of this ilk, we are all sinners.) then that Lake of Fire must be standing room only at this point.
I solve this problem simply: there is no god, hence there is no sin, hence I can’t be punished for it. But what if I am wrong, you ask? I respond with “But what if I am right?” Tag, you’re it.
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Well said Steve! Eternal torment in a lake of fire seems evil to me, dare I say worse than telling a lie.
Sure a Holy God could stop us sinners entering heaven, but why the need to torture us for all eternity?
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“When people sin, they do not die”
I clearly said that the punishment of sin is death. That doesn’t mean that the next nanosecond after you commit a sin, you’ll be burning in a pit — it means that on the Day of Judgement you’ll be cast into the lake of fire in your crimes, just like how on court day the judge will send you to jail for your crimes.
Besides that, my point stands.
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“a group of crazy people that determine the historicity of what Jesus said by voting on it.”
At the Council of Trent?
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And Nicea …and … and …
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I’ve seen him try to
pissmark his territory on SB’s blog. I watched the video. Four words:Laughing My Ass Off
Aside from that, the “Scientific” Christian has demonstrated how illiterate and malevolent both he and his god of choice is. It’s worth noting that it’s illegal for a U.S. police officers to threaten a suspect with torture during interrogation. If they do, any subsequent statements, confessions, or evidence discovered because of those threats would be inadmissible as evidence under the “fruit of the poisonous tree”, a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally.
But a Christian can target and threaten adults and children with torture, in the name of their god, and it’s legal.
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“and it’s legal”
Are you suggesting that it should be illegal for me to tell you that the punishment for sin is eternal torture according to my religion? Ridiculous. When a criminal threatens people, they are directly threatening them physical harm that they themselves will enact on you. That’s quite different from being told that you will be punished after your life on Earth.
Anyways, your response to InspiringPhilosophy’s amazingly well-put together video on the evidence for the reliability of the New Testament is “Laughing My Ass Off”. Because that isn’t a valid response, you’ll need to further clarify your argument.
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Jesus was a Jew. The christian version of hell does not feature in Jewish belief. Thus,Jesus would never teach such a silly doctrine.
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“The christian version of hell does not feature in Jewish belief”
Daniel 12:2: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
“Thus,Jesus would never teach such a silly doctrine”
The premise fails, and so the conclusion disintegrates along with it.
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Where on earth do you derive the everlasting torture of the christian hell in that verse?
Stop being a disingenuous arse-hat or I’ll tell everyone what you said about chariot wheels on the floor of the Red Sea.
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“Where on earth do you derive the everlasting torture of the christian hell in that verse?”
Try reading it. Slowly, this time.
Daniel 12:2: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
Basically, some people are going to go to an eternity of joy after they die and some to everlasting ‘disgrace and eternal contempt’ — basically hell.
“Stop being a disingenuous arse-hat or I’ll tell everyone what you said about chariot wheels on the floor of the Red Sea.”
I’ve already read your comments on this thread and found that you’ve already beaten yourself to getting to that, LOL.
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Basically you are an ignorant Nob.
Do you have a poster of Ron Wyatt on your bedroom wall, by the way?
Someone once tried to auction Wyatt’s leather hat, jacket and leather whip Ebay.
Did you bid for it?
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“Do you have a poster of Ron Wyatt on your bedroom wall, by the way?”
No, doofus. Indeed, I never even quoted Wyatt in any of our discussions — I just so happened to have read some thing online about the wheels (over a year ago) and thought “wow” to myself. No doubt, since all your dogma derives from the internet as well without any fact-checking (as I’ve demonstrated hundreds of times), this accusation falters yet again.
And you were amazingly owned when it comes to the OT’s view of hell.
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What a Dick!
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LOL!
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Yes, well you would think ”wow” to yourself.
My dogma derives from the back of Cornflakes packets.
Whereas you get most of your from the bible.
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Your Cornflakes versus my Bible? Looks like I win.
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Wanna bet?
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You’re on.
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As a Christian, the primary tenet of your religion is that the character, Jesus of Nazareth is Yahweh in the flesh.
Without resorting to quoting any biblical text to back this assertion please demonstrate the veracity of this claim.
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“As a Christian, the primary tenet of your religion is that the character, Jesus of Nazareth is Yahweh in the flesh.
Without resorting to quoting any biblical text to back this assertion please demonstrate the veracity of this claim.”
… Huh? LOL!
So, I need to prove Jesus of Nazareth is God in the flesh… Without resorting to any of the sources that talk about this? This is circular reasoning to its greatest extent.
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So you mean all you have is faith ?
Oh, dear ….
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“Without resorting to any of the sources that talk about this?”
Yup! Because you can’t. Your ONLY source of your belief in this comes from a VERY ancient book that you have chosen to take as truth. In actuality, there is very little truth (fact) in this particular book. But even beyond that … it was a group of early church fathers who got together and decided that Jesus was God. Yeshua never made this claim … even though the church likes to teach he did.
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“Yup! Because you can’t. Your ONLY source of your belief in this comes from a VERY ancient book that you have chosen to take as truth.”
Except that is *NOT* true. The Bible is not a “book”, it is a collection of 66 different sources spanning over several centuries, written by many authors in different contexts with differing sources and knowledge.
The New Testament, in specific, is composed of twenty-seven books of at least nine different authors. Hence, the New Testament is not “one book” to base Christianity on, it is twenty-seven books which make a cumulative case for belief in Jesus, assisted by prophecies throughout the many books comprising the Old Testament.
Thus, far from the Bible being my “only” source, I, as a Christian, find myself in a position of having NUMEROUS sources to base my faith on, all adding their own fees of evidence and confirmed by their own historical evidences.
“it was a group of early church fathers who got together and decided that Jesus was God. Yeshua never made this claim … even though the church likes to teach he did.”
This is total nonsense and the claim is rejected by the large majority of scholars in the field. Jesus claimed to be God, ALL his followers thought He was God, all our earliest sources call Jesus God, all first century writings describe Him as God — we have *not a single writing* within one hundred years of Jesus’ life that describe Him as anything but God.
Paul thought Jesus was God, and according to Paul, he brought his preaching and message and had it confirmed by the pillars of the early Church (John, Peter, James) before continuing to preach it to others (Galatians 2). In other words, the very original followers of Jesus confirmed Paul’s teachings, including his view of Jesus as God. Thus, all our earliest and best sources claim Jesus is God, even His very first followers, and based on what we can know Jesus said in His lifetime, He claimed to be God. That’s that. That’s the truth. That’s history.
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Wow! I’m impressed. Yes, you’re totally correct. The bible is not simply a “book,” but this is how it is often referred to so I used the common descriptive term.
Please provide chapter and verse where Jesus said he was god. And how do you know his followers thought he was god? Please provide scripture to confirm. Also, please provide the exact words where Paul thought Jesus was god.
SC, there are tons of assumptions that have been made throughout the years about Yeshua and his followers. Most of them are taught from the pulpit, written about by Christian apologists (and thus swallowed whole by Christians), and argued over by unwitting believers.
I know you think you have the inside scoop on Christian beliefs because you “are one.” But trust me. Those of us who have been there, done that, have FAR more knowledge than you give us credit for. In fact, this knowledge is the very reason we are non-believers and/or atheists.
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“Wow! I’m impressed. Yes, you’re totally correct. The bible is not simply a “book,” but this is how it is often referred to so I used the common descriptive term.”
Yep, that is how it is ‘commonly referred’ to. I don’t wish it was so, though. I myself am probably guilty of referring to it as just a ‘book’.
“Please provide chapter and verse where Jesus said he was god. And how do you know his followers thought he was god? Please provide scripture to confirm. Also, please provide the exact words where Paul thought Jesus was god.”
Before I do any of this, to note, I’ve already written two very long (and rather well received) posts on showing that Jesus claimed to be God.
https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2016/10/09/jesus-claimed-to-be-god/
https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/jesus-claimed-to-be-god-again/
I’ve wanted to write a third part, and I’ve been gathering some sources, but I guess I’m just too lazy to finish the third one by now. Enjoy those two for my full written case as of yet.
Now, I will in fact address your concerns here as well. I’ll work backwards from your requests. First, some clear verses where Paul outright expresses Jesus is God:
Phillipians 2:5–7 Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form,
Romans 9:5: The ancestors are theirs, and from them, by physical descent, came the Christ, who is God over all, praised forever. Amen.
Now, what evidence is there that the followers of Jesus thought Jesus was God? This is obviously outlined. Firstly, we saw above Paul thought Jesus was God (Paul also refers to Jesus as past-eternal, the creator of the universe, all-existing, an object to whom we pray to, etc). We also know Paul brought his gospel to the pillars of the Church, such as Peter, James and John, before dispensing of his gospel message to unbelievers, and hence, people like Peter, James and John, who knew Jesus, confirmed this message of Paul’s. So literally all our indications (including the Gospels of courses) show that all of the disciples and earliest Christians thought Jesus was God.
Now, for some of Jesus’ own personal statements that obviously make him out as God.
Matthew 11:27: All things have been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.
John 8:58-59: Jesus said to them, “I assure you: Before Abraham was, I am.” At that, they picked up stones to throw at Him. But Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple complex.
Matthew 28:19: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
These are all out of Jesus’ mouth. These quotations of mine don’t include the many times where Jesus called Himself the Son of Man, a divine being who is to judge the world and all its peoples on God’s throne.
“I know you think you have the inside scoop on Christian beliefs because you “are one.” But trust me. Those of us who have been there, done that, have FAR more knowledge than you give us credit for.”
I personally haven’t a clue where your ‘expertise’ is located on this issue, but when I notice a statement I see in error, I raid it. That’s all I can really do. I don’t think these populist atheist shticks stand up to scrutiny, and I do what I can to demonstrate that.
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Please go back and re-read each of the scriptures you provided and note that not one of them says Yeshua was/is god. The most you will get is intimation — which comes from age-old teachings within the church. The scriptures themselves do NOT say in clear, uncut, undisputed words that Yeshua was god. Anything that resembles same is due to indoctrination.
Examples you cited:
“All things have been entrusted to Me by My Father” — This does not say Yeshua was god.
“Before Abraham was, I am.” — So? That means nothing. Even Adam was before Abraham and he’s not god.
“baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” — This is the writer’s claim of something Yeshua said. In actuality, it’s referring to the trinity doctrine which was developed many years later. Chances are it was a later insertion. Further, if Yeshua was truly “god,” why would he mention himself (son)?
I say again. Nearly everything you have offered as “proof” for your beliefs is based on church teachings. If you (or any believer) looks very closely and reads the words as they are written and does the research BEHIND the words, you will nearly always find it doesn’t say what you think it does, but rather what you have been taught that it says. Just as a sidenote — I spell out several of these in my book.
I will pretty much be absent from any further discussion from now on as I have much to do related to our move. I feel confident my several followers will fill in for me. 🙂
P.S. I’m going to go ahead and publish a post related to the reliability of the New Testament as discussed earlier. Even though Ark is the only one who has stepped forward as a willing participant 😉 , I feel certain others will join in at some point.
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“Please go back and re-read each of the scriptures you provided and note that not one of them says Yeshua was/is god.”
The scriptures provide sure, undebatably clear expression of Jesus’ own words that He was God. Let me quickly repost each verse I noted and explain how this fits together;
Matthew 11:27: All things have been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.
Here, Jesus basically puts Himself as the Son on equal footing with the Father, stating that only He has absolute knowledge of the Father and only the Father has absolute knowledge of Him in some eternal fashion. This is inexplicable if Jesus’ was a human being, or even a mighty prophet, or even angel. Also, Jesus says here “all things have been entrusted to me by my Father” — basically Jesus *literally* owns everything in existence.
John 8:58-59: Jesus said to them, “I assure you: Before Abraham was, I am.” At that, they picked up stones to throw at Him. But Jesus was hidden and went out of the temple complex.
This verse, where Jesus says “I Am”, alludes to Exodus 3:14 where Moses asked God for His name. God said “I AM WHO I AM” — Jesus puts the divine name of God alone on Himself. In fact, interestingly enough, the Jews revered this name of God in Exodus 3:14 so much that they actually wouldn’t write it down anywhere so God’s name couldn’t be desecrated in any conceptual form. This is flat out Jesus calling Himself God.
Apparently, you are completely unaware of God’s divine name and took this to mean that Jesus simply claimed to exist before Abraham (which itself would be inexplicable for a human being since Jesus would then be claiming to pre-exist His own birth).
Matthew 28:19: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Here, yet again, Jesus makes it clear He is God. Basically, people get baptized in God’s name. Here, we have the Father (God) and the Holy Spirit (God) and then.. Jesus in the middle of it. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, it’s the Trinity right there in Matthew’s Gospel.
As I read your response, you called this passage a ‘later insertion’, one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read. Needless to say, precisely zero scholars on Earth contest that Matthew 28:19 is a later insertion, and it’s also in all our manuscripts, making the case for interpolation stunningly disappear.
“Further, if Yeshua was truly “god,” why would he mention himself (son)?”
I simply have no clue what this question is even asking, you’ll need to clarify it.
All of these verses make it obvious Jesus is God. There are many others as well, and I’ve linked you to two of my posts where I already prove Jesus historically claimed to be God. Jesus also said things in the Gospels like “I and the Father are one”, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father”, etc. Also, watch this great video from the unsurpassed William Lane Craig further crushing the claim otherwise;
This is amazingly obvious. Obviously, Jesus didn’t go around saying “hey guys I’m God” in those exact words, but His teachings no doubt make it ridiculously clear and He said things about Himself that couldn’t possibly be said for mere humans.
“I say again. Nearly everything you have offered as “proof” for your beliefs is based on church teachings.”
This sounds like bungled up nonsense to try to explain away some rather awkward evidences contradicting your (admittedly awkward) claims.
You then go on to say that you have deciphered what the Bible REALLY MEANS when it says obvious things, and that you have to look at the meaning BEHIND rather obvious statements, and when you do that, THEN your position makes sense. This sounds amazingly ad-hoc and fails to take into account the actual meaning of the Gospels: the Gospels were written for an audience, and you have to read the Gospels from the understanding of its original audience. Once this is done, it’s clear that your modern day anachronistic interpretations hold no water to how a 1st century Jew would have read something like “Before Abraham was I Am”. By the way, if you read the very next verse after John 8:58 where Jesus says “I Am”, the Jews try to stone Him — thereby pretty much proving He said something crazy in their eyes — He said He was God.
Anyways, thanks for posting the thing about the debate. I saw Ark taking on the challenge, let’s see how that turns out. By the way, we need to have a proper debate format, like this.
Me: Opening Argument
Ark: Opening Argument
Me: First Rebuttal
Ark: First Rebuttal
Me: Second Rebuttal
Ark: Second Rebuttal
Me: Final Response and Conclusion
Ark: Final Response and Conclusion
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“Eternal “contempt” is not hell. It is contempt. Perhaps you need to look up the meaning of the word.”
Not at all, the verse says exactly what I’m telling you it says.
Daniel 12:2: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.
Here, we’re clearly told that the multitudes who sleep “in the dust of the earth” (sheol/underworld/hell) will awaken to one of two fates;
1) Eternal joy
2) Eternal contempt
This is a black and white obvious, and it says exactly what it says. These are two staunch opposites — either eternity in ‘heaven’ or eternal torture. You go on to explain that you don’t understand the concept of ‘hell’ in the Bible. In popular culture, hell is the place where you burn for eternity. But that’s *NOT* what the Bible says. Hell IS Sheol, and the LAKE OF FIRE is where you burn for all eternity. In fact, we are told in the New Testament that hell and death will be cast into the lake of fire, proving that they are both different and that the lake of fire is the place of eternal torture.
Revelation 20:14: Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
So, your claim that hell is not a place of eternal torture is obvious and rebuts nothing, because only popular culture was making this claim. Hell is *not* permanent. The lake of fire is. And that’s exactly where the eternity directed in Daniel 12:2 is talking about.
But there’s more.
Jeremiah 23:40: I will bring on you everlasting disgrace and humiliation that will never be forgotten.”
And it gets even worse.
Isaiah 66:24: “As they leave, they will see the dead bodies of those who have rebelled against me; for their worm will never die, their fire will never go out, and they will be a horror to all mankind.”
An eternal fire of torture, eh? That ends this debate.
You then go on about something completely irrelevant to salvage your position.
“In actuality, the word “hell” is actually derived from the Old English word, hel or helle and came into being around 725 CE as a reference to the netherworld of the dead. It’s core meaning is “to hide, to conceal.” A far cry from the Christian interpretation.”
A pagan interpretation of hell that comes seven centuries after the New Testament is completely irrelevant in every conceptual way to this discussion — why on Earth should I care about your (baseless) assertion that some people hundreds of years after the Bible came along thought of one particular way about hell? Do I also need to give credence to the Hindu belief of hell now?
This comment should completely dismantle your notion about the lake of fire in the Old Testament, and if you haven’t figured it out yet, the word ‘hell’ never appears in the entire Bible — it just depends on how you translate ‘hades’ and ‘gehenna’, which are totally different from the 8th century term ‘hell’.
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You say to me, You then go on about something completely irrelevant to salvage your position. And I say to you … everything you have offered so far has been irrelevant. But it makes for great blog fodder. 🙂
That’s all I have time for.
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“everything you have offered so far has been irrelevant”
You then go on to say that’s all you have time for — that wont stop me from declaring the facts as they appear in the Old Testament. Jeremiah 23:40 and Daniel 12:2 both speak of eternal shame and unending contempt, and Isaiah 66:24 reveals that the eternity is in fire itself. This stuff about the lake of fire is totally in the Old Testament. The New Testament introduces specific terms, hades and gehenna, whereas helle is a completely irrelevant later Germanic development that has nothing to do with hades and gehenna, or the speakings of the lake of fire in the Old Testament.
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SC wrote: Basically, some people are going to go to an eternity of joy after they die and some to everlasting ‘disgrace and eternal contempt’ — basically hell.
Eternal “contempt” is not hell. It is contempt. Perhaps you need to look up the meaning of the word.
Further, in the original text of scripture, the word “hell” is nowhere to be found. Anytime you see the word in your bible, it is a translation of either the word “sheol” or the Greek word “hades” — both of which mean nothing more than “the grave” — a dark, unknown state, the abode of the dead (NOT the abode of the “wicked”).
In actuality, the word “hell” is actually derived from the Old English word, hel or helle and came into being around 725 CE as a reference to the netherworld of the dead. It’s core meaning is “to hide, to conceal.” A far cry from the Christian interpretation.
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For the record … I have also previously had this discussion with SC…. lol.
“to hide, to conceal. And where we get the word Helmet as well, believe it or not?
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NOTE: Nan closed all comments on the ‘Reliability of the New Testament’ page, so my response to your comment and question that you gave their is being posted here:
Hello Ark, thanks for the question. You want corroboration for specific New Testament materials, such as;
Paul knew all the disciples himself, especially John, Peter, so we know they existed, and we also know aspects of their lives mentioned in Paul’s letters. The life of the twelve is also independently documented in our Gospel accounts,
Then, in 70-95 AD, Clement of Rome writes this;
So, we know how Peter was tortured and died, historically, and we know that Peter’s martyrdom for Christianity happened in and around the time that it happened to Paul. Then, there are our pre-Pauline creeds. 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 in specific is a short creed Paul quotes that dates to within a few years, if not months, of the crucifixion of Jesus and goes back to the original Jerusalem apostles. This is what the creed says;
This ridiculously early creed (which is contemporary to all the twelve apostles) mentions that Jesus appeared to “the twelve”, meaning we have a source documenting the existence of twelve so early on in Christian history as to engrave them in historical fact. The only thing we know about their lives, though, from this creed, is that Jesus appeared to them thereafter His death (resurrection). The most important source, of course, is the Book of Acts, written by a historian who both traveled with Paul and interviewed the original eyewitnesses (as in the actual twelve themselves), recording various things they were doing with their lives after Jesus’ death written by someone who knew them and was their contemporary. Church historiography doesn’t get better than this. You also ask for “Paul’s missions, including his arrest and deportation to Rome” which is corroborated in the Clement passage above, besides its appearance in Acts. Nothing else you ask for, though, has corroboration, besides the corroboration between its recordings in the various Gospel accounts.
Weirdly, your comment ends with this;
Besides the fact that it’s not just a “may” that He was called ‘Yeshua’, the entire distinction here is totally useless because in both cases you’re describing the exact same figure: Jesus.
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Dickhead!
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First of all torture doesn’t have to involve physical harm. You can torture people mentally. You using fear as a coercive tactic to govern behavior. You are telling them that great torture awaits them if they don’t think a certain way. It matters not whether you personally will inflict that torture. You are telling people you are certain it will happen.
Yet you cannot be certain that there is a God or a hell let alone be certain what the nature of those things are. These are assertions without substance. Yet the assertions themselves are meant to cause fear, fear of something that you have knowledge even exists and rests entirely on faith. That is mental abuse and over long periods of time definitely qualifies as torture. I mean if the truth of God is so fucking obvious, why would fear need to be used to coerce people into believing? Because it’s not obvious and no such evidence actually exists, so best to manipulate people through fear.
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“First of all torture doesn’t have to involve physical harm. You can torture people mentally.”
True.
“You using fear as a coercive tactic to govern behavior.”
Christians shouldn’t be afraid of the day of judgement because they have faith in God whom will save them if they repent and believe in Jesus.
Unbelievers, on the other hand, probably (and maybe rightly) are scared to death.
“Yet you cannot be certain that there is a God or a hell let alone be certain what the nature of those things are.”
I’m pretty certain about it. I have no reasons to doubt it, especially since I fully understand the utter greatness of the biblical story and the many historical evidences backing it up. Checkmate.
“and rests entirely on faith”
Evidence backed faith.
Good video:
” I mean if the truth of God is so fucking obvious, why would fear need to be used to coerce people into believing?”
Because for many, the temptation to sin is greater than the desire to be of God’s children. DUH
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Hard to be scared to death of something that isn’t real.
Never heard the term “God-fearing Christians”, I don’t think fear is strictly for the non-believers.
I’m pretty certain about it. I have no reasons to doubt it, especially since I fully understand the utter greatness of the biblical story and the many historical evidences backing it up. Checkmate.
Well the bible is full of more holes than a sieve. Again it’s funny how you just assert things and claim checkmate without offering any evidence. Please remove “scientific” from your blog name, you haven’t a clue what the word means. As further evidenced by the video you posted. As Dawkins’ says quite clearly, the key is in the evidence. For which you have none of the supernatural, you have only faith.
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I admire and applaud you for taking-on this discussion/civil debate, if indeed it stays that way and is informative and productive for everyone concerned. We ‘non-believing hopeless sinners’ can stay mentally-emotionally sharp by sometimes being patient, tolerant, understanding, empathetic with their world-view and happy to discuss their’s and our’s. I emphasize “sometimes” for good reasons! 😉
Because almost every single Evangy-Fundy Xian starts off with a shitload of unproven presuppositions, I have to quickly stop them JUST to begin at square one! When building a house, you don’t start with the roof! This is usually my personal approach:
“Tell me in precise articulated detail, HOW does your God speak to you these things?”
Because you are well-versed in dismantling the Christian FAITH (not truths!), I won’t go down the flowchart of what follows with that question. But it does indeed force the Evangy-Fundy Xian to quickly reveal the initial major flaws in their narrative, or myth/legend, or story, or fairy-tale and world-view. In my personal experience with them (hundreds if not thousands), after 15-30 minutes of asking them questions about their answers, they get SO BOGGED DOWN in all their “circles and runarounds” of explanations, in frustration they throw their arms in the air and shut-up. Then I say, “Well, if you want to prey to your God to open my heart, mind, and ears, THAT does demonstrate some “faith” in your God.” Hahaha. But usually when it comes down to it, the only real pertinent question they’ve answered for themselves, not for truth or the world, is How does this faith-religion choice benefit me or hurt me? I’d wager that’s 75% — 90% of Christians.
Yet, very very rarely will I encounter a well-educated, well-versed Follower (in their own bible) also capable of understanding the full-spectrum of my questions and discussions of INDEPENDENT verifications of THEIR God, Christ/Messiah, and Canonical Scriptures. If those select few go there with me, there’s a chance of hope for them. Sadly, many of those then write ME OFF (out of fear?) to the Devil and his works! 😛
I wish you lots of good productive fortune Nan in this ride! Hehehe 😉
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Gee thanks, Professor. 🙂
Of course feel free to jump in!
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Ahh, where is this discussion taking place? I may have misread; thought it was via personal emails.
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No, PT — it’s right here on this blog.
Explanation: SC posted the above comment on my “book blog.” I didn’t feel it related to the book contents, so I emailed her/him and advised that I would be posting it on Nan’s Notebook and opening it for discussion.
Got it? Thus, you are MORE than welcome to “jump right in!” 😀
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Oh! My bad! I was thinking SC was one of your/our regular followers here already I wasn’t familiar with — just made the connection (Science Christian). Duh. LOL
Well then, I WILL jump in when I feel I might have something tasty to offer! 😀
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In such debates, I have no doubt about the outcome. When the subjectively narrow-minded, emotionally-consumed, fear-mongering believer is pitted against the objective, rational, intellectual non-believer, it is the former who loses.
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“objective, rational, intellectual non-believer”
An oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one, LOL.
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Obviously, your hearing isn’t good. Oxymoron = Scientific + Christian
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Scientific Christian doesn’t sound like an oxymoron to me. I’m a scientific dude and a Christian (just like almost 70% of Nobel Prize winners). What’s up?
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I suggest you have your hearing medically checked. That is, if you believe in medical science. Yes, there are some Christians who are not anti-science; but, most of the ones I know personally certainly are. They don’t believe in evolution, genealogy, cosmology, astrophysics, vaccines, and many other empirical disciplines and practices. They vehemently oppose the secular, unbiased nature of science which form its foundational bedrock.
I’ll accept your assertion that you are “a scientific dude” for the time being. But, those who lay among the ignorant will be perceived as ignorant.
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“I suggest you have your hearing medically checked. That is, if you believe in medical science. Yes, there are some Christians who are not anti-science; but, most of the ones I know personally certainly are.”
Because you’re an atheist, I’ll simply presume that this diagnosis of being ‘anti-science’ is nothing more than your own imagination.
“They don’t believe in evolution, genealogy, cosmology, astrophysics, vaccines, and many other empirical disciplines and practices.”
Ridiculous — the only problem Christians have with any of these is evolution. Vaccines doesn’t even have to do with Christianity and thus you’re conflating your own nonsense with actual Christian positions. As for ‘cosmology, astrophysics’ — Christians don’t, in any case deny these, so you’ll have to explain where your imagination is leading you from.
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You’ve just proven to me that you are not scientific. Evolution is verifiable and accepted science. Denying it is, by definition, anti-science. Christian precepts are incompatible with cosmology because it demands the assumption of a creator-god whereas science can make no such assumption in the search for the origin and nature of the cosmos. Furthermore, you incorrectly presumed I am an atheist which I most definitely am not. A truly scientifically inclined person would never assume knowledge not in their possession.
Regarding vaccines, it is true that the opposition crosses cultural and political lines. However, the religious opposition – primarily among evangelicals – is widespread. Currently, all U.S. states except California, Mississippi, and West Virginia have statutes exempting mandatory vaccinations for those with religious objections.
Your reference to “actual Christian positions” seems rather absurd because Christians argue all the time about what those positions are.
I’ll waste no more of my time with a science fraud – Christian or otherwise.
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“You’ve just proven to me that you are not scientific.”
How unfortunate.
“Evolution is verifiable and accepted science. Denying it is, by definition, anti-science.”
LOLWHAT? In my previous comment, I didn’t deny evolution — I just said that out of all the categories you mentioned, a segment of Christians only take issue with evolution (not cosmology, astrophysics, certainly not cosmology).
“Furthermore, you incorrectly presumed I am an atheist which I most definitely am not.”
Thank God. So, are you some kind of buddhist?
“Regarding vaccines, it is true that the opposition crosses cultural and political lines. However, the religious opposition – primarily among evangelicals – is widespread. Currently, all U.S. states except California, Mississippi, and West Virginia have statutes exempting mandatory vaccinations for those with religious objections.”
You MUST simply admit that without reserve, vaccines are not a religious issue. I have no problem to someone saying “I will not let the state vaccinate my child”, that’s their own right, regardless of the reason. I support vaccination because I think it’s beneficial, although I don’t support forced vaccination (nor do I support forced anything).
You then conclude based off of.. Seemingly nothing.. That I’m a “science fraud”. Foiled again! LOL. When you’re more interested in serious discussion without this eccentric name-calling, hit me up with another response.
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You should know by now Robert that Christian scientists have the added benefit of choosing to go with science when it suits them and going against science when it does. It’s the best of both worlds. lol
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Yes, Swarn Gill, and it’s fraudulent. They disingenuously embrace the label of science, but not its substance, only to present themselves as being rational – which they certainly are not.
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Agreed. I don’t know need to call myself the Scientific Blogger to add legitimacy to what I have to say. If it’s logically and scientifically sound it doesn’t matter if your blogger name is Coco the Clown. lol
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Exactly.
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Robert determining who has won a debate seems to be in the eye of the beholder, in the absence of genuinely unbiased judges. Thus in interchanges with Scientific Christian both parties will likely be genuinely convinced they had the better of the exchange.
Having said that most likely I would interpret the outcome in the manner you describe.
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I’ve seen professional and amateur boxers claim they won their fights after being knocked down and unconscious, so your point is well taken. Still, all forums have observers regardless of their subjective biases. In lieu of truly objective arbiters, public opinion holds sway. Here on the WordPress blogosphere, religious propagandists like “Scientific Christian” aren’t very effective.
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Upon reading it, it’s evident that beyond all your problems of history, psychology of religion, etc, etc, etc, the biggest problem you had with Christianity that you stressed is the lake of fire. “Truth hurts”, as they say. The truth is that the price of sin is death. The truth is that sin is so inexplicably evil, terrible, that the only conceivable just punishment for it is death. That is how evil it is to a holy God. The truth is that you and I don’t realize it’s that bad, we don’t think it’s nearly that bad, and therefore, we cannot possibly understand why such a punishment can be given for something as small as lying!
This entire paragraph is just full of shit. It assumes 1) We know there is a God without question 2) We know that Yahweh exists without question 3) We know that the Bible represents the inerrant word of God. None of these are proven, until that is done the argument is built in presumption. Premises that are not proven to be true. “Truth hurts”? It’s clear that this person does not understand how we actually derive truth.
There are also plenty of examples of people realizing how bad a “sin” is once they do it. Many people feel remorse for murder, seeing someone’s hurts feelings when they found out you lied to them is plenty of evidence for the dangers of lying. At the same time getting swatted by your wife when she asks you if she looks good in something unflattering and decide to tell the truth, also tells you that there might sometimes be value in lying. 🙂 But really this is a brand new bullshit argument I’ve never even heard before “only having never done something before can we know how evil it is”. I mean that’s about as ludicrous a statement as I’ve ever heard. That statement alone is evidence that this isn’t an intellect worth debating with.
And this kettle accusing the pot of bias is brilliant. Ruth’s comment was an excellent retort to his complaint of voting. And Professor is spot on. Why don’t you start proving the supernatural exists before trying to convince anybody that they should believe in it. The fact that the Bible gets geography and kinds correct doesn’t mean a damn thing, people were keeping those records then. People made maps then. It could easily be determined by any scholar 70 to 100 years later. I could easily write a pretend book about the wonders of Sir Isaac Newton as if I was there when he’s alive. It’s really not that hard.
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Hahahaha! Well, YOUR rebuttal Swarn is rich with delicate genteelity! Love it! 😉 😛
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To begin with, my comment doesn’t presuppose the factuality of Christianity — it’s simply a discussion on the morality of Christian doctrine, because that’s what I was responding to. So, the first segment of your argument simply falls apart.
The second one is totally illogical. It states ‘sometimes people feel remorse for doing bad things, therefore, people know how bad something is when they do it’ — a complete non-sequitur. As I demonstrated, the reason why Nan (and other non-believers) can’t possibly understand why sin is so evil that it warrants eternal punishment, is because they are all sinners who sin so frequently that they’ve become entirely used to it and therefore cannot understand why something so inconsequential as ‘sin’ has a punishment like the lake of fire waiting for it. You completely missed the point of my argument, and thus your rebuttal shatters like a shard of glass hitting the ground.
“The fact that the Bible gets geography and kinds correct doesn’t mean a damn thing, people were keeping those records then. People made maps then. It could easily be determined by any scholar 70 to 100 years later.”
As the video established, that wasn’t the *only* thing that the Bible got right, that was one of the innumerable things that the Bible got right. The Bible even turned out to be right in cases where all historians once thought it was wrong. This is quite amazing and certainly surpasses the level of accuracy of most other ancient writers.
Based off of your (non) understanding of my position, you went on to conclude that I am not even worth debating, and thus you go on to deliberately flaunt in your own self-declared genius. Your hand must be tired of tipping that fedora, LOL. Take a nap.
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You assert things as true without backing them up. You know intelligent jargon, but you don’t know how to argue intelligently. Sorry you can try to dodge what you said but it doesn’t change the fact that you actually have to demonstrate evidence of some supernatural system of reward and punishment before trying to make claims about how it works. I’m sure your cart before the horse arguments impress other people such as yourself, but you can’t ignore the very foundations of logic and reasoning and expect to fool us. To even suggest that sin even exists would this be built on the assumption that the supernatural claims of the Bible or true. Without evidence of that your argument simply carries no weight in changing somebody’s paradigm. I mean mentioning things like “lake of fire” like it actually exists without proving that is so, is the point of why your argument isn’t valid.
At best you arguing interpretation of fiction. We might as be presenting a case for why you don’t believe Frodo was really the hero of the Lord of the Rings… It’s an attempt at a reasoned argument with in a fiction. However since you don’t believe the Bible is fiction you have to demonstrate that the things in it actually exist. Without that, I’m actually quite free to dismiss your ability to reason.
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“You assert things as true without backing them up. You know intelligent jargon, but you don’t know how to argue intelligently.”
As far as I’m concerned, these are simply assertions without substance.
“Sorry you can try to dodge what you said but it doesn’t change the fact that you actually have to demonstrate evidence of some supernatural system of reward and punishment before trying to make claims about how it works.”
No, I don’t. I was responding to claims about the morality of Christian doctrine, and so I focused my arguments on the morality of Christian doctrine. Whether or not that doctrine is *true* is a separate question, but we can surely discuss if it is moral or not regardless if it is true.
Besides that, I do claim to have shown evidence for Christianity anyways. I wrote this post a few months ago.
https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/isaiah-53-confirms-christianity/
So, what else are you exactly looking for? Do I need to pull Moses out of a hat now? LOL
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There are simply assertions without substance? How convenient.
And any justice system that punishes lying by putting them in a lake of fire is immoral. To defend such a system is defend the actions of a psychopathic deity.
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“There are simply assertions without substance? How convenient.”
I suppose that, in a way, it is quite convenient for me that your arguments are of little substance to refuting my position.
“And any justice system that punishes lying by putting them in a lake of fire is immoral. To defend such a system is defend the actions of a psychopathic deity.”
This ties in to the crux of my argument: unbelievers such as yourselves simply *cannot conceive* that something like sin is so evil that the punishment for it the lake of fire. The reason you can’t conceive of that is because you, as a sinner, have become so use to sinning that you no longer see anything wrong with it. As I noted in my post, it’s the equivalent of a mass murderer who doesn’t see anything wrong with murder just because they’re so used to doing it. However, we who have never murdered understand how evil it is. Likewise, the One who has not sinned (God) understands how evil sin is, and the punishment for it is the lake of fire. Truth bites.
Not only do your arguments against the morality of Christian doctrine not stand, interestingly enough, your position is also self-refuting. Your position requires for the Christian doctrine to be ‘immoral’ — however, if this is an objective statement rather than a personal opinion, it presupposes the existence of objective morality. If objective morality doesn’t exist, Christian doctrine couldn’t possibly be immoral — but you think Christian doctrine is actually, truly immoral, and thus your worldview requires the existence of objective morality (which we all know exists anyways). Objective morality is incompatible with atheism. Thus, your position refutes itself.
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See believers like yourself can’t see that you are you are purporting a fiction. Unless you take an honest attempt at trying to prove that fiction to be true what you try to claim about what non believers can or cannot see means nothing. Your just another person lost in a fantasy trying to convince others that it’s real.
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This is one of the most annoying things I’ve read all day.
“See believers like yourself can’t see that you are you are purporting a fiction. Unless you take an honest attempt at trying to prove that fiction to be true what you try to claim about what non believers can or cannot see means nothing. Your just another person lost in a fantasy trying to convince others that it’s real.”
Here, we can see the skeptic in their natural habitat. Upon any signs of an ‘outside’ intruding into their safe space, they quickly respond with a vapid aggression. The skeptic is quick to accuse the believer of believing in fiction and self-declaring their position the obvious truth, and the skeptic rubs this obvious truth in long enough until they have achieved total satisfaction with their lives.
The skeptic later goes to bed, making sure to pat themselves on the shoulder for the excellent job they’ve done at vanquishing the evil believers. Well done.
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It brings me no joy or satisfaction that people like you exist that not only don’t understand the very fundamentals of how we determine truth and that furthermore you try to convince others that you represent clear and rational thinking. The fact that you think there are assertions that require no substance to be true is the exact sort of thinking that leads to harm in the world. And the worst part of it is that people like you try to pass yourself off as some sort of authority on what is moral and what is not as you launch yourself off a springboard of your own invention.
You’re not on any sort of honest journey to understand the universe… You think you’ve already got it figured out. It’s that kind of self-righteousness that makes me aggressive, but given your haughty words to Nan, and your aggression now such an attitude in return seems warranted. You act like nobody here has read scripture and hasn’t done a lot of research into determining the truth claims of the Bible and many other religions. We have. We’ve heard your arguments before. They are repetitive and tiring. They are without substance.
It actually gives me no comfort that zealots like you exist, and no matter how right I might be, matters little. But what I don’t have to do is sit back and allow people like yourself to repudiate the very normal for determining truth as you judge others according to the myths which you believe. The gall of someone walking in assuming that we don’t understand the consequences of something as human as lying is quite frankly insulting and you literally embarrass yourself by walking up to someone as intelligent as Nan claiming some superior knowledge.
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“It brings me no joy or satisfaction that people like you exist that not only don’t understand the very fundamentals of how we determine truth and that furthermore you try to convince others that you represent clear and rational thinking.”
Keep stroking your own brilliance, pal.
The rest of your comment is about how I am supposedly presuming you’re completely biblically ignorant, but in reality you have tirelessly spent day and night researching completely objectively to find the clear truth, and lo’, you have proven (to your own satisfaction) that I am wrong (without actually showing it).
Unless you’re willing to engage with my arguments rather than start pulling out assumptions about me faster than a magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat, then this discussion will be meaningless and I will consider that I “owned” your claims.
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See that’s the thing. The onus isn’t on me to prove that God exists. You theists still don’t get that. You actually have to prove that God exists…I am required to do nothing until you do. Nobody is stroking their own brilliance here…I know many people far more intelligent than me, and you’ll have to do a lot better to demonstrate that you’re one of them.
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“See that’s the thing. The onus isn’t on me to prove that God exists.”
I think you meant to say ‘The onus isn’t on me to prove that God doesn’t exist’. No worries, forgiven, forgotten.
You then say I need to prove God exists. OK, have fun with this:
“Never heard the term “God-fearing Christians”, I don’t think fear is strictly for the non-believers.”
I’m scared of God, but I’m not scared of hell.
“Well the bible is full of more holes than a sieve. Again it’s funny how you just assert things and claim checkmate without offering any evidence. Please remove “scientific” from your blog name, you haven’t a clue what the word means. As further evidenced by the video you posted. As Dawkins’ says quite clearly, the key is in the evidence. For which you have none of the supernatural, you have only faith.”
Dang, Dawkins got hammered and freaking owned in that video. You can see Dawkins got caught in his own bull after he affirms that he has evidence for his faith in his wife (hence, he has evidence backed faith, refuting his own position), and so he stumbles and simply stops talking. The entire audience bursts into laughter at Dawkins’ stupidity. Lennox (who literally has three doctorates) owned him.
And if the Bible has more holes than a sieve, then how do sieves even have holes? It’s another self-refuting claim — the Bible has no holes, sieves have holes, and thus the Bible cannot have more holes than a sieve.
I am a very scientific person, hence, my name isn’t changing. I know it makes your skin squirm to see a username like ‘Scientific Christian’.
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It doesn’t make my skin squirm at all, it just hammers home the point that at best confused and at worst a charlatan.
And no you missed the point that Dawkins made, the key is in the evidence. Whether you want to call it faith or not, the fact that your belief in your God has no evidence at all is the important part. Your clip conveniently edits out Dawkins response which is that what matters is the quality of evidence. I never claimed that faith doesn’t have evidence, I am claiming that the evidence for your faith is insufficient in demonstrating the presence of the supernatural.
The next video you also posted is fine. Sure Krauss presents only a possibility and it is at best a hypothesis. The questions has to how the universe began or why there even is one remains unanswered. But God is only a possibility to that question too, and what Christians fail to understand is that there is no guarantee that it is your God. It could be a God of any other religion, it could be several gods, it could be a God as yet undefined. Ultimately to say that the universe must have an origin and a creator, conveniently frees God from having similar constraints. Where did God come from? Did an amazingly complex being come out of nothing? Or was God just always there? Such questions have no evidence either, and it’s just as likely that the universe came out of nothing or that the universe was always there. This is no specific evidence of Yahweh or specific evidence for the nature of Yahweh.
The Bible is full of contradictions, it is full of missing information. Not a single book in the bible can be dated to have been written at the time of Jesus. The stories in the bible, borrowed from older religions. Most of the books in the bible can’t even be verified to have been written by the author that has been purported to write them. It’s been through numerous translations, had footnotes transcribed into verses. There is furthermore no evidence that God was working through any of the writers. The fact that the Bible contains some historical facts in no way makes the supernatural claims real. There is a ton of scholarship on the bible that doesn’t support your claims about it, but you wish to ignore that scholarship in favor of the ones that do. If you were scientific in any way you would be intellectually honest about the Bible.
The Bible has holes because of all the things that it doesn’t say. Every continent was inhabited at the time of the Bible, it seems to know nothing about any of it. It is woefully contradictory at best on moral issues such as rape and slavery. It’s stuck ethically and morally to the values held by at best progressive people at the time. It provides no prophecies about science and technology. It is clearly a man made enterprise trying to explain a world it understands very little.
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“And no you missed the point that Dawkins made, the key is in the evidence.”
Exactly, and Lennox simply broke him down on this point. Dawkins contended that faith, by definition, is not based on evidence, and Lennox in seconds caused Dawkins to reject his own ludicrous claims. Again, Dawkins clearly suddenly stops speaking in the video and catches himself speaking total nonsense, and then the audience erupts realizing how crazy Dawkins is and how easily Lennox broke down his claim. That video is total gold. Denying that Dawkins got totally owned here requires a denial of obviousness. None of this about the Dawkins and Lennox clip is up for debate.
“Whether you want to call it faith or not, the fact that your belief in your God has no evidence at all is the important part. ”
As we saw from the video I sent in my previous comment, the evidence easily demonstrates God. I am, to this day, confounded that atheism can even possibly exist, especially since all the facts debunk it.
“But God is only a possibility to that question too, and what Christians fail to understand is that there is no guarantee that it is your God. It could be a God of any other religion, it could be several gods, it could be a God as yet undefined.”
And in all of these cases, atheism is ruled out. Regardless of which God it is, atheism is ruled out. That’s the point. I never cite the beginning of the universe as a proof for Christianity, I cite it as a proof for theism. I also cite it as something that totally confounds anyone of a naturalistic worldview. Krauss’s idea is not a “hypothesis”, it’s total bonkers because it misrepresents quantum processes and what ‘nothing’ is.
“Where did God come from?”
No one believes in a created God, so this question can be put to rest.
“it’s just as likely that the universe came out of nothing or that the universe was always there.”
No, it is not “just as likely” that the universe came out of nothing — by definition, it is science fiction for something to come from nothing, and secondly, we *know* that the universe wasn’t always there because *science has established* that the universe began to exist. The vast, vast majority of cosmologists no longer regard the universe as something eternally existing, and that’s because every existing evidence we have points towards an absolute beginning. The red-shift state of the universe. The cosmic microwave background. The second law of thermodynamics. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem. We can know that the universe began to exist. If you want to contest that, you might as well go back to living in the 1950’s. When I was in grade 9, the beginning of the universe and the big bang theory was literally part of our education system — it’s just no longer a contested point of science. Isn’t it just so coincidental that the only people today who hold to a past-eternal universe… Are atheists?
I will now list statements of yours about the Bible that are obviously false and can be dismissed with a wave of a hand;
“The stories in the bible, borrowed from older religions.”
“The Bible is full of contradictions, it is full of missing information.”
“… [H]ad footnotes transcribed into verses.”
You go on to accuse me intellectual dishonesty about how I treat scholarship on the Bible, demonstrating you know absolutely nothing about how I treat scholarship on the Bible. There’s so much total clatter in your response about the Bible that I must simply dismiss all of it; it’s all assertions with no substance to back it up. Indeed, all of your claims need to be dispensed of until you can provide evidence for them.
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Haha…I accuse you of dishonesty because you are. There is a lot of scholarship proving my claims about the bible. Here is a scholarly work from 1885 that already knew that stories from the Bible are taken from older religions. There is much more scholarly work than this: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=C6oTAAAAYAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=bible+stories+from+older+myths&ots=wnY1c3C4RU&sig=Pd8OeA0B_tbTkVr_SDtzXXj1CCQ#v=onepage&q=bible%20stories%20from%20older%20myths&f=false
ANd here is a book full of contradictions in the bible: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ABmVAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA2&dq=contradictions+in+the+bible&ots=VJFfQVmPmi&sig=Owko4J1ewIKMgd_0pkBTZiCxtHc#v=onepage&q=contradictions%20in%20the%20bible&f=false
Even Bible.org admits that scribes intentionally added things into the bible to try to fix inconsistencies. We have evidence of their scrawls on the sides of passages, and then scholars later added these into the bible. https://bible.org/article/significance-scribal-corruptions-new-testament-text
http://www.nola.com/religion/index.ssf/2011/03/changes_to_the_bible_through_the_ages_are_being_studied_by_new_orleans_scholars.html
http://helpmewithbiblestudy.org/5system_moses/dh13_copyistError.aspx#sthash.24ctJ0Mo.dpbs
These are all from pro-Christianity sites. So you can try to argue away that the mistakes are no big deal, but you have to be honest that they exist.
Again as Dawkins said after your clip cut it off, not all faith is equal. Even Lennox before that clip admits that there is such a thing as blind faith and reports that as equally dangerous. There is also disagreements as to what constitutes evidence. Dawkins understands the difference between reliable evidence and poor evidence. Apparently you and Lennox do not.
Just because no one believes in a created God doesn’t change the fact that you can’t argue that something as complex as the universe must have had a creator that is necessarily more complex, and then deny the need for a creator for that complex being. That simply denies logic. Whether anybody believes in a created God is immaterial to the logical contradiction.
Since time and space are interwoven, the question of “before” assumes a linear movement of time, but time also began at the big bang so it’s not so much that the universe is eternal, it’s that there is no such thing as eternity. You can still have a beginning if time is not moving, and space is condensed to a single point. And there is still isn’t solid evidence that the universe won’t slow down it’s expansion and collapse and start all over again, although it seems unlikely now. But even if you want to call that fiction, it’s still just as much fiction as their being a God. There is simply no evidence that this universe has a purpose or that anybody created it. So any other scientific explanation that you dismiss as fiction is at least equal to the fiction you espouse.
And in all of these cases, atheism is ruled out. Regardless of which God it is, atheism is ruled out. That’s the point. I never cite the beginning of the universe as a proof for Christianity, I cite it as a proof for theism. I also cite it as something that totally confounds anyone of a naturalistic worldview.
Actually it’s deistic, not theistic. Because there is the possibility the creator is indifferent and had no purpose. But no, it doesn’t rule atheism out, because there is also the possibility that there is no creator at all. The fact that you can’t conceive that is your own failing. Something had to come out of nothing, or something had to be eternal. Both are problematic statements and we can prove nothing definitive either way, so again, any discussion of there being a creator, let alone the Christian one is as much as a fiction as anything that science proposes.
And Krauss is certainly not bonkers, but a critical review of ideas is presented here from Sean Carroll who explains pretty how a creator is not a necessary condition for the universe even while he criticized Krauss. http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2012/04/28/a-universe-from-nothing/
You simply substitute in God where there are no answers. This is intellectual dishonesty, you still, as was pointed out by many who debated Dr. Lennox continue to dance around the issue of providing any evidence for this creator. Your argument simply boils down to “We don’t know = therefore God”. You can’t help but come across as intellectually dishonest and displaying a lack of understanding of what science is, if you think that’s how proof works.
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Too many links — went into moderation.
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“Haha…I accuse you of dishonesty because you are. There is a lot of scholarship proving my claims about the bible. Here is a scholarly work from 1885 that already knew that stories from the Bible are taken from older religions.”
If you were at all knowledgeable about the history of the literature that critical historians have wrote, you’d know that the accusations of Christianity ‘borrowing’ from other religions far predates 1880. And furthermore, the theory has self-imploded in recent decades. This is, in significance, due to an article by J.Z. Smith called ‘Dying-Rising Gods’, where he takes these claims to task.
“ANd here is a book full of contradictions in the bible”
I did a bit of searching and it looks like you just typed in ‘bible contradictions’ on Google Scholar (or maybe Google Books) to find that crazy monograph. Anyways, here is a book full of refutations of Bible contradictions (which is way more recent than your 1920 bazazzle);
Click to access Gleason_L_Archer_Encyclopedia_of_Bible_DifficultBookZZ.org_.pdf
“Even Bible.org admits..”
Bible.org, a site I’m familiar with, doesn’t “admit” anything. The website Bible.org is built by a range of contributions from a range of different authors. Nevertheless, I checked out your bible.org link, and Daniel Wallace (a renowned scholar and the author of the link you referenced) doesn’t ‘concede’ anything, he just makes an obvious observation to everyone in the field of textual criticisms; scribal quotations are not necessarily verbatim, regardless of intention (error has nothing to do with it, seemingly). As far as I’m concerned, Daniel Wallace is also an inerrantist.
“These are all from pro-Christianity sites. So you can try to argue away that the mistakes are no big deal, but you have to be honest that they exist.”
Incredibly, the very authors of the links you give don’t call this ‘mistakes’ or ‘errors’. Thus, your source refutes your position. Hence, I have no need to accept your nonsensical accusations against the Bible.
“Again as Dawkins said after your clip cut it off, not all faith is equal. Even Lennox before that clip admits that there is such a thing as blind faith and reports that as equally dangerous. There is also disagreements as to what constitutes evidence.”
Again, you’re trying to malform the events that happened. Lennox knows the fact that blind faith can exist and justified faith can exist. Dawkins did not know this, which led to him getting utterly humiliated in front of an audience laughing and cheering at his stupidity. This is so amazingly obvious from the clip that it’s remarkable you’re still trying. As I said earlier, none of this is debatable about what happened in that video.
“Just because no one believes in a created God doesn’t change the fact that you can’t argue that something as complex as the universe must have had a creator that is necessarily more complex, and then deny the need for a creator for that complex being.”
More atheist fiction. God was always there, whereas we *know* that the universe began to exist from science. There is no such thing as a created God and there is no such thing as a past-eternal universe. Both exist in the realm of fiction. You’re going to have to deal with this and try to find another argument to suit you, because the way I see it, trying to argue that “universe began to exist so this has to apply to God as well” is just desperation. If you’d like, I can turn a blind eye and pretend you didn’t make this amazing blunder.
You then pull a complete non-sequitur:
“Since time and space are interwoven, the question of “before” assumes a linear movement of time, but time also began at the big bang so it’s not so much that the universe is eternal, it’s that there is no such thing as eternity. ”
The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise in any way, nor is the claim relevant to anything we’re discussing anyways, so the whole thing falls apart.
“Actually it’s deistic, not theistic.”
Deism is a type of theism. Your response is just blunders on top of blunders. I know you might be confused that Christopher Hitchens’ speeches were totally nonsensical now that I tell you this, but let me explain it a little more; theism is the view that God exists, whereas deism is a type of theism that further states that God doesn’t care nor has intervened with human affairs.
As for Sean Carroll, Carroll is one of the few scientists who still hold on to a past-eternal universe. And in the end, neither of them can explain how the universe could possibly exist from nothing, nor does Krauss’s misrepresentation of nothingness and quantum processes work either (seriously, Krauss says quantum mechanics can create spacetime, when quantum mechanics exists solely inside of spacetime, it’s impossible).
“You simply substitute in God where there are no answers.”
No, God IS the answer. You go on to make the ridiculous assertion that there is no evidence for the Creator, and amazingly missing the exact thing we were discussing: the beginning of the universe. The beginning of the universe is just one big egg on the face of any naturalist (like you).
You then strawman my position with this:
“We don’t know = therefore God”
Perhaps that settles where the *real* intellectual dishonesty is taking place. Checkmate.
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Checkmate?…Who is tipping their imaginary fedora now? lol
I haven’t strawmanned you at all. You have cherry picked biblical scholarship that supports your point of view while ignoring scholarship that does not. You provide no proof for God, you simply say that physics is insufficient in explaining why there is a universe, thus you conclude that there must be a God.
And I’m sorry you don’t seem to understand the connection between space and time. It is completely relevant to the discussion. It completely destroys the notion that there is such a thing as “before the big bang”.
What you claim is atheist fiction, is theist fiction. God was always there? How do you know? The fact that science tells us the universe had a beginning doesn’t lead one to the conclusion that there must be an eternal God. It doesn’t imply a creator at all. This is the point that you are constantly missing. You are simply applying attributes to God for the convenience of argument without once again proving that there is one.
See when you say ridiculously stupid shit like “God IS the answer” it’s hard for me to take you seriously. There simply is no causal link between the start of the universe and a supernatural consciousness. Your proclamations do not make it so. You haven’t provided one shred of evidence for a creator. You are stuck on this something from nothing idea as being some sort of proof of God. It is not. It is a question that we don’t know the answer to. So I’ll state again your argument reduces to:
“We don’t know = therefore God”. Until you actually provide evidence other than you are unsatisfied with what the current state of physics can tell us about the origins of the universe, this is your argument. The more you emphatically deny this, the more intellectually dishonest you become.
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“Checkmate?…Who is tipping their imaginary fedora now? lol”
Shoot. That’s the first time I’ve ever been rhetorically outsmarted. For the record, I’ve taken multiple shots at you too.
“I haven’t strawmanned you at all. You have cherry picked biblical scholarship that supports your point of view while ignoring scholarship that does not.”
This is a totally false statement, I’ve taken a look at scholarship far and wide — probably far more than you have. I’ve read countless papers on this issue, I’ve read academic books. I’ve watched maybe a hundred hours of lectures by now. This is total nonsense. Perhaps you just genuinely can’t believe that someone who has looked at the evidence, even more then you have, hasn’t come to your conclusion.
You go on to strawman me again, claiming that I’m saying that physics is insufficient to explain naturalism and hence I insert God here. Again, that’s not my argument, and why you haven’t understood my argument by now despite my many explanations is incomprehensible.
I specifically state that naturalism is *inferior* than supernaturalism at explaining our data. That’s simply the way things are. Physics can’t answer the question “why is there something rather than nothing” for the same reason why your dance class can’t — because physics has nothing to do with this question, and physics *did not even exist* before the universe began to exist. In fact, at the supposed singularity, the laws of physics completely broke down. Physics only exists inside the universe and thus fails to explain the universe, by definition. To claim that physics, which only exists in the universe, can explain the universe is clearly circular reasoning.
As I have pointed out earlier, naturalism made absolutely no since ever since the Big Bang theory was devised and cosmologists discovered the universe began to exist. I have absolutely no need to adopt a worldview that makes absolutely no sense, it’s counter-intuitive to my logical reasoning. If you can’t even properly explain that your worldview is coherent, then it by definition is logically, and evidentially inferior to my worldview, supernaturalism.
“And I’m sorry you don’t seem to understand the connection between space and time. It is completely relevant to the discussion. It completely destroys the notion that there is such a thing as “before the big bang”.”
Yet another straw man that you perpetuate in every single one of your responses now. I went back to all my comments I posted on this thread, and found just what I thought I would — I *never once* referred to a “before the big bang”, because I know that time only came into existence at the beginning. Hence, because I never argued for this ardent fiction, conflating it as my position is a complete straw man argument as I never made such an argument. Good try, though.
But what’s even more important is that even if I did use the term in some hypothetical situation, I would *not* be asserting that time predates the universe. I would just use the term to explain my reference to the cause of the beginning of the universe. Technically speaking, the cause didn’t happen “before” the universe, but in a hypothetical situation I might use the term ‘before’ (like other Christians do, such as William Lane Craig) to simply refer to the cause of the universe, well-knowing that time didn’t actually exist then.
I don’t know why I had to explain this much for something I could have simply dismissed as a strawman. You should be thankful that I’m willing to explain these things in detail for you so that you can understand.
“What you claim is atheist fiction, is theist fiction. God was always there? How do you know?”
The mere concept of a created God is logically self-refuting. How can an omnipotent being at one point not exist, and then start existing at another point? There is no possible force in existence that can turn non-omnipotence to omnipotence, because there is a fundamental difference between these two things. If an omnipotence exists, this omnipotence must be the most fundamental thing in existence — i.e. God. For God to be the most fundamental thing in reality, He obviously cannot begin at some later point within the space-time continuum, otherwise He is totally not omnipotent nor even spaceless and timeless.
Hence, the idea of a created God 1) is self-refuting and 2) doesn’t exist outside of the imagination of atheists. In fact, it is a total straw man against the God that theists believe in.
Hence, if God exists, he MUST be eternal, and thus I don’t need to explain “where God came from”.
Again, the only intellectual dishonesty is on your part. We have two models, the theistic model of the universe and the naturalistic model of the universe. The more valid one should be adopted, that’s how science works — you always adopt the more valid model. The fact that the universe began to exist totally contradicts the naturalistic model of the universe. Thus, the theistic model is the most valid one.
So, not only is naturalism incoherent since we have a beginning, it has been demonstrated by a number of philosophers that you can directly connect the beginning of the universe to the existence of God. I will explain this some other time, perhaps my next response.
Up until now, I’ve been using a logical form of argument to prove God exists. There is only one way to ‘logically’ prove something. There are multiple ways to mathematically/scientifically/historically prove something, but using pure logistics, there is only one way to prove something is true — by negating it’s necessary opposite.
For example, let’s say you have the following: if I put A and B together, I will either get X or Y. If I disprove the result is Y, that logically necessitates that X is true.
Likewise, theism and naturalism are two necessary opposites. If one is necessarily shown to be false, the other is necessarily true. Hence, by showing naturalism is incomprehensible given what we know, that necessarily means theism is true given logic. Therefore God exists.
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Oh, the gods … not SC… again. He is a Rabid Moronic Arsehole of the very highest order. In fact I think RMA might actually be his official initials.
Bit more lowdown in case you were not aware.
He once cited the illustrious Ron Wyatt and the chariot wheels on the Red Sea as evidence of the Exodus.
He then recanted and said he had made a mistake. he did not in fact know who Ron Wyatt was.
He then went on about the possibility of a Red Sea crossing anyway until brought to heel that the Red Sea was in actual fact a mistranslation.
Bear in mind this was over a quite extended thread. I was having a bit of fun by this stage I must admit.
He cites all the usual suspects when asked about evidence, and offers archaeologists such as Kitchen, Wood and Hoffmeier. Also, he doesn’t understand the word contemporary.
I consider you are brave to enter into any sort of email correspondence with this Dickhead ; ‘scusez moi mon Francais.
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No email conversation. See my reply to the Professor above (timestamp: 12:07 pm).
The original comment was in moderation on my book blog, but since it really didn’t pertain to the book contents, I decided to move it here … and open it up for discussion.
Actually, this whole discussion started on Logan’s (lifeafter40.net) blog post, “My son told me he’s an atheist (part 6).”
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Okay… phew! 🙂
Seriously, have you read his blog?
He is a flat out nutter. He sounds like a fairly recent convert (to me)- year or two – and not a very well-educated one either.
He will eventually wear you out, much like everyone’s favorite Flat Earther.
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I pretty much avoid “Christian” blogs. The exposure to them on blogs such as yours (and a few others) is way enough! 😀
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I went back to Logan’s blog. Crikey, that series is years old. I had forgotten I had commented on it. And there’s SC popping up in ’17 to to do what? Troll?
I will be surprised if he turns up here to continue this. But then, his ego is bursting full of Sunshiny Loving Jesusness so maybe he will grace us with his presence?
I have tangled with that slippery poisonous eel before so I will grab some popcorn and leave it to you guys … have fun!
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Well, he did throw out a debate challenge to me at the end of his comment … so maybe he’ll follow through and we’ll see more of him.
On the other hand … he really hasn’t had anyone to contend with on Logan’s blog (except Logan and me) whereas If he comes here things will be considerably different. Time will tell.
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If SC does indeed arrive here to discuss/debate, he’ll be one BRAVE (or foolish?) person, I’ll give him/her that. He will need very, very thick skin to deal with this group!!! Hahaha! 😛
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Again, a so-called Christian has identified his own dread and distress involving the horrors associated with God. This person shows signs of having nightmares about evil and a lake of fire and obviously believes his subservience to God will enhance his chances of avoiding this repulsive fear that rules his simplistic mind.
He is childish and unscientific in comparing lying to mass murderers. If he was at all scientific he would understand more about the mental health of such people and if he is not a science denier he should be able to check out his own cognitive health.
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“a so-called Christian”
Daringly, the majestic sklyjd decides to start out his polemic against me by questioning my faith. This should be good.
“has identified his own dread and distress involving the horrors associated with God.”
Actually, my ‘dread’ had to do with the idea of nothingness after death when I was a ‘non-believer’ so to speak.
Anyhoo, your comment goes on to accuse me of being ‘childish and unscientific’ for ‘comparing’ lying to mass murderers, when of course, I did no such thing. I simply used lying and murder to demonstrate a key point: that the *reason* some unbelievers cannot conceive that the punishment for sin is death *is precisely because* they themselves are sinners, and sin so often that they have become used to the entire thing that they don’t see sin as wrong. Thus, because they don’t see since as wrong, they cannot possibly conceive that their punishment for it is eternal hellfire.
Hilariously, based on your (non) understanding of my argument, you go on to label me as someone who denies ‘Science™’ (the new atheist equivalent of calling someone a heretic). That should be enough to put your polemic to rest.
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The Hell-talk is mildly amusing.
Lakes of fire, gold asphalt, and robo-virgins.
Even taken as metaphor… it’s silly metaphor.
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Agreed, and the math is terrible. Heaven is hotter than hell.
Heaven, according to Isaiah 30:26, is where “the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days.” Taken as read, Heaven receives from the moon as much radiation as the earth does from the sun, and in addition 49 times more, meaning fifty times in all. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann fourth power law for radiation [(H/E)4 = 50 where E is the absolute temperature of the earth 300°K (273+27)] gives the temperature of H (Heaven) as 525°C. Hell, according to Revelations 21:8 is where the “fearful and unbelieving shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” Now here’s the fun part. A lake of molten brimstone (sulfur) means that its temperature must be at or below its boiling point, 444.6°C. Above that point and it’d be a vapor, not a lake. Heaven (525°C) is therefore hotter than Hell (<444.6°C).
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Reminds me of an old Joke:
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That’s a good one 🙂
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Hi Peter,
Yes, an oldie … but most definitely a goodie. Thanks for a little levity. ❤
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I used to ponder how a lake of fire would work. Would our loving God give us a special post death body that would never be destroyed but be able to suffer pain? If so then that God must be a sadistic monster.
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Where is John Lennon when we really need him as he said in Imagine “nothing to kill or die for and no religion too.” In Dostoyevsky’s chapter entitled the Grand Inquisitor describing the religious leaders listening to Jesus and his clarification on what he meant concluding they had everything under control and didn’t need him interfering. My own conclusion is if Jesus was blogging today his comment would be be decent and get on with life. If you are a believer in some religion more power to you if not so what? Try not to be an a. hole.
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The wackos are always so damn sure of themselves that no amount of well reasoned logic will sway them from their indoctrinated positions.
I imagine even the preacher, when seeing them walking in their direction, sighs and says to himself “oh Jesus, not this guy again!”
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Oh, my. Shelldigger – that was especially chuckle-worthy after reading a new comment by Silence of Mind (about our friend John Zande) on violetwisp’s blog. (I don’t know how to link on my ipad – sorry) All one can do is shake one’s head. And grin.
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Reading that which comes forth from the likes of SOM can cause headdesk spasms. His posts should come with a Surgeon Generals warning 🙂
SURGEON GENERALS WARNING: This persons posts have been known to cause brain trauma from head meeting desk. Some people have jumped out of windows. Also known to cause teh stoopid in unborn children. Please if you are considering reading his posts, take up cigarettes and whiskey instead.
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Nice one, bucko. I presume such confidence can only mean that rebuttal is on the verge of being posted, otherwise, it would be rather interesting to see a dismissal of an argument without any attempt to demonstrate it is false. I seem to sense an argument ad lapidem about to emerge from beneath your skin.
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Oh look! It walks and talks just like a real troll.
The only thing I have to rebutt here is that someone who apparently rides along on the coattails of science, then believes that by doing so makes his interjections about proof of dogs noteworthy. It doesn’t.
I smell another crank. Similar to SOM.
Oh, also, anyone familiar with logical fallacies should also be aware when they use them.
Very close to the same level of Mr. Smartypants arrogance in this one, is it SOM by another handle? Or just another one like him? Yegads is that even possible?
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“The only thing I have to rebutt here is that someone who apparently rides along on the coattails of science, then believes that by doing so makes his interjections about proof of dogs noteworthy. It doesn’t.”
Apart from misspelling the word ‘rebut’, none of this makes any sense. The rest of your response is equally incomprehensible. Let’s get back on track.
You’ve made highly arrogant statements about both me and my arguments, and hence, you can only be so surely confident that they are wrong. But if you truly believe they are wrong, you must at least have some *good reason* to think my arguments do not represent fact. So, what are these good reasons that have convinced you that my argument is wrong and you’re right?
I’m trying to get you to post an actual rebuttal, but you seem to be dancing around it. You either have no interest in intellectual discourse or have been caught flaunting an arrogance that you can’t back up when confronted.
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Nah, I just have better things to do with my time at the moment. Maybe later. Perhaps you could get the conversation going with all of the evidence you have at hand as proof of your claims?
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The argument was explained quite in some detail in my comment that Nan reblogged.
“True story, I spilled orange juice on my keyboard the other day.”
My condolences.
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Ok, I finally have a moment to dedicate to this.
First when I commented here the other day, there were maybe 3-4 comments. I had not seen all of the rabbit droppings you left since.
Now that I have, and also seen much of your work in another post I am certain any effort on my part would be wasted on you, or anyone with such a profound handle on truth. Your truth is based upon a book of bullshit. As such any derived truth from said book is also bullshit.
There’s my rebuttal.
Now if you have any claims of fact someplace that are observable, verfiable, and falsifiable, I’d love to see that.
Any continued proclamations of truth or fact with no supporting evidence need not bother. Proclamation by assertion, with nothing more than an opinion, or a bible verse to back it up is a waste of everyones time. Unless opinions and bible verses are meaningful, which they won’t be here or anywhere with reasonable people present. You might want to stick with fellow brainwashed churchies instead.
That’s it. I’m said and done. You can go wallow with SOM for all I care. And take your snide ass pretentious superiority complex with you. You will find good company in SOM.
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Bucko finally is going to challenge me.
“Your truth is based upon a book of bullshit.”
Ouch, off to a terrible start.
“There’s my rebuttal.”
LOL. To be honest though, that’s the most convincing, well detailed and argued a case I’ve ever seen an atheist make in my life. Well done.
“Now if you have any claims of fact someplace that are observable, verfiable, and falsifiable, I’d love to see that.”
Apart from misspelling the word ‘verifiable’, what exactly do you want me to observe for you?
“Any continued proclamations of truth or fact with no supporting evidence need not bother.”
Hopefully this will fulfill you;
“And take your snide ass pretentious superiority complex with you.”
Are you going to be here all night?
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Good grief get a life dude. Your one hyper religious freak aint ya?
Ill not waste my time on any further discussion with you. Do you understand?
No matter what you think may be relevant, it has no meaning to me. Do you understand?
I’d honestly rather go have all of my teeth pulled than even try to attempt any kind of meaningful conversation with the likes of you. Do you understand?
I dont have much left but a fuck off! Jesus fucking christ but you are something… and it is as bad of a condition as I have ever seen. I really hope you get some help man. Just not from me. Ok? Now I am done. Do you understand? Done.
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“I’d honestly rather go have all of my teeth pulled than even try to attempt any kind of meaningful conversation with the likes of you. Do you understand?
I dont have much left but a fuck off!”
Good grief, you’re one crazy atheist I can tell you that.
“Now I am done. Do you understand? Done.”
I understand, Sherlock, you wrote that like 70 times in your comment. Go tel yer mama to give you a spanking for being such a rude little twat.
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I see you’re being your dickheaded self over here, too, SC.
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Just found out?
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Glad you own it.
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Pathetic. 🙂
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Did you want juice with that? LOL
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In case anyone was wondering if playground bullies grow up to become internet trolls, I think we have a data point.
You know I have to wonder, back when I made my first post on this topic if perhaps I struck a nerve with this guy? This IS the person that the reverend sees heading his way, sighs and says to himself “Oh Jesus not this guy again!”
What else would explain the fact that he just can’t get enough of trolling me?
Get help SC. Seriously.
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Evading the question yet again. Do you not see how many chances I’m giving you to salvage yourself from what you’ve gotten yourself into?
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Lol, you seem to think I actually care. Go piss up a rope.
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Piss up a rope? You’re crazy. No wonder you’re pretending as if Paul doesn’t exist.
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I was married to Ms. Personality Disorder once. You reek of it. 🙂
Get help.
Having been where I have been, and done the things Ive done, give me a unique perspective. You see I know that for you the argument is your one and only goal. You will goad and insult your way along until you get what you want. The argument. Having had that experience in my life, I can see it coming pretty quick.
I know the one thing in the arsenal to really piss off someone like you, is to not argue with them.
So. There you go.
I repeat, Get help. And piss up a rope lol!
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Also, SC, shelldigger knows very well that it’s useless to argue with the delusional — they just rearrange their perception until it fits their idea of reality. You are an enthusiastic participant in this.
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Delusion is the tip of the iceburg with this one.
Hey! How ya doing Carmen? 🙂
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Busier than a one-armed paperhanger, shelldigger. Since we live in a vacation spot, there are people coming and going constantly. My husband doesn’t know it yet, but daughter #2 (of 3) is coming for a surprise visit this weekend. . . he’s been whining about seeing everyone but her so he’ll be thrilled! How ’bout you?
(sorry for the OT, SB, but I figured we’d heard enough of SC — talk about initials. . .) 🙂
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Extremely busy myself. 🙂 It’s always one thing after another ’round here. But we keep on trucking 🙂
Enjoy your visit!
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To be honest, you’re right. Sometimes I take things too far and insult my opponent. I know better. I guess frustration is something I need to be able to counter more easily. In all truth, thanks for the reality check.
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True story, I spilled orange juice on my keyboard the other day. I have been having trouble with typos as a result. I’m also no perfect typist either, so it happens. But thanks for pointing that out…. 😉 I have a better understanding of what I’m seeing atm.
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I wonder if these preachy types understand how patronising they sound to people who have studied the Bible and concluded it is a human, not a divine, book?
Rather than address your stated reasons for rejecting Christianity this person seems to be really saying between the lines, ‘you just want to sin’.
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‘But lying is not a ‘small’ thing, it’s inconceptually evil’
Really! How does this sit with the story in Exodus of the Jewish midwives who lied to the Egyptians and were commended by God? What about Rahab who lied to the authorities in Jericho? What about when ‘God’ told Samuel to lie if questioned by Saul? What about when ‘God’ sends a lying spirit to deceive Ahab?
Just more inconsistency in the Bible that our learned critic should contemplate.
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Thanks for re-posting this. It definitely seems to reach a wider audience than the comment on your book. Anyhow, now that I’ve spent some time responding to the errors your fans made in their responses, would you actually be interested in debating the reliability of the New Testament with me on your blog? I would definitely enjoy such a thing.
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I trust you’e aware that scholars and historians have spent YEARS debating “the reliability of the New Testament” — and have come up with starkly opposing opinions. At this point in time (we’re in the process of moving), I don’t think I want to take on such a HUGE topic.
However, I feel certain there are several of my blog followers that would love to jump in with both feet. If this would be acceptable to you — and a few volunteers step forward — I will put up a new post devoted entirely to such a debate.
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I am in complete awareness of the scholarly debate on the issue. If you don’t want to jump in yourself, I’d look forwards to having discourse with someone else too. Now that it’s the summer I have more free time than I usually do.
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OK — the call is out to any of my blog followers who want to take this on. As soon as I get at least 2-3 people, I’ll put up a new post dedicated to this “enlightening” discussion.
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Sounds great. I’ll wait and see how things stack up.
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Go on then, Nan, I’m in.
But will please insist on the proviso that SC answers direct questions with direct answers. No hand waving theological two step nonsense.
He and I have engaged in dialogue before… and I can already see he is beginning to go ”All Apologetic”
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“Go on then, Nan, I’m in.”
Do we have a taker?
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See my latest post: “How Reliable is the New Testament?”
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Personally I think a debate on this gives the pro-supernatural position more credit than it deserves. I can’t find anyone who is willing to debate the existence of mermaids or unicorns. The New Testament makes some similarly incredulous claims:
1. That some guy died, his body decomposed for three days, but then he came back to life with the wounds from dying but no other source of rot.
2. Post death of Jesus, the Book of Matthew claims there was practically a zombie apocalypse that the external sources in the video all neglect to mention.
3. Every single claim of miraculous healing or other bending of the supernatural by Jesus and the disciples.
Believing that people lived near an apocalyptic rabbi 2 thousand years ago isn’t a big deal, along with the claims that some Roman dude was governor. But I really think that people who support the supernatural should demonstrate why the fantastic claims ought to be believed in spite of the lack of evidence that this stuff actually happens.
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“in spite of the lack of evidence”
Unfortunately, by stating there is a lack of evidence for the supernatural claims of Jesus and the Bible, one must actually ignore the critical scholarship on the issue. The historicity of these supernatural events, such as the resurrection, is critically debated today by historians, especially the non-religious ones, precisely because we have so much material and evidence for it.
A recent book, titled ‘The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach’ published to IVP Academic by the historian Michael Licona has been described by academics in the field as a game changer for its high quality and a stunning examination of the details. The evidence is rather remarkable. Anyone who claims otherwise… Simply hasn’t engaged with the evidence presented. Even Bart Ehrman, when he engaged in a written debate with Michael Licona in 2016 through TheBestSchools.org admitted that the evidence Licona has for the resurrection is the best that a believer could possibly hope for existing.
Without reading Licona’s 700 page giant and magisterial book on the issue (which interestingly enough, solves your entire ‘zombie apocalypse’ tirade), one can look at a concise historical defense for the resurrection here;
Enjoy.
As for the a priori dismissal of the supernatural, this only convinces people who are already totally convinced that the natural world is all that could possibly be. Hence, pandering.
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The dismissal of the supernatural is based on common sense and ordinary perception. One doesn’t ask doctors to eschew medical training in favor of prayer, or rocket scientists to read their bibles in lieu of actual learning. Even in ordinary matters like cooking, one doesn’t beg the favor of a deity for food to prepare itself.
One consequence of your position is that reality does not obey natural laws. If that were demonstrable, I could see the utility in having debates on what that means for people in how they live their lives. Instead, the best anyone can point to is that supernatural happenings must have occurred outside the scope of any measurable setting or within the observation of any disinterested party.
Moreover, it elevates every other fantastic claim to the level of credible inquiry. Someone says he or she saw a leprechaun? Congratulations, scholars will have to collect evidence on leprechauns.
A much simpler barrier to such labors exists. Namely, proponents of the supernatural really ought to provide testable, objective, verifiable, and non-testimonial evidence of their claims. Unless and until that happens, all you’re doing is whining about people not taking your phantasms seriously.
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“The dismissal of the supernatural is based on common sense and ordinary perception.”
Interesting. I seem to have common sense and ordinary perception, yet I don’t share your a priori dismissal of the supernatural. So, does your claim fall apart?
“One doesn’t ask doctors to eschew medical training in favor of prayer, or rocket scientists to read their bibles in lieu of actual learning.”
This is a complete red-herring to the existence of the supernatural. Doctors don’t need to be medically trained to be able to pray, nor does the supernatural have anything to do with a NASA astronaut keeping a nice Bible besides their telescope.
“One consequence of your position is that reality does not obey natural laws.”
False, yet again. Reality obeys natural laws unless an intervention is made from something apart from the supernatural world.
“Moreover, it elevates every other fantastic claim to the level of credible inquiry. Someone says he or she saw a leprechaun? Congratulations, scholars will have to collect evidence on leprechauns.”
The supernatural isn’t equivalent to leprechauns (if such beings even would qualify as supernatural in the first place), and thus this statement too does not employ any valid reasoning.
“A much simpler barrier to such labors exists. Namely, proponents of the supernatural really ought to provide testable, objective, verifiable, and non-testimonial evidence of their claims.”
Because the supernatural is by definition, an intervention from ‘outside the system’ — it can’t be something you slap under a microscope to repeat. Here, we have a simple failure of methodology. The method you just cited is the scientific method, but we all know that the scientific method is, by definition, how we investigate the *natural* world, and hence by definition does not apply to the supernatural. Thus, you are intentionally using the wrong methodology to investigate miracles. The only case I have any clue of where your methodology was passed by supernatural test is during prayer studies. Aside from that, we need to use the historical methodology — examining the evidence for the supernatural occurring in events in the past. In this case, the beginning of the universe is an obvious egg on the face of anyone who denies the supernatural.
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“I seem to have common sense and ordinary perception[.]”
By all means, show us all how supernatural interference in the natural world is a common, ordinary happenstance obvious to anyone.
Your argument that science is inadequate to investigating supernatural claims is misplaced, as you also argue that the supernatural can act upon the natural world. If that were the case, there should be indicators that natural things were acted upon by supernatural forces. Nobody even has that luxury.
Third, your response to my point about doctors and rocket scientists is completely non-responsive. What I was driving at was the idea that nobody relies on the supernatural to affect the natural world when results need to be reliable. In short, if your points about the supernatural are true, then more people ought to rely on the supernatural for such outcomes.
All of your points here are being made solely to bootstrap the validity of the testimony of people who were promoting a religion. My analogies to other claims about supernatural entities stands. If your claims about the existence and nature of a supernatural deity are taken as valid without any independent indicators, then people would have to entertain such claims about anything else.
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“By all means, show us all how supernatural interference in the natural world is a common, ordinary happenstance obvious to anyone.”
Huh? Only a tiny minority of the world population doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Less than 15% of the world population is unaffiliated with religion (it used to be higher, but non-religious have been dying off recently because of their surprisingly low fertility rates). Hence, almost everyone on Earth knows that the supernatural exists.
If anything, the belief that the natural world is everything is the *uncommon* perception.
“Your argument that science is inadequate to investigating supernatural claims is misplaced, as you also argue that the supernatural can act upon the natural world. If that were the case, there should be indicators that natural things were acted upon by supernatural forces. Nobody even has that luxury.”
I would argue that we do have this luxury, but you are shifting goalposts. You said something like “I want to take the supernatural and repeat it and observe it and slap it under my microscope and put the rewind on it as many times as I want just like I’d do a chemical test” — a ridiculous request, considering the nature of the supernatural. The supernatural is an *intervention* in the ‘system’ (natural world), and hence cannot be slapped under a microscope and repeatedly tested. That’s just not how it works. That’s the problem I was getting at in your response.
“Third, your response to my point about doctors and rocket scientists is completely non-responsive. What I was driving at was the idea that nobody relies on the supernatural to affect the natural world when results need to be reliable.”
Absolutely incorrect. Doctors don’t get trained in prayer because prayer is not something that needs training to do — you just got to be a good Christian (which demonstrates why prayer studies in non-Christian contexts are failures in comparison to Christian ones). Why on Earth would the actuality of the supernatural have anything to do with a rocket scientist using the Bible to interpret his findings? These are two totally different things. It has nothing to do with the supernatural. If anything, you’re only arguing that people in general don’t utilize the supernatural in their daily lives.
Again, the beginning of the universe is an egg on the face of any naturalist, as well as the many studies which affirm the works of prayers (although some don’t find results). There is also good evidence, as the Bible says there is, for the historical resurrection of Christ the greatest miracle in all the Bible. Just look:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=historical+evidence+for+the+resurrection
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I like how you just took several hundred words to say, in a nutshell, that you can’t provide non-testimonial evidence of the supernatural.
Creating a straw man out of my position, shifting goalposts on your own, and bastardizing scientific inquiry to suit your own end doesn’t absolve you of this. Rather, it highlights the double standard you and other Christians have set for yourselves.
Consequently, it’s also highly disingenuous you’d claim common cause with non-Christians who believe in the supernatural. You haven’t argued the validity of Hinduism or Wiccan spiritualism. Are you suggesting their belief systems are equally valid to Christianity? I understand why you might not be willing to go there; the bible doesn’t exactly extol the virtue of entertaining other belief systems.
My request is simple, SC. Searching for excuses not to respond to it is pathetic and intellectually dishonest.
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“I like how you just took several hundred words to say, in a nutshell, that you can’t provide non-testimonial evidence of the supernatural.”
The beginning of the universe is not testimonial, and prayer studies use scientific methodologies in controlled settings to confirm their conclusions. Hence, this is not only a misrepresentation of my words, but it is now a shattered misrepresentation of my words.
“Consequently, it’s also highly disingenuous you’d claim common cause with non-Christians who believe in the supernatural. You haven’t argued the validity of Hinduism or Wiccan spiritualism. Are you suggesting their belief systems are equally valid to Christianity?”
This is totally shifting goalposts. You said that the non-supernatural is common perception. I showed that the vast majority of the world population would completely dismiss atheism and naturalism as nonsense. This completely picks apart your claim. I never said the majority of the world population is Christian, I’m just saying that it’s rather obvious that the supernatural world exists.
You then completely lose it:
“Creating a straw man out of my position, shifting goalposts on your own, and bastardizing scientific inquiry to suit your own end doesn’t absolve you of this.”
You also didn’t respond to the evidence I posted in my last comment on historical evidence for the resurrection (the video), and you decided not to say anything about the big egg on your face called the ‘beginning of the universe’.
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Well, I didn’t respond because you’re providing testimonial evidence in support of your position. In other words, you’re requiring someone else to make determinations on reality for me and everyone else you want to evaluate your claims. Your position on the beginning of the universe is similarly flawed. The existence of the universe doesn’t inherently illustrate the existence of a supernatural entity; one needs to have prior supernatural beliefs in order to make the jump.
Your prayer studies are equally inconclusive. For every study saying prayer works, there are numerous other studies showing prayer doesn’t work. What makes your studies more accurate than anyone else’s?
Additionally, what you’re not grasping is that if we were to take your claims as valid, the question then becomes an issue of why we don’t do that for every single supernatural claim. That the point eludes you isn’t shifting a goalpost. It just means you’re lost in this exchange.
To simplify my point for you, I’m saying you should provide materials which don’t require someone else to determine what is real for anyone else. Otherwise, you’re not providing any new material anyone here hasn’t seen before.
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“Well, I didn’t respond because you’re providing testimonial evidence in support of your position. In other words, you’re requiring someone else to make determinations on reality for me and everyone else you want to evaluate your claims. Your position on the beginning of the universe is similarly flawed. The existence of the universe doesn’t inherently illustrate the existence of a supernatural entity; one needs to have prior supernatural beliefs in order to make the jump.”
None of this makes very much sense to me — the beginning of the universe is a fatal flaw in naturalism. All naturalists before the 20th century held to a past-eternal universe before scientific cosmology started taking off. The supernaturalists who believed in God as the Creator put their bets on a beginning. The naturalists lost. This is a fatal flaw in naturalism to have lot something as important as this — in fact, naturalists in academic positions even tried resisting the Big Bang theory towards the second half of the 20th century. Your worldview simply doesn’t make sense anymore now that we know the universe began to exist.
“Your prayer studies are equally inconclusive. For every study saying prayer works, there are numerous other studies showing prayer doesn’t work. What makes your studies more accurate than anyone else’s?”
Some studies show working results, some don’t. This can be explained, of course — there are numerous instances where God obviously isn’t going to answer a prayer (either because the praying person isn’t a Christian, or he doesn’t have faith in his prayer, or he’s praying for something contradictory to God’s will such as wanting tons of money, etc). But the fact that many prayer studies show conclusive results proves that you can’t keep ignoring this data.
“Additionally, what you’re not grasping is that if we were to take your claims as valid, the question then becomes an issue of why we don’t do that for every single supernatural claim.”
That’s because not all supernatural claims are substantiated by scores of papers in secular peer-reviewed academic journals. Name me the last time a Hindu published a peer-reviewed paper for the miracles of Krishna. You’ve probably never heard of one. Tell me the last time a Christian published a peer-reviewed book on the historical evidence for the resurrection. If you’ve looked at this at any serious depth, at least two titles would have sprung to your head by now in the last two decades alone (which is also when the better ones started rolling in). Christianity is the most credible worldview.
“To simplify my point for you, I’m saying you should provide materials which don’t require someone else to determine what is real for anyone else.”
I’m not doing that. I’m simply telling you to objectively look at the evidence for yourself. Don’t believe what I’m saying. Read Jesus’ teachings. Read some of the books arguing in favor of the historical resurrection. You will be surely convinced if you care for the truth (just like I was).
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“I’m simply telling you to objectively look at the evidence for yourself.”
If we’re being completely honest here, that’s not what you’re doing at all. Rather, you’re assuming that anyone that disagrees with you who actually has read their bible and companion materials isn’t objectively looking at what you consider is evidence. That’s quite presumptuous.
Everything you’ve offered here is not anything any skeptic hasn’t heard before, including your charge that people who disagree with you don’t care for the truth. At the risk of repeating myself, repackaging of previously dismissed information doesn’t warrant new examination. Similarly, you still haven’t offered anything other than the bare allegations of supernatural existence. Just because Christians are more prolific writers than Wiccans or Muslims or Jews doesn’t elevate the supernatural to reality.
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“If we’re being completely honest here, that’s not what you’re doing at all. Rather, you’re assuming that anyone that disagrees with you who actually has read their bible and companion materials isn’t objectively looking at what you consider is evidence. That’s quite presumptuous.”
Eh, I might be a little presumptuous. But I’m probably also right.
You then go on to totally forget about our past conversations and say this;
“Similarly, you still haven’t offered anything other than the bare allegations of supernatural existence.”
I’ve already pointed to the beginning of the universe and offered valuable prayer studies. I haven’t even gotten into things like the complexity of life or the Bible or whatnot (although I did also touch on the historical evidence for the resurrection). It’s not just that Christians are more prolific writers than Hindus or Wiccans, it’s just that Hinduism and wacky Wiccanism are totally nonsense religions and we both know that. But you just haven’t given up on your own atheism to become a Jesus fanatic yet. What on Earth is stopping you?
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“I’ve already pointed to the beginning of the universe and offered valuable prayer studies.”
And I’ve already explained why they’re irrelevant.
“But you just haven’t given up on your own atheism to become a Jesus fanatic yet. What on Earth is stopping you?”
The answer to your question is simple: Christianity’s inability to show why its supernatural claims should be any more credible than other “totally nonsense religions[.]”
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“And I’ve already explained why they’re irrelevant.”
Looks like I missed your fictional explanation.
“The answer to your question is simple: Christianity’s inability to show why its supernatural claims should be any more credible than other “totally nonsense religions[.]””
I have given you links that demonstrate this very thing for you earlier, and you did not click on them. Why? Pretending away the evidence wont make it go away.
Hinduism is as insane as atheism, probably planted by Satan himself. You’re not getting into heaven once you finally admit Jesus died for your sins.
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“Looks like I missed your fictional explanation.”
No, you ignored it, like every other reasonable point everyone here has made.
“I have given you links that demonstrate this very thing for you earlier, and you did not click on them. ”
No, you didn’t. You provided testimonial evidence based on other testimonial evidence. All the YouTube videos and allusions to other evidence rely on someone else’s bald assertion that the bible is true. I’ve also explained why that’s not persuasive.
“Hinduism is as insane as atheism, probably planted by Satan himself. You’re not getting into heaven once you finally admit Jesus died for your sins.”
An allusion to an imaginary antagonist, followed by a fantasy torture threat. This still doesn’t make your claims about the supernatural any more credible than anyone else’s claims about the supernatural. In fact, you should probably quit while you’re behind.
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“No, you ignored it, like every other reasonable point everyone here has made.”
I’ve looked at your claims and they simply don’t stack up to the evidence I’m aware of. I’m sorry to say but, you’re going to have to give up on the sinking boat of atheism. God is greater than you are. Your explanations are not going to work.
“No, you didn’t. You provided testimonial evidence based on other testimonial evidence. All the YouTube videos and allusions to other evidence rely on someone else’s bald assertion that the bible is true. I’ve also explained why that’s not persuasive”
How on planet living Earth does the video I note get based on ‘testimonial’ evidence? An ancient source is an ancient source. Ancient sources are used to determine what happened in history. This is not some amazing new phenomenon. The video uses ancient sources and demonstrates that they reveal the historical reality of Jesus rising from the dead. Perhaps you can try to explain a historian why historical sources don’t work (you might get scolded though).
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“How on planet living Earth does the video I note get based on ‘testimonial’ evidence?”
Testimonial evidence is evidence provided by a person for the truth of the matter asserted. By necessity, it requires the assertion of a person. Your video needs the assertions of people in order for its conclusions to be true, and therefore it relies on testimonial evidence.
Please note that I’m just being specific on this in relation to supernatural claims. Your attempt to drag this to criticizing ancient history in general isn’t really appropriate here.
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“Testimonial evidence is evidence provided by a person for the truth of the matter asserted. By necessity, it requires the assertion of a person. Your video needs the assertions of people in order for its conclusions to be true, and therefore it relies on testimonial evidence.”
The explanation still makes absolutely no sense. Does your claim boil down to ‘the author of the video is making an argument, therefore he is wrong?’ Or — are you saying that the sources he used to demonstrate the resurrection are ‘testimonial’? Where is the ‘testimony’ being given? This is one of the most absurd excuses I’ve ever read for avoiding dealing with the argument at hand.
“Your attempt to drag this to criticizing ancient history in general isn’t really appropriate here.”
Of course it is. If your argument is simply calling the authors sources ‘testimonial’, even though they are simply ancient sources like any other, your argument can disqualify *all ancient records in existence* because they are ‘testimonial’ — in other words, if this is really your argument, it is obviously incoherent.
Could it be that you’re simply making something up to get around the overwhelming historical evidence at hand that shoots up non-Christian worldviews?
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It’s been horrendously obvious from your first comment that you haven’t quite grasped what I’m saying. Making guesses in ignorance isn’t going to help you at all. You’re snarking up the wrong tree.
Every religion has someone that says it’s true. All I’m saying is that you’re going to need more than just a bunch of talk to demonstrate the veracity of your claims about the supernatural.
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“It’s been horrendously obvious from your first comment that you haven’t quite grasped what I’m saying. Making guesses in ignorance isn’t going to help you at all.”
So why don’t you actually make your argument comprehensible?
“Every religion has someone that says it’s true.”
And for every religion other than Christianity (like Islam), that’s total bull.
“you need more than a bunch of talk to demonstrate the veracity of your claims”
God help me. Has it ever come across your mind that the content of the talk IS what demonstrates the veracity of my claims about the supernatural? Or am I supposed to explain why Christianity is true while not saying a word? This is total bolts.
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Once again, you’re snarking up the wrong tree. Ask anyone else here if they know what I’m getting at. Or continue mocking what you don’t understand. It’s a free country.
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“It’s a free country”
I haven’t exactly heard that one as an explanation as to why someone won’t clarify themselves. Freedom, amiright?
I think I understand what you’re saying — I just don’t think it’s a valid complaint.
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“I haven’t exactly heard that one as an explanation as to why someone won’t clarify themselves.”
The good news is that I didn’t offer it as an explanation for that. The bad news is that you’re still making stuff up about what I’m saying. That’s part of your problem here.
The complaint you’ve articulated isn’t a valid one. Unfortunately, it’s not the point I’m making, either.
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“The good news is that I didn’t offer it as an explanation for that. The bad news is that you’re still making stuff up about what I’m saying. That’s part of your problem here.”
Your responses are just amazingly evasive of the points I raise. You’ve really gone a long way from talking focus off of the arguments in which you could not respond to. I might simply end this conversation as I’m only here to destroy naturalism and anti-Christian arguments.
Here, recite this and your life will change;
Our Father in heaven,
your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
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“Your responses are just amazingly evasive of the points I raise.”
I could very well make the same complaint of how you’ve conducted yourself here. It’s amazing how loud you get when you receive the same treatment you’ve given others here.
As far as your version of the Lord’s Prayer is concerned, I think it’s incredible that you’d give short shrift to other religions and then make the claim that saying some words will have a profound effect on someone’s life. The closest I can get to treating you in kind is to condescendingly tell you your life will change if you stop believing in the supernatural. Is that the sort of treatment you’re going for?
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“As far as your version of the Lord’s Prayer is concerned, I think it’s incredible that you’d give short shrift to other religions and then make the claim that saying some words will have a profound effect on someone’s life.”
All other religions are obvious fiction, as we both know. I also find your accusations of condescension curious, since I was simply giving you what I consider most beneficial for your life.
“I could very well make the same complaint of how you’ve conducted yourself here.”
I did not evade any of your points, however. Thus, it makes no sense to me that my comments are evasive.
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“I did not evade any of your points, however.”
Actually, you just flat out didn’t respond to them. The only things you responded to were your characterizations of what I was saying. Even when I tried clearing up the matter (for example, with your attempt at claiming the beginning of the universe’s relationship with the divine), you simply repeated that you believed you were right.
“I also find your accusations of condescension curious, since I was simply giving you what I consider most beneficial for your life.”
Then you shouldn’t find it condescending when I tell you that you should give up your belief in supernatural deities; your life will change after you do so.
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“Actually, you just flat out didn’t respond to them. ”
I actually addressed and dealt with all of them. I have no clue where this is coming from, especially since you’re the one who claimed it was you who didn’t need to respond to my responses because of your ‘Murican freedom.
Anyways, it appears as if the Lord’s Prayer just isn’t right for you. This one might work out too, though;
Romans 10:9: If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Let me know if any problems go with your conversion.
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” I have no clue where this is coming from[.]”
This is because you’re still making up stuff that I said. Apparently reading comprehension has suffered since your conversion. It’s not too terribly surprising, considering you believe a deity can sacrifice itself to itself to appease its own bizarre cosmic justice system.
Hopefully you’ll see the error of your ways and you’ll give up on zombie uprisings and parting the Red Sea. Best wishes to you!
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“This is because you’re still making up stuff that I said. ”
Ugh… Nope.
“Apparently reading comprehension has suffered since your conversion.”
That’s rather rude.
“It’s not too terribly surprising, considering you believe a deity can sacrifice itself to itself to appease its own bizarre cosmic justice system.”
Now that’s just a misrepresentation. God sacrificed Himself to Himself? No… The Son sacrificed Himself for the sins of mankind in order to appease the debt for our sins. There’s nothing “cosmic” about God’s judgement system, considering that it isn’t located in any physical place in space anyways — it’s an absolute concept.
“zombie uprisings”
Zombies are daft rotting pieces of flesh walking around trying to eat your brains, hence, the analogy of a zombie to the divine resurrection of Jesus falls apart.
Perhaps you would be a Christian if you did not misunderstand it like the way you do. Hm. What can I do for you about that?
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“God sacrificed Himself to Himself? No[.]”
So you don’t believe Jesus was your deity incarnate? Don’t believe in the holy trinity?
Blasphemy.
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“So you don’t believe Jesus was your deity incarnate? ”
Of course I do, but He didn’t sacrifice Himself to Himself, He sacrificed Himself for the sins of humanity. It’s remarkable how that slipped you when writing your response out to me.
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Fine then. Your deity sacrificed itself to itself for the sins of humanity. Does that make things better for you?
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“Fine then. Your deity sacrificed itself to itself for the sins of humanity. Does that make things better for you?”
No. You’re not getting it. God didn’t sacrifice Himself to Himself. That makes no sense, where does it say that in the Bible? God wasn’t sacrificed “to” anyone. He was, on the other hand, sacrificed for something — our sins.
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Luke 23:46.
Jesus totally wanted to go into his/his father’s hands…which then threw him to hell to pay the ancient blood/sin debt. Unless you’re saying your deity doesn’t send people to hell?
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“Jesus totally wanted to go into his/his father’s hands…which then threw him to hell to pay the ancient blood/sin debt. Unless you’re saying your deity doesn’t send people to hell?”
Huh? Jesus here simply entrusted Himself in death to the Father’s will. The objection appears to be nonsense.
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Now you’re just hairsplitting your own bible. If you don’t trust what it means in plain English, how is anyone else supposed to?
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Again, Jesus entrusted Himself on His death to the Father. This is rather a simple concept and trying to extrapolate any further meaning from it is (especially with an unbelievers agenda) crosses the line about what we can know from the text.
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“Hinduism is as insane as atheism, probably planted by Satan himself. You’re not getting into heaven once you finally admit Jesus died for your sins.”
You are scared shitless of not getting to heaven, you literally believe in heaven and hell and the big evil Satan. You have just judged and condemned Hindus and atheists, therefore you must be as righteous as your own God. Didn’t he mention something about, “For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself?” It seems we will see you in that pit of fire after all because I doubt your evangelising on this site will save you.
All the rhetoric from apologetics, philosophers, religious scholars and fanatical persons you believe and present has produced Jack shit in evidence and has been countered by the ex- Christian scholars on this site. Look inside your own head not the Bible, because that is the secret to where the truth about your God is found.
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“You are scared shitless of not getting to heaven, you literally believe in heaven and hell and the big evil Satan. ”
That’s a great way to start out a response, bucko. Nevertheless, I’m not afraid of not getting into heaven, and it’s amazingly obvious satan exists, alongside heaven and hell.
“You have just judged and condemned Hindus and atheists, therefore you must be as righteous as your own God.”
Huh? Complete non-sequitur. Furthermore, I said that Hinduism and atheism are as crazy as each other and that Hinduism was probably planted by Satan. Read my sentences as they are — extrapolating your own meaning from them might lead to your brain completely malforming everything in the process. There was no ‘judgement’ in my comment. Plus, John 7:14 tells us to judge righteously.
“All the rhetoric from apologetics-”
Gonna cut you off there, bucko. ‘Apologist’ is just the new atheist way of calling someone a heretic, get a grip.
“has been countered by the ex- Christian scholars-”
That is hilarious.
“-on this site”
LOL! You’re telling me you guys have actually addressed my arguments without me totally strangling your rebuttals? Why don’t you give it a go yourself — respond to my comment that Nan reblogged.
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“I’m not afraid of not getting into heaven, and it’s amazingly obvious satan exists, alongside heaven and hell.”
Well from bucko to sucko, you have made it amazingly obvious you are nothing more than any other indoctrinated evangelist tool. If you are not afraid of not going to heaven why do you carry on the pretence of being a preachy Christian to get there? After all, if you were smart enough you could surely work it out that heaven and hell is the device of man’s imagination. You disagree? So, think seriously about how many Christians would there be without the concept of a heaven and a hell? Absolutely bugger all because the incentive to be subservient would not exist. All the major religions have similar doctrines for the same reason.
In fact, if you look at the brain’s pineal gland in more detail it appears to create serotonin and an enzyme converts it to dimethyltryptamine (DMT) every day and researchers believe this extremely powerful and potent psychedelic drug is released into our brains. It is released to provide our consciousness and our dreams, just before we are born and when we die. This is believed to explain out of body experiences, alien abductions, hallucinations and impossible witnessed events etc. This powerful brain is where your god, heaven and hell exist, pal.
“Why don’t you give it a go yourself — respond to my comment that Nan reblogged.” What for? These guys are way smarter about this religious stuff than I am. And by the way, the people on this site are used to sarcastic comments from know- it -all Christian preachers.
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“Well from bucko to sucko-”
Huh?
“you have made it amazingly obvious you are nothing more than any other indoctrinated evangelist tool.”
Good one bucko. You go on to make some logically questionable statements; that if I was not worried about getting to heaven, I wouldn’t be preaching — but that is logically indefensible, since it’s my duty as a Christian to make others into Christians. You then say that hell is ‘obviously’ part of man’s imagination, of course because this isn’t obvious to me (nor the majority of the world population), the argument becomes self-refuting.
“In fact, if you look at the brain’s pineal gland in more detail it appears to create serotonin and an enzyme converts it to dimethyltryptamine (DMT) every day and researchers believe this extremely powerful and potent psychedelic drug is released into our brains. It is released to provide our consciousness and our dreams, just before we are born and when we die. This is believed to explain out of body experiences, alien abductions, hallucinations and impossible witnessed events etc. This powerful brain is where your god, heaven and hell exist, pal.”
LOL. You went from talking about some basic neurological principles about our brain and then continued explaining your own fictional understanding of religion. The entire comment is a total non-sequitur. Are you going to be here all night?
” What for? These guys are way smarter about this religious stuff than I am.”
They’re smarter than you? That says.. A lot.
LOL
“And by the way, the people on this site are used to sarcastic comments from know- it -all Christian preachers.”
Their arguments have fallen one after another. Just like at my discourse with Sirius Bizinus, his arguments were taken apart so badly that he claimed the reason he wasn’t responding anymore is because he has the human rights and freedom not to do so. What a crazy way of saying “I can’t rebut that”.
Plus, I don’t think I “know it all”. My knowledge has actually increased rebutting the unbelievers on Nan’s blog.
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“since it’s my duty as a Christian to make others into Christians.”
Unfortunately, you are delusional and you are not so smart blogging atheist adults and ex-Christians with the pretence to convert them into Christians obviously knowing it is impossible. You must believe you are looking good and godly but your charade is simply justifying the persistently powerful and fearful emotions of rejection by your almighty loving God that relentlessly tears at your distressed soul and the gruesome and repulsive horrors manifested within your indoctrinated brain of the agony as you burn and scream in unimaginable pain for eternity in a fiery pit of hell.
Of course, blogging atheists from your lounge chair is more fun and certainly beats going down and preaching on a street corner in the wet and cold where people can abuse your face. Most blogging Christian fanatics we know are much smarter but more despicable than you because they target the children. If god hands out points for conversions we will all see you in hell and the child abusers will go to heaven.
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“Unfortunately, you are delusional”
How unfortunate.
The rest of your comment is hardly comprehensible, besides the typical atheistic peanut gallery. Typing up on my laptop is certainly easier than going out on the streets, but I find that approaches besides the common street-preacher approach is necessary to win back the culture war. So far, the street-preacher ideology hasn’t helped much, considering the very high apostasy rates among teens.
“If god hands out points for conversions we will all see you in hell and the child abusers will go to heaven.”
Salvation hasn’t to do with works, rather you are saved by grace through faith. I will act on God’s will and do what I can to try to destroy the arguments of atheists and the typical unbelievers — I put what I cannot do up to God. My duty is to tell you the truth, whether or not you respond is up to you and between yourself and God.
By the way, how many fedoras do you have?
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Lol what a Nob!
Mike Licona is a Christian fundamentalist and evangelical apologist with a nice haircut who thinks the gospels are eye-witness testimony!
And who could forget that in his 2010 book he stated that the Raising of the Saints should be considered analogous and not a literal historical event.
For this small note in his book Norman Geisler and a few ”friends” went on a bit of a witch hunt demanding Licona write a retraction. He refused and subsequently was forced to resign his position at his place of employment. Nice! How very Christian of dear old Norm. What a wanker! ( does he drown kittens as a hobby, I wonder?)
Even Arch Nob Number 1, William Lane Craig thought that was a bit harsh and came out in support of Licona.
So, the Rasing of the Saints is analogous … according to Licona, but the Resurrection of the Lake Tiberius Pedestrian is a real historical event?
Seriously?
This is an absolute riot. You couldn’t write a better script for Comedy Central.
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“Lol what a Nob!
Mike Licona is a Christian fundamentalist and evangelical apologist with a nice haircut who thinks the gospels are eye-witness testimony!”
Licona has a PhD from Pretoria University and last year published a book with Oxford University Press. He is universally recognized as a top notch scholar, and thus this falls apart.
You then talk about the unfortunate instance I am all to familiar with of Norman Geisler and several other at some place Licona worked at where others tried to make him retract a statement in his book which, in the view of guys like Geisler, removed the historicity from one segment of the Gospel narratives.
Licona’s argument had to do with the saints rising from the dead in the Gospel of Matthew along with the earthquake or whatnot. This only happens in Matthew’s Gospel. Licona argued that this was apocalyptic imagery, and not an actual event Matthew was describing. He argued very simply for this — if the saints rose from the dead in their new, transformed bodies, then this would contradict Paul who said that Christ was the first of the resurrection. If they rose in their own, ordinary bodies while they lived on Earth, then basically we have a bunch of saints who are now going to be living around, homeless and without food or work. So Licona thinks it’s apocalyptic imagery. I don’t think his argument necessarily works, but he got a hard beating for this claim.
Licona was defended by many (including guys we all know like Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig), but ultimately resigned. Nevertheless, even his critics in this crossfire admitted that his book ‘The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach’ (published to InterVarsity Press) is a game changer.
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Why are you repeating what I wrote?
He is an evangelical apologist and considers the gospels are eye-witness Testimony.
So that puts him among the Silly People
And now you make yourself look like a nob(again) too.
I am curious, how many times a day does your Nanny make you take Meds?
Also, do you use regular cutlery or plastic?
Oh, and how did Licona’s book change the game?
And what game are you talking about?
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“Why are you repeating what I wrote?
He is an evangelical apologist and considers the gospels are eye-witness Testimony.
So that puts him among the Silly People”
Nevermind Richard Bauckham’s groundbreaking monograph on eyewitness testimony on the Gospels, I’m not aware that Licona thinks the Gospels are eyewitness testimony. He simply agrees with the majority of scholars that the author of Mark was named Mark (who was the interpreter of Peter) and the author of Luke was named Luke (who traveled with Paul).
Licona has a PhD from Pretoria University and published a monograph last year with Oxford University Press. You forgot about this in your response. He also regularly publishes papers in good journals.
“Oh, and how did Licona’s book change the game?
And what game are you talking about?”
The ‘game’ as in the historical defense for the resurrection of Jesus, and he ‘changed’ it as is made clear by the many academic reviews of his book.
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He has a phd in theology? And?
He still believes the Lake Tiberius Pedestrian was an actual historical figure.
Let’s bring this back on track and get back to basics shall we?
Splendid opportunity for you ….
To help your claim along a little, please cite contemporary evidence for the character Jesus of Nazareth.
Then we can tackle all the other issues, okay?
Super … Take it away, Tiger. The floor is all yours
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“He has a phd in theology? And?”
His PhD is in New Testament Studies (like most scholars in his field), not theology. There is no such thing as a ‘PhD in Theology’, although there is something called a ThD. Rookie mistake.
“He still believes the Lake Tiberius Pedestrian was an actual historical figure.”
Is that a biblical event? If so, I too, believe it.
“To help your claim along a little, please cite contemporary evidence for the character Jesus of Nazareth.”
LOL are you a mythicist?
“None of them [specialists in the field], to my knowledge, has any doubts that Jesus existed. …The view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet.” -Bart Ehrman
Of course we do not have contemporary sources for Jesus (nor do we have contemporary sources for the Germanic warlord Arminius who was said to have destroyed a sizable portion of all of Rome’s army. Nevertheless, we have sources like the early Pauline creeds dating to within a few years if not months of Jesus’ death (like 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 and Phillipians 2:6-11), and the Aramaic traditions in the New Testament that date to the 30’s AD.
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Read very carefully. I am of course referring to the miracle wielding Lake Tiberius pedestrian, the biblical character, Jesus of Nazareth and not some smelly Ist century eschatological prophet called Yeshua.
So therefore, what you are telling me is, no, you have no contemporary evidence at all
Thanks for playing.
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Again, I already explained the non-relevance of contemporaneous documentation, noted that we do have documentation so early that it is borderline contemporary, debunked mythicism, and affirmed that whatever New Testament event you arr referring to (the “miracle wielding Lake Tiberius pedestrian”) I affirm.
“not some smelly 1st century eschatological prophet called Yeshua”
The only thing that smells is your motives for writing this. Anyhow, the eschatological prophet Jesus is indistinguishable from the New Testament Jesus.
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How many miracles claims are attributed to Arminius?
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LOL! Are you seriously a mythicist? Please answer this.
“How many miracles claims are attributed to Arminius?”
Irrelevant, as Arminius was WAAAY more prominent than Jesus in his lifetime. It’s not even comparable. It’s also not as if Arminius is the only guy of his caliber to not have any contemporary records — this objection is sunk.
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Of course it is relevant. I am not referring to the Yeshua who may or may not have walked around Palestine I am talking about the biblical Jesus of Nazareth whose deeds John said could likely full a ”library”.
So how many bona fide non-biblical accounts are there of the miracles performed by the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth?
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Again, we’ve already demonstrated that people far more prominent then Jesus was have no contemporaneous documentation, hence a first century Rabbi who was going around and doing miracles wouldn’t have been testified of either. No problems here.
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NOt some smelly little itinerant rabbi. The miracle working Jesus of Nazareth, who cured lepers, fed thousands , cast out demons and whose exploits … that even the world itself could not contain the book that should be written.
This /em> is the Jesus I am talking about.
So, one mention outside the bible please …
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“NOt some smelly little itinerant rabbi. The miracle working Jesus of Nazareth, who cured lepers, fed thousands , cast out demons and whose exploits … that even the world itself could not contain the book that should be written.”
Taking into account John’s obvious exaggeration that he intentionally made, Jesus did do many miracles. But these miracles did NOT gain the traction of the whole world. What we know is that Jesus was a fairly reputable Jewish teacher in and around Galilee, Jerusalem, etc. That’s the fame he got from his many miracles.
“Really? How about Apollonius of Tyana?”
Apollonius wasn’t written about for until over a century after his death. Try again.
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I never suggested he wasn’t. But he was attested as a real person.
So a non-biblical account of the miracle working biblical character Jesus of Nazareth.
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“I never suggested he wasn’t. But he was attested as a real person.
So a non-biblical account of the miracle working biblical character Jesus of Nazareth.”
This just doesn’t seem to make any sense to me, you’ll have to clarify.
Again, we’ve seen that people who did deeds in their life way more influential than Jesus are not documented by contemporaneous records. Thus, we have no reason to expect contemporaneous documentation of Jesus. That’s just how it is.
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Well … you have the bible. This is the book on your shelf that probably says Holy Bible on the cover. It is supposed to be divinely inspired and its contents Yahweh breathed.
Then you have all the other books that DON’T have Holy Bible printed on the cover.
Does this help?
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“Well … you have the bible. This is the book on your shelf that probably says Holy Bible on the cover.”
Honestly, I don’t actually have the book. I read it through my app. *brushes that under carpet*
” It is supposed to be divinely inspired and its contents Yahweh breathed.”
Sure.
“Then you have all the other books that DON’T have Holy Bible printed on the cover.
Does this help?”
Yes. God inspired the Bible, and all other books are man-made. That’s already my worldview. Are you supposed to make an objection or argument now? Is this the part where you self-destruct? I don’t know. I really don’t see the relevance in your comments, dude.
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Even the spurious parts, and the exaggerations in John? and the interpolations and the Pauline forgeries, and the lies and the murders and rapes and incest and geographical errors and biological nonsense,and the slavery, and the torture and the genocide and the the fact that there are no standard bibles and never have been.?
Oh, And anyone who uses the word ”Dude” needs to seriously re-consider their life.
Tell us, out of curiosity, just what guilt trip was it that turned you towards the loving embrace(sic) of Jesus of
NazarethNowhere?LikeLiked by 1 person
“Even the spurious parts, and the exaggerations in John?”
When John says that the miracles of Jesus are innumerable, it is like when God tells Abraham that his descendants will number the grains of sand in the world. Inspired, and the message is clear — Jesus did a LOT of miracles, and Abraham will have a LOT of descendants. As for ‘spurious’, you’ll need to elaborate there.
” and the interpolations and the Pauline forgeries”
All fiction.
“and the lies and the murders and rapes and incest and geographical errors and biological nonsense”
More total fiction.
You continue writing out fiction. You then say;
“Oh, And anyone who uses the word ”Dude” needs to seriously re-consider their life.”
You’re completely crazy.
“Tell us, out of curiosity, just what guilt trip was it that turned you towards the loving embrace(sic) of Jesus of Nazareth Nowhere?”
Goodness gracious. Do you actually take up the conspiracy theory that Nazareth wasn’t around in Jesus’ lifetime? As your responses come and go, I become more and more convinced you’re a loony mythicist.
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You don’t know what spurious means?
Well I daresay my blog pals here on Nan’s blog will no doubt have a whip round for a few bucks to pay for my nurse.
The cost of the neurosurgery you obviously need might stretch their kindness and their bank balances a bit too much.
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“You don’t know what spurious means?”
I know what the word ‘spurious’ means — I simply have no clue where your accusation of spurious elements in the Bible comes from. Hence, I questioned you on it. You didn’t seem to get that, or perhaps you didn’t have any examples so you tried changing my words.
As for the neurosurgery I need, my uncles a neurosurgeon so I’m probably backed in the case that I go mental.
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Old or New?
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Both.
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Noah’s Ark and The Exodus …
”Ark drops the mike.”
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“The Exodus”
Which most egyptologists accept?
https://www.academia.edu/12144234/Egyptologists_and_the_Israelite_Exodus_from_Egypt
“Noah’s Ark”
That’s a tough one. I heard that some guys at BioLogos consider the entire thing a moral story or whatnot. The entire world was in sin, so God destroys the world for its sin in its entirety — a contrast with Jesus, whom takes the entire sins of the world upon Himself to give us another chance. It’s showing us the meaning of Jesus’ death for us, and what would happen hadn’t He died, for God truly would destroy all the world.
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Don’t give that most eyptologist garbage again, you disingenuous pre-Abrahamic camel dung.
Hoffmeirs stupid assertion wasn’t even a valid survey and he says so himself.
Archaeologist the world over dismiss the biblical tale as nonsense.
And biologos …
So the story of Noah’s ark is nonsense,
Thank you.
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“Don’t give that most eyptologist garbage again, you disingenuous pre-Abrahamic camel dung.
Hoffmeirs stupid assertion wasn’t even a valid survey and he says so himself.”
He simply called it an ‘unscientific survey’, since basically all he did was interview a bunch of egyptologists at an egyptological conference. Nonetheless, the results are very telling. The fact that the majority of egyptologists accept the bare story is also supported by this article from biblicalarchaeology.com, the worlds most famous biblio-archaeological magazine.
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/exodus/exodus-fact-or-fiction/
It’s not a big deal that the exodus happened — this is supported by the evidence. Again, did you forget all about Benjamin Noonan’s study, among others?
Click to access Noonan.pdf
The evidence crushes your narrative. As for your crazy statement “So the story of Noah’s ark is nonsense”, my explanation clearly demonstrated too complex for you to get it.
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There is no archeilogical evidnece for the Exodus.
And we have already dismissed Noah’s ark so there goes you claim about the bible.
Now, how about the claimed Virgin Birth in Matthew?
You want to have a shot at that, next?
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“There is no archeilogical evidnece for the Exodus.”
LOL check your grammar there bud.
In my last comment, I posted a bunch of evidence for the exodus. I re-mentioned Benjamin Noonan’s study, and you seem like you really don’t want to talk about that. Anyhow, I’ve debunked the idea there is no exodus. So, that’s 1-0 for me.
The ark? I explained that previously — some scholars suggest that the primeval history of Genesis (Genesis 1-11) is potentially something else. It’s possible. It depends on how the author meant for it to be read. I guess that’s all we can know.
2-0
“Now, how about the claimed Virgin Birth in Matthew?
You want to have a shot at that, next?”
Sure. Here’s my argument;
1) The Bible is inspired by God
2) The Bible says Jesus was virgin born
3) Therefore, Jesus was virgin born
2) is obvious, and 1) is supplemented by this;
And this if you’re interested…
Click to access Noonan.pdf
So, 1) and 2) are true therefore Jesus was virgin born.
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<blockquote<Sure. Here’s my argument;
1) The Bible is inspired by God
2) The Bible says Jesus was virgin born
3) Therefore, Jesus was virgin born
Z
And this is why you are an indoctrinated quarter-wit.
It was only a matter of time before you dropped your pants and let the world see your arse.
I will leave you t the wiles of the others. I have had my fill of crazy for one day!
Oh … please stay away from children.
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Really? How about Apollonius of Tyana?
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Nan, I just thought I’d tell you this post made my day. Hats off to all the commenters here who had me laughing until I damn near suffocated. 😀
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Thanks, glad I gave you a good laugh. Is this the part where you make an objection to the argument or self-destruct or something? Looks like I’ll have to wait and see.
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SC, while I disagree with your position, I think you’ve shown some good humor here too. 🙂
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Many thanks.
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[…] in a debate with Scientific Christian over on Nan’s blog he presented a clip that I don’t know was supposed to represent game, set, and match about […]
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[…] recent nonversation over on Nan’s blog (here) got me thinking about how people claim the supernatural exists and affects reality – among […]
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Here I come, late to the party as always,
I must say I am most amused by the line in the OP that lying is evil and deserves punishment. What punishment? The lake of fire of course! The most evil punishment any deity could deliver to those it claims to love.
This is why Christianity is a rotten philosophy.
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Hey friends — have you noticed CS’s FAVORITE word? Hint: it’s starts with the word “non-” And he uses it every time he disagrees with something but doesn’t have a solid, researched, reasoned response.
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Just testing something here. Thanks.
This is an absolute link.
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Hallelujah! It works. Considering this achievement, could someone buy me a beer?
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