Dr. Donald Whitaker - Ex Atheist

[robvalue]

Did we win yet? What's the score?

[GUBU]

prove we came from soup

We didn't come from soup, we came from earlier primates, who evolved from other types of mammals (most likely candidate we have currently is Plesiadapis which existed c. 65m years ago), which evolved from earlier cold blooded land dwellers, which evolved from yet earlier cold blooded sea dwellers, which evolved from single celled lifeforms (google Cambrian Explosion or Burgess Shale or Ediacaran), and so on until we get to a period c.500m years after the beginning of our planet (so about 4bn years ago).

Now we're not sure about how life on earth got started, but that is not due to a lack of possible scenarios, but a surfeit of relatively equally plausible scenarios, a number of which have been shown under experimental conditions to be able to make long chain proteins, which are the necessary building blocks for all forms of life. So while we can't point to an event or scenario and say "this is how life begun" we can reasonably say that life began naturally, and evolved over billions of years into the fecundity and diversity we have today, and god had no hand, act nor part in this creation.

[Jackalope]

prove we came from soup

We didn't come from soup, we came from earlier primates, who evolved from other types of mammals (most likely candidate we have currently is Plesiadapis which existed c. 65m years ago), which evolved from earlier cold blooded land dwellers, which evolved from yet earlier cold blooded sea dwellers, which evolved from single celled lifeforms (google Cambrian Explosion or Burgess Shale or Ediacaran), and so on until we get to a period c.500m years after the beginning of our planet (so about 4bn years ago).

Now we're not sure about how life on earth got started, but that is not due to a lack of possible scenarios, but a surfeit of relatively equally plausible scenarios, a number of which have been shown under experimental conditions to be able to make long chain proteins, which are the necessary building blocks for all forms of life. So while we can't point to an event or scenario and say "this is how life begun" we can reasonably say that life began naturally, and evolved over billions of years into the fecundity and diversity we have today, and god had no hand, act nor part in this creation.

All of that is irrelevant to his claim in any case. I could grant (for sake of argument) that all of science is unsound. That wouldn't get him one fucking nanometer closer to making a case for deity in general, and his pet skydaddy specifically. Framing it as some kind of dichotomy is utterly fallacious.

[Whateverist]

All of that is irrelevant to his claim in any case.  I could grant (for sake of argument) that all of science is unsound. That wouldn't get him one fucking nanometer closer to making a case for deity in general, and his pet skydaddy specifically.  Framing it as some kind of dichotomy is utterly fallatio's.

He is probably an expert at that.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Do you have a citation for this?
If my soul is immaterial, it won't be affected by fire, for good or bad.

Yes, that is exactly what the Bible says will happen. At the resurrection, the dead in Christ will rise first, then everyone else. This is a physical resurrection since the souls are already in heaven—or hell, whichever the case may be.

Now, if you want to make a decision based on fear of hell, Islam is your best bet.  Yahweh just throws people into the lake of fire and is done with them. But Allah rejuvenates their skins when it burns away so they will eternally get the full effect of torment.

You know, I never thought about it before, but their claim that "the dead in Christ will rise first, then everyone else" (as you put it) seems to also assume that Christ would be imminently returning, as in "within this generation", when they wrote the stories. Otherwise, WHAT dead will rise? It has been 2000 years... most of the people who "died in Christ" have completely decomposed; there is nothing left to raise from the dead, even if their spirits somehow are what animate bodies, as the ancients believed. It's not a small question, either; churches have opposed the practice of cremation on the basis that the bodies needed to return, which is also why we have the practice of burying bodies "facing the east", from whence Christ will supposedly return. (Presumably, he will appear over the Pacific somewhere, and sweep westward over Japan toward Israel.)

Under normal circumstances, a body decays down to bones in 12 years. The bones will usually be gone within 200 years, though they're "dry and brittle" and tend to fall completely apart after roughly 40 years, depending on burial circumstances (soil acidity, etc). At what point in the decomposition process does a Christian corpse become un-resurrectable?

[abaris]

Nobody has given me any reason to care about what this Whitfucker character thinks to be true. Anecdotal evidence doesn't make a case.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, OP.

[GUBU]

eye witnesses claiming to see Jesus after he was killed alive.
around 500 plus the apostles and paul
odds of 500 people going crazy all at once is improbable

Wrong, 500 people, to whom the bible doesn't give us sufficient details to verify (in fact it gives us no details for most of the people, and the people it does mention are almost impossible to track down during one of the best documented periods of the Roman empire no less) are alleged* to have witnessed a resurrected Jesus.

Alleged is very important here, you can as truthfully allege that I killed Yitzak Rabin as you can allege that 500 people saw an actual resurrected Jesus. Even if you could find sworn testimony from five hundred people stating they saw him after he died, that doesn't even mean they did, they just thought they did. Illusions can be very convincing altogether especially if you've a predisposition to believe them (c.f. the UFO mania, and its mother the medieval witch mania).

[GUBU]

http://christianity.about.com/od/easter/...ection.htm

this article is informative.

"Proof" 1:

Point to me the actual tomb, and then point to me the evidence that a Jesus son of Joseph was laid to rest there, and then point to me the evidence that he was revivified and walked out. There are any number of supposed tombs of Jesus, just as there are over 40 "relics" of his holy foreskin cut off at birth. You cannot even locate his tomb with certainty, because there are no burial records for him.

"Proof" 2:

Unsubstantiated hearsay. Where are the sworn statements, the verified back up. And even then, sworn eyewitness testimony is nearly the worst possible type of evidence, simply because the mind has almost innumerable ways of playing tricks on itself.

"Proof" 3:

Unsubstantiated hearsay. We have no evidence outside of the bible (similar to "proof" 2 above) of Jesus' disciples and their preaching. In fact from the words of Saul of Tarsus, we can be confident that nearly 20 years after the supposed death of Jesus his cult numbered no more than 100 people. Not a great testament to the courage of his disciples nor their effectiveness in preaching them (especially when you remember that early Principate Iudea was lousy with messiahs some with thousands of followers).

"Proof" 4:

See my response to proof three. You simply cannot present unevidenced assertions from propaganda tracts which have been repeatedly changed over nearly two millennia to reinforce a post-hoc story line and expect rational, marginally intelligent and sceptical enquirers to accept them.

"Proof" 5:

No there are no large crowds of eyewtinesses, see my last post above.

"Proof" 6:

Saul of Tarsus was thrown from his horse, hit his head on a rock, and due to his subsequent brain trauma had a hallucination. Plus, I'm of the opinion that his "conversion" was more to do with the chance of monetary gain than with any genuine belief. One of the defining truths of all religions is that on foundation or soon after they are swamped with snake oil salesmen out to make a quick buck. And everything we know about Saul supports the hypothesis that he was a carpetbagger.

"Proof" 7:

Thousands willingly died for Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, Ghengiz Khan et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Does that make them gods? No, nor does the fact that believers dying for Jesus make his cult any more a reflection of the truth.

So of your proofs not even one is sufficiently strong enough to convince a person of even marginal intelligence, unless they've been brought up predisposed to believe in the Jesus cult.