Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

[Cyberman]

Please enlighten me; to what dogmatic belief are atheists enchained?

I don't agree with him 100% or even 50% but on the basic premise he's right at least. Atheism and the what is taken to be "science" tend to be considered to be one and the same thing.

And I repeat my question. I don't care what may "tend to be considered", especially by sources you don't even stand by. So what dogmatic beliefs enchain me?

And I should get that cough seen to, if I were you. Might be nasty.

It's not an infection I was just taken aback.

You do realise you don't have to actually type verbal auxilliaries and exclamations, right? The only reason for doing so is to make a statement, in this case a judgement of my position where none was needed. It makes another statement as well, one about your own character. Politeness restrains me from expressing it but I'm sure you don't need me to spell it out for you.

Pascal's Wager? Seriously?

No I was just pointing out the materialistic assumption you were making without realizing you were making it. You just take it for granted that this is true unless proven otherwise.

Excuse me, you did nothing of the sort. You dodged behind the threats of your god doing something unspoken to me if it exists and I dismiss it out of hand. I reject that desperate strategem as I reject the implication of closed-mindedness, when all I and others are asking is for something - anything - to support every prima facie claim you make. Until you do that, I am under no obligation to consider any of it as factual.

Quite sure, thanks. As demonstrated rather beautifully by the pages and pages of evidence that atheists have presented on these very boards, compared to the equivalent number of pages of theists with their fingers in their ears and shouting "T'isn't!"

We share the same scientific evidence of the exact same universe, there is no "evidence of atheism". Where are getting this from?

Same place as you, presumably, if you think for one second that's what I was doing. At the risk of cluttering up yet another reply spoonfeeding you, here for the viewers at home is the story so far:

In my post #49...

Since atheism is, ideally, the emancipation of people from the shackles of dogmatic belief, then no it's not an exclusive in-crowd. You're quite correct that a person's belief is as likely to be wrong as right; that's why I and many others endeavour to ensure that such beliefs as we choose to have are as correct as we can possibly make them, not merely adopted out of hand and against all evidence to the contrary.

Your post #50...

Are you sure about that? I'm under the impression that's what most atheists are essentially doing.

If you can find one syllable of my saying anything about "evidence of atheism", I'll take you out for a drink of your choice.

And yet again, you miss the point I'm making while addressing one I didn't. I'll reiterate and clarify for you:


and its suggestion that real events within living memory would cancel out the adoption of an alternative reinterpretation of history, to put it politely, I offered an exampleof a popular belief which actually is propogated as fact despite having a much more recent origin; ie, the US Pledge of Allegiance contains the "One Nation Under God" line, therefore the country was founded as a xtain nation, even though the words were only added in 1954. I see no evidence that the reality has "killed the movement in it's [sic] tracks"

The NT already covered the possibility that the faith is a mistake.

"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

So this has already been covered, if you're wrong then you're wrong there's nothing you can do about it. But it goes on to give some assurance to the faithful that Christ was indeed raised from death as will we all be. That's the idea of the faith/belief. So you apparently lost your faith but we can put it down to defeatism/nihilism on your part not rationalism or science. God is perfectly rational as an existential concept and science does not or ever could in anyway disprove Gods existence. You either believe or you don't and you have the freedom of choice either way. What you believe right now could easily be an error of judgement on your part if you have have been taken in by a human made ideology which denies the existence of anything beyond this transitory world and claims it merely exists by purposeless accident. To believe in this I think there is an awful lot of stuff you just have to ignore or deny.

What does any of that have to do with the subject under discussion, and did your decision to share it have any bearing on your excising the thrust of the section of my post you chose to quote?