My blog

[watchamadoodle]

Sure. But whatever information Josephus had was hearsay, wouldn't you agree? Is there any reason to think it is more reliable than just what he had heard or been told about events? (Also Josephus' work contains at least one blatant forgery by Christians raising further suspicions).

That's a good point that there is an obvious Christian forgery interpolated into another part of Josephus' work.

In some ways, most things we believe are based on hearsay. Even when a juror listens to an eye witness to an event, that evidence is still hearsay (for the juror). Rather than hearsay or not hearsay, we should consider the provenance of the evidence. Did the report travel through one person, or did it travel through 10 people? Do we know those people? Are they reliable witnesses?

In the quote from Josephus, his source was probably King Herod Agrippa II, because the wikipedia article says that Josephus used Agrippa as a source. Agrippa was the person who replaced the high priest over the unjustified stoning of James. Probably there was a formal government investigation of some kind. It was hearsay, but it was probably good quality hearsay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Agrippa_II

I've finally got on my website and made improvements to the What is atheism/theism? page and the What atheism is not page, taking into account excellent feedback from Watchamadoodle and Dystopia. Thanks guys! Please let me know if you think it's an improvement Hopefully I've removed all confusion now, and I took into account your observation Watcha regarding the theist mindset.

On the blog, the last line of the "what is atheism" page came out of the text box. I'm using Firefox on Linux mint (a few versions old too). Maybe it formats properly on other browsers.

Also, I wonder if you want to add anything about agnostics? Whenever I talk to Christians, they always insist that I'm actually an agnostic instead of an atheist. You explained that not all atheists are gnostic atheists, but maybe you want to go further and explain that most atheists are agnostic atheists? This seems to be a big hang-up for Christians when they talk to atheists. I know that should be obvious from what you said about gnostic atheists, but maybe it needs to be mentioned?

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@robvalue, I read your page again and saw that you covered the agnostic issue, so never mind.

This is a typical description of someone who identified as "just an agnostic", preferring not to label themselves as an atheist, even though they are.