Can't word it better than Hitch tbh;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQox1hQrABQ

(September 23, 2015 at 11:23 am)Yeauxleaux Wrote: Can't word it better than Hitch tbh;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQox1hQrABQ

Effing brilliant.

(September 23, 2015 at 1:27 am)MysticKnight Wrote: I know a Christian who believes the Bible is full of errors. He believers the over all message is inspired, but, not that it's absolute word of God.

So given you can have that view, how would one disprove Christianity?

Whether your acquaintance wants to admit it or not, he comes damn close.

(September 22, 2015 at 10:24 pm)Aractus Wrote: Here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-36296.html

All the proof you need.

Or pick one of these topics and I'll explain it to you:

1. God lies to Abraham about the covenant he makes with him. Then he lies to Moses, Joshua, and David too.
2. God is a misogynist: Women are property, only men can get divorced, and adultary means sleeping with a married woman (married men are allowed to sleep with sex slaves, prostitutes, other wives they own, and unmarried women).
3. There is no morality in the Old Testament that isn't reflective of the conventional wisdom of the age.
4. There was no Exodus.
5. There was no conquest of Canaan.
6. The Pentateuch wasn't written until the 7th century BC at the earliest - that's 6-8 centuries after the mythical Exodus.
7. While there's very good evidence that Jesus was crucified, there's almost no evidence for his supposed bodily resurrection and ascension which forms the cornerstone of modern Christianity. Paul never mentions it, James and Jude and Peter never mention it, the author of Hebrews doesn't mention it, and Mark doesn't mention it either. Mark does say that Jesus ascended, and he does say Jesus will appear to people - but that's it - there isn't any mention of a bodily resurrection or an ascension. Matt 28:17 says that "some who saw the resurrected Jesus doubted" - so by the own admission of the gospel writer there were people who saw the supposed resurrected Jesus and said "that's not him". So what makes the people who did believe right and those that didn't wrong? We have no objective way to determine that other than to ask the question "who are the ones that are religiously biased"? So the gospel writer is basing the account on religiously-biased hearsay - that's hardly convincing evidence.
8. God is not faithful to his followers: Jesus is crucified, John the Baptist is beheaded, Judas Iscariot hangs himself, Herod has James the son of Zebedee killed by the sword, Simeon and James the Just are stoned to death, Peter is crucified, Paul is executed by the Romans, Nero persecutes the Christians from 64-68AD, and in 70AD the Jerusalem Church is completely destroyed (along with the rest of Jerusalem) as far as anyone can tell. BUT Jesus promised that the Son of Man would come before they finish going through all the towns of Israel (Matt 10:23).

Number 7, please. Thanks in advance.

(September 23, 2015 at 11:16 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: Good analysis, Aractus. I don't doubt that Paul knew the disciples (indeed, it's my hunch that he was not converted "on the road to Damascus" by a vision, but was converted during the process of Christian-hunting on behalf of the Romans, and ran in his own direction--influenced by his Pharisee background--with the information he had, one of the reasons Paul seems so different in tone from Jesus, and why I like to joke that modern Christians are actually "Paulians"), but it's clear from his own writings that they considered him a fanboy and questionable in his theological approach. Nevertheless, I don't think one should throw the baby out with the bathwater, with regard to Carrier. His questionable results should be criticized, most heavily of all by us, but his speculations may produce fruit when turned over by other scholars, and at the very least I find his speculations about the relatedness of Hebrew theology to the theological inputs of now-extinct religions to be useful in forming a picture of the ancient mindset.

Paul was converted on the road to Damascus - that's what he himself says. He says he received a revelation, but he doesn't say how he received it. It's likely he received his revelation from a Christian (or whatever you want to call the followers of Jesus at that time) in 36AD. Christians use Acts 9 to tell them about it, but it's not contemporary and is written by someone who didn't have first-hand knowledge of any Christian events that early. Acts 22 quotes Paul directly giving testimony that he did have a vision and hear the voice of Jesus on the road to Damascus - and the author is writing about contemporary events they have some first-hand knowledge about at this point, and furthermore the author knew Paul. So Acts 22 is the strongest case that Paul did indeed receive a vision - or at least believed that he had.

However, Paul doesn't mention it as a part of his conversion in any of his letters. So I would agree that it's perfectly disputable about whether he had a vision or not - however we know that's the time and location he was converted because he himself says so.

Carrier doesn't really make ANY interesting insights in that video. He has a few minor valid points, but they're overshadowed by his quackery, and don't contribute anything substantial to showing that his hypothesis should be treated as a theory.

As I said, any decent presenter would have references on their slides - yet he has none at all. That's not academic, and if he's using other people's ideas (as he claims to be doing), or even his own published ideas, then it's plagiarism. So either he's making everything up as he goes along, or he's plagiarising - that doesn't make him very credible at all in my book.

This is one of his slides:



And this is how it should look, either like this:



Or like this:



Or of course you can use other referencing methods such as supertexts: "4. And other evidence forged in its place6" ... and then on your references slide have them ordered by number instead of author. But the fact is he didn't use any at all.

(September 23, 2015 at 1:33 pm)vorlon13 Wrote:

(September 23, 2015 at 1:27 am)MysticKnight Wrote: I know a Christian who believes the Bible is full of errors. He believers the over all message is inspired, but, not that it's absolute word of God.

So given you can have that view, how would one disprove Christianity?

Whether your acquaintance wants to admit it or not, he comes damn close.

Why is that?

He knows better than God which verses apply and which ones don't.

Gives himself an A+ on the course work, gives God a D-.

Practically one of us.

If he was a Muslim he'd have a Fatwa on his ass with that attitude in regards to the Koran.

(September 23, 2015 at 9:59 pm)Aractus Wrote:

---

Paul was converted on the road to Damascus - that's what he himself says. He says he received a revelation, but he doesn't say how he received it. It's likely he received his revelation from a Christian (or whatever you want to call the followers of Jesus at that time) in 36AD. Christians use Acts 9 to tell them about it, but it's not contemporary and is written by someone who didn't have first-hand knowledge of any Christian events that early. Acts 22 quotes Paul directly giving testimony that he did have a vision and hear the voice of Jesus on the road to Damascus - and the author is writing about contemporary events they have some first-hand knowledge about at this point, and furthermore the author knew Paul. So Acts 22 is the strongest case that Paul did indeed receive a vision - or at least believed that he had.

However, Paul doesn't mention it as a part of his conversion in any of his letters. So I would agree that it's perfectly disputable about whether he had a vision or not - however we know that's the time and location he was converted because he himself says so.

Carrier doesn't really make ANY interesting insights in that video. He has a few minor valid points, but they're overshadowed by his quackery, and don't contribute anything substantial to showing that his hypothesis should be treated as a theory.

As I said, any decent presenter would have references on their slides - yet he has none at all. That's not academic, and if he's using other people's ideas (as he claims to be doing), or even his own published ideas, then it's plagiarism. So either he's making everything up as he goes along, or he's plagiarising - that doesn't make him very credible at all in my book.

This is one of his slides:



And this is how it should look, either like this:



Or like this:



Or of course you can use other referencing methods such as supertexts: "4. And other evidence forged in its place6" ... and then on your references slide have them ordered by number instead of author. But the fact is he didn't use any at all.

---

I didn't know the standards for an historian to speak, with citations, in an on-stage event. It is something biologists sometimes do as well, but to be honest I never was around any of the ones that did, and we mostly did field work and published reports, so I'm out of my element with analyzing what he should have done. I'll defer to your word on it.

I didn't watch the Carrier video you may be referring to; the ones I watched of him, some time ago, were informal small-group gatherings that did not look like conference speeches, though he did use slides that looked like the ones you're showing me, here. I believe what I believe about Paul for the reason you stated: it strikes me as the sort of thing you do not omit when writing to the early church about your experience, and I'm utterly convinced (particularly by Luke/Acts and then John) that they kept embellishing the stories as time progressed.  I just finished listening to Ehrman's interview on The Humanist Hour,  and I am happy to see he is still correcting himself on the fly. It is one of the reasons I rarely listen to evangelical "scholars", no matter what degree of expertise they express-- it is simply fatal to my willingness to listen to you if you show that you cannot change your mind in the face of better evidence. Then you're no better than a tape recorded message being put onto a new tape.

Finally, I don't think I'd go so far as to classify Carrier as "quackery" even though I disagree with most of his conclusions (in areas I know enough to do so), and reached conclusions surprisingly similar to Ehrman's. Based on what I read about Carrier on Ehrman's blog, he doesn't quite seem to consider him a quack, even though Carrier lampooned him pretty badly, just totally wrong and in need of some humility in carefully examining his position before he boasts about it. This is hardly unique in academia (though more common with department heads, to whom no one will say nay), and it might spark young Richard into refining his ideas. With citations

Hey everyone! I'm sorry it's taken me forever to respond. I'd also like to sincerely thank you all for replying. You have been incredibly helpful. I'll respond to a few of you folks below, but I've gotta say, you've given me plenty of information. I'm not sure I'll be able to respond to it all. Again, thank you all.

(September 22, 2015 at 10:24 pm)Aractus Wrote: Here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-36296.html

All the proof you need.

Or pick one of these topics and I'll explain it to you:

1. God lies to Abraham about the covenant he makes with him. Then he lies to Moses, Joshua, and David too.
2. God is a misogynist: Women are property, only men can get divorced, and adultary means sleeping with a married woman (married men are allowed to sleep with sex slaves, prostitutes, other wives they own, and unmarried women).
3. There is no morality in the Old Testament that isn't reflective of the conventional wisdom of the age.
4. There was no Exodus.
5. There was no conquest of Canaan.
6. The Pentateuch wasn't written until the 7th century BC at the earliest - that's 6-8 centuries after the mythical Exodus.
7. While there's very good evidence that Jesus was crucified, there's almost no evidence for his supposed bodily resurrection and ascension which forms the cornerstone of modern Christianity. Paul never mentions it, James and Jude and Peter never mention it, the author of Hebrews doesn't mention it, and Mark doesn't mention it either. Mark does say that Jesus ascended, and he does say Jesus will appear to people - but that's it - there isn't any mention of a bodily resurrection or an ascension. Matt 28:17 says that "some who saw the resurrected Jesus doubted" - so by the own admission of the gospel writer there were people who saw the supposed resurrected Jesus and said "that's not him". So what makes the people who did believe right and those that didn't wrong? We have no objective way to determine that other than to ask the question "who are the ones that are religiously biased"? So the gospel writer is basing the account on religiously-biased hearsay - that's hardly convincing evidence.
8. God is not faithful to his followers: Jesus is crucified, John the Baptist is beheaded, Judas Iscariot hangs himself, Herod has James the son of Zebedee killed by the sword, Simeon and James the Just are stoned to death, Peter is crucified, Paul is executed by the Romans, Nero persecutes the Christians from 64-68AD, and in 70AD the Jerusalem Church is completely destroyed (along with the rest of Jerusalem) as far as anyone can tell. BUT Jesus promised that the Son of Man would come before they finish going through all the towns of Israel (Matt 10:23).

First of all, thanks for giving me all this info in such an orderly manner, and giving me so very much information. I found your blog by using the link in the other thread you created, and there's a huge amount of information there.

I hope you'll understand if I don't respond to it all, as it's going to take quite some time to go through it. Again, thank you for your help.

(September 22, 2015 at 10:56 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: To the OP, welcome to the unforgivable sin.

It's probably just my upbringing, but I find this one sentence incredibly disturbing.

(September 23, 2015 at 12:31 am)Salacious B. Crumb Wrote: Just a general thought.. do you think any of the miracles in the koran are true? Do you believe in the gods of hinduism? I'm sure you answered, NO. Why? Because you weren't raised that way. When you see these you can't help but shake your head or laugh. You have been so indoctrinated that you may believe that people have lived to 900+ years old, snakes and donkeys can talk, a man walked on water, a man turned water into wine, and god needed to have a son in order to forgive people that he supposedly created in the first place, knowing how they would turn out. If you can completely wipe your brain clean, and truly look at the stories of the bible, you should be able to get yourself to the point of laughter. It should be hilarious to you that people can actually believe such fucking moronic stories on no evidence whatsoever (except that they're written in a book.. which is not evidence). There are many things written in books that aren't true. It's a good start that you're at least willing to listen to opposing views because you have some doubts. It sounds like you even went further and are saying that you fear god, or even still believe because of fear. That's what religion was designed to do. It's supposed to make you feel guilty over your natural sexual instincts, and it's designed to make you fear consequences of such victimless crimes. Do you think god actually condones slavery and misogyny like it says in the bible? Ask yourself questions like that, and you should find that none of it makes sense, if your mind is open enough. It may take awhile because of the fear you have, but try not to worry, it's totally man-made poisonous dogshit.

Also, you shouldn't be looking for reasons to just give up your religion. You should be looking at it objectively and skeptically, like all things, and deciding from there. My goal isn't to de-convert people that want to be de-converted, but to try to get people to actually learn to think for themselves, and not let others do it for them.. especially through the means of idiotic primitive stories that are meant to instill fear in order to keep people believing in them.

You make some good points. After all, why do I think Christianity is better than other religions?

(September 23, 2015 at 1:10 am)Aractus Wrote: My advice: Read your Bible for yourself. Take the ten commands as an example, the tenth commandment is "thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbour" or specifically:

"You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour." (Ex 20:17)

Christians try to claim this means don't think of you neighbour's wife lustfully - however the 7th commandment is "You shall not commit adultery" (even though adultery hasn't even yet been defined - it gets defined in Leviticus 18 for the first time in the Bible) - and Jesus says "'You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt 5:27-28). And that means that "means don't think of you neighbour's wife lustfully" is covered in the seventh commandment not the tenth commandment. And anyway the tenth command ends with "or anything that belongs to your neighbour" - so it's clearly talking about property, and wives are listed as property.

Besides adultery, Exodus does not talk about sexual immorality. There is no mention of sexual immorality other than bestiality until Leviticus. This is one reason why Sodom and Gomorrah can't be guilty of homosexual acts for example - God never said in Genesis that any specific sexual act is wrong.

As mentioned, at no time in Genesis or Exodus does God or anyone else define "adultery". So Moses can't possibly know at that time what the seventh commandment even means. It's not until Leviticus 18 that it gets defined, and if you blink you literally miss it:

Lev 18:19-23: "19 You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. 20 You shall not have sexual relations with your kinsman’s wife, and defile yourself with her. 21 You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. 22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 You shall not have sexual relations with any animal and defile yourself with it, nor shall any woman give herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it: it is perversion."

That's a very narrow definition of adultery - it simply means any man who sleeps with another's man's wife. Married men are allowed to sleep with concubines (sex slaves), any wife that they own, unmarried women, and prostitutes. There is no law against any of that - and it happens quite a lot in the Old Testament. Most Christians do not know the correct Biblical definition of adultery and when they look at Matt 5:27-28 they take an erroneous definition of adultery based on the contemporary secular definition and not the ancient Jewish definition that applied in the first century, or the one that can be derived from Leviticus 18 and the rest of the Old Testament. The bible does NOT ever say that "extramarital sex is adultery" - it's only adultery if it is the wife that does it, and both parties are guilty.

Note that even Jesus himself was specific enough to say "a man who looks at a woman with lust" (Matt 5), and he does the same thing when he talks about divorce. Divorce is permitted only for men in ancient Israel (Exodus 23), and when Jesus talks about divorce in Matt 5 & 19 he affirms this: "“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (Matt 5:31-32). See, nothing to do with unfaithful men or women who want to divorce their husbands. If he though they should be more progressive like Egypt and give women equal rights then he would have said so.

Numbers 5 spends the entire chapter starting from verse 11 on what to do about an "unfaithful wife". There is nothing in Numbers that discusses what to do about an "unfaithful husband" because as far as the Pentateuch is concerned, husbands can't be "unfaithful". They can be guilty of adultery if they sleep with a married woman, but that's not even seen as being "unfaithful".

It is quite funny that Christians today (except for hardcore fundamentalists) believe that their god is not a misogynist.

Exodus 22:18 "You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live."

Funny though that the Magi the "wise men" are the ones to "worship the king of the Jews". Had they been women they likely would have been stoned to death.

Yes, the Bible is quite sexist. What worries me is that this doesn't disprove Christianity, it just means that if it's true, reality is a crappy place to live for women (and men, and children). When I've talked to people about injustice in the Bible (though I tend to talk more about hell than sexism), so far the answer I've been getting is that God is what determines our morality. This is probably the biggest reason I want to get away from Christianity (to my shame, bigger than the fact that I don't have a good reason to believe it beyond my upbringing). If it's true, then morality means we're all screwed.

(September 23, 2015 at 1:27 am)MysticKnight Wrote: I know a Christian who believes the Bible is full of errors. He believers the over all message is inspired, but, not that it's absolute word of God.

So given you can have that view, how would one disprove Christianity?

I'm not sure how he would disprove it. I mean, once you think something is both inspired by God and also flawed, how do you decide which bits are in error and which bits are divine?

(September 23, 2015 at 2:12 am)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote: I'm obviously too late to jump in on any serious basis, since others have done an excellent job of laying more than enough to chew and digest, on your intellectual "plate". I won't add too many more "you should consider" elements.

What got me out of religion was being lied to by my church leaders (and the books they handed me, when I inquired about it) about the nature of science, what we know through science about life and the universe, and some of the fundamental social teachings about humanity and our history. I wound up going to school to become a biologist, so if there are questions you wish you ask in the field of Creationism/Evolution, you're welcome to PM me if I don't respond to a question posted, in here or elsewhere.

The only thing I'll leave you to consider is this. You have already been threatened with hellfire (oh, so politely, but nevertheless threats) by the Christians here who responded to your questions. And yet, all the atheists have done is answered questions you asked. At no point will one of us say we'd be upset if you stayed a Christian, nor will we try to tell you there's some reason you must become an atheist. All we want is to see people asking good questions and learning how to rigorously think about those questions using logic (recognizing and avoiding fallacious thinking) and well-sourced information to form their premises (since logic operating on false premises can still reach false conclusions). Our opinion of you will not change based on what you end up deciding for yourself, provided you arrive at your conclusions by honest means, do not blind yourself to uncomfortable facts or those that disagree with your presuppositions, and treat nonbelievers as fairly and kindly as you have done so far.

The majority of atheists on this site went through the process of deconversion (as we call it), and we know how stressful and confusing it can be. Just keep trusting in your own power to reason, and I think you will find that, whatever you choose in the future, adherence to a rational mindset is very emotionally satisfying in the long run. It's more work, true, since you won't have any pre-digested answers, but that's part of what makes it so satisfying.

Good luck in your journey.

Thank you, RocketSurgeon. Even if all goes well, I'm going to have a lot to relearn, especially in regards to biology and evolution. I might take you up on that later, actually, if you don't mind. I don't expect you to explain all that I don't know to me (and there's so very much!), but if you could point me in the right direction, so that I can start learning what I wasn't taught, that would be fantastic.

Sorry, I'm not sure what to say other than thank you. Your post is incredibly... hopeful. It's nice to know that many of you went through questioning your religion (deconversion), and got out through reason.

(September 23, 2015 at 3:47 am)robvalue Wrote: Hello, welcome

Good on you for seeking the truth. The first big question is what reason do you have to think any religion contains any truth? Religion is passed on by indoctrination, teaching religious mythology as fact, mainly to young children. So it becomes embedded in the brain as fact, when actually there is no evidence for any of it. Without this happening, each religion would die out very quickly.

Here are some thinking points:

1) Can you define God in such a way that any particular person could distinguish it from a figment of imagination?

2) If there is a god, then there are an infinite number of possibilities. This includes gods which just created the universe and let it develop, with no further interaction. All of science points to this being the only consistent possibility. There has never been any evidence of a "God" interacting with the universe.

3) To end up with Christianity, since there is no positive evidence, you have to first assume there is a god, then somehow eliminate every possible type of non-interventionist God, then shortlist all the infinity of interventionist gods down to those who happen to have story books lying around identifying them. And even then, you have to disprove all those except the biblical God.

4) The biblical God is a tangled mess of contradiction. It's presented as being all powerful and all knowing, while also displaying a very limited amount of power and knowledge. It's meant to be a superior being infinitely above humans, yet it displays entirely human emotions such as anger, jealousy, sadness, and frustration. It's presented as all loving, yet it creates Hell, the most evil and harmful place there could ever be. It's described as perfect, yet it feels the need to create this universe simply for its own amusement. It creates thousands of galaxies, yet is only concerned with the actions of one species on one tiny rock in the middle of nowhere. Such a being cannot exist. If there is a god, it bears no resemblance to this cartoon character.

I could go on all day! Let us know how you find all our suggestions. I'm not at all concerned with whether there is a "god" or not, as it makes no practical difference. It's the attempts to correlate it with the character in a story book that I find completely absurd, and should be disregarded.

Thanks for your thoughts, robvalue! This, along with everything else posted, is giving me a lot to mull over.

(September 23, 2015 at 3:56 am)Aoi Magi Wrote: OK, WishfulThinking,

first things first, religion and especially abrahamic religions like Christianity are unfalsifiable by default, and thus trying to disprove them when they haven't been proven in the first place is futile.

We can however test and disprove their claims.

First would be the story of original sin by Adam and Eve, which can be easily disproved through evolution. Animals and species exist and have existed which are not accounted for in the bible. All animals couldn't have been herbivores as the bible suggests and after the fall of they became carnivores, we shouldn't have any herbivores out omnivores today. Besides, we and other species have several dumb biological design flaws, which can only be explained through evolution and not through intelligent design.

Next up is Noah, the story has no proof in reality of a global flood. Plus the story comes from sources much older than their first mention in the bible.

Next is Moses, again there are several discrepancies in the geographical locations mentioned and any historical records of him and his miracles is non existent.

After that is Jesus, again, no proof whatsoever about the biblical Jesus have ever been found. Nobody documented a single one of his miracles during his lifetime as a historical record.


Hell in itself is a borrowed concept. It didn't exist in the old testament and it isn't unique to Christianity either. Every religion has a way of scaring people into believing it. And even if I agree that there are fiery places all over the world, like the earth's core, the sun, etc, after you die, those things mean jackshit. Think about it, without your body and nerves to carry signals and your brain to process them, how do you expect to feel any pain? Do you get burnt when picking up a hot kettle while wearing baking-gloves?

Hello Aoi Magi!

Disproving the claims of Christianity is exactly what I'm trying to do. In my mind (and forgive me if I've confused things), if you disprove a religions claims, then you've pretty much disproved the religion. That religion could have truth in it, but it shouldn't be treated as Word Of God anymore.

Now, if you don't mind, I have a few questions about what you brought up. You're under no obligation to answer them, because like I said to porcaracas below, the burden of proof isn't on you. However, if you're willing, it'd be quite helpful.

This is an embarrassing gap in my knowledge of the Bible, but where did it say animals were all herbivores before? I remember the belief that humans were only vegetarians before the flood, but nothing about the animals being the same way. As for biological design flaws, I can personally identify with that one. I had to have my appendix removed awhile back. Not fun.

Also (and this is another embarrassing gap in my knowledge or lack thereof. Sorry), what are the specific flaws in geographic locations mentioned?

(September 23, 2015 at 4:22 am)ignoramus Wrote:

Quote: I don't think I can find it within me to leave my religion behind without proof that it's false, even if I can't back my faith up.

Same here bro!  That pink unicorn has been the bane of my universe for decades!@
It  . keeps . haunting . me . and . I . just . cannot . prove . that . it . doesn't . exist!   hehe
Relax man, just having some fun!  See how silly that logic really is when put a different way!

Let me ask you something simple! If you happen to be born in Saudi Arabia, then  your "Islam" would be the one true religion! And you'd be conditioned to feel justified in the death of non believers! Think of Russian roulette with 4199 live bullets and only one is "everlasting heaven".
Every religious person plays these odds!  Atheists know the game is "loaded" and have no part of it!

Enjoy your time here!

Funnily enough, I've used exactly the same metaphor to describe religions. Sometimes it does feel like an insane game of Russian roulette, except with far worse chances and far worse consequences.

(September 23, 2015 at 6:37 am)MysticKnight Wrote:

(September 23, 2015 at 12:10 am)WishfulThinking Wrote: It never really occurred to me that there could be a hell without a religion. I'm apologize if I'm being obtuse, but how do you investigate it without the two tying together? It seems that the last question could have an entirely different answer depending on whether or not hell and a religion were intertwined. Forgive me for not understanding, but what do you mean by morality being properly basic?

For example showing compassion (in general) is good, is properly basic fact of morality. You cannot prove it to be a feature, you simply have to accept it through vision or faith. Goodness in itself, that is being good to be good, itself, is a properly basic belief/faith/sight, it's not something that people believe due it be proven from outside itself.

I might be misunderstanding you, but are you saying that we decide that some actions are inherently good without having any reason besides the decision to treat them that way (is that what you mean by accepting them through vision or faith)?

(September 23, 2015 at 8:59 am)pocaracas Wrote: Hey, WT. Welcome aboard!

At its base, you do not disprove christianity. You merely watch as the faithful fail time and time again to prove it.

Belief in a tale is no proof of the truthfulness of such tale.
All books in the bible are written by believers... believers in the accounts of others, at best... believers in the made up accounts of themselves, at worst... none were written by actual witnesses of the events... even if some do claim to be.

Thanks for the welcome porcaracas!

Now, I understand that you are in no way obligated to do this, as the burden of proof is on Christians who believe the bible is accurate, not the other way around, but how do you know the books weren't written by the folks that were there (even if they were written a few decades after Christ's death)? Is it that we don't have any evidence that says they did, or that we have evidence that says they didn't? Again, no need to answer this questions if you don't want to.

(September 23, 2015 at 10:51 am)Whateverist the White Wrote:

(September 22, 2015 at 8:00 pm)WishfulThinking Wrote: I don't think I can find it within me to leave my religion behind without proof that it's false, even if I can't back my faith up.

This is all you needed to post.  Looks like you're stuck with your religion.  

There can be no argument in favor of non-belief except in so far as what is claimed contradicts what is known.  Since god claims are classified as supernatural, contradiction with the natural world is no longer relevant .. assuming you accept that the set of supernatural things is empty as I do.  However, even there I have to admit my belief regarding the emptiness of the set of supernatural things is my own bias.

For most of us, non-belief is the default response to baseless claims, especially when the claims are extraordinary verging on absurd regarding entities which are poorly defined.  I can't help you shed your onerous beliefs so long as your own bias is to imagine the set of supernatural things to be teeming with entities.  Maybe 'god' will help you.  I can't.

Again, I understand that the way I'm going about this is somewhat absurd, trying to disprove what I haven't proven, but the posts from the people here have very much helped in that regard. It's much easier to disbelieve Christianity because I have firm reasons not to believe it, than to disbelieve due to a lack of reasons, even if the latter is a perfectly valid response.

(September 23, 2015 at 11:23 am)Yeauxleaux Wrote: Can't word it better than Hitch tbh;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQox1hQrABQ

This is... exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Thank you.

(September 23, 2015 at 10:42 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:

(September 23, 2015 at 9:59 pm)Aractus Wrote:

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Paul was converted on the road to Damascus - that's what he himself says. He says he received a revelation, but he doesn't say how he received it. It's likely he received his revelation from a Christian (or whatever you want to call the followers of Jesus at that time) in 36AD. Christians use Acts 9 to tell them about it, but it's not contemporary and is written by someone who didn't have first-hand knowledge of any Christian events that early. Acts 22 quotes Paul directly giving testimony that he did have a vision and hear the voice of Jesus on the road to Damascus - and the author is writing about contemporary events they have some first-hand knowledge about at this point, and furthermore the author knew Paul. So Acts 22 is the strongest case that Paul did indeed receive a vision - or at least believed that he had.

However, Paul doesn't mention it as a part of his conversion in any of his letters. So I would agree that it's perfectly disputable about whether he had a vision or not - however we know that's the time and location he was converted because he himself says so.

Carrier doesn't really make ANY interesting insights in that video. He has a few minor valid points, but they're overshadowed by his quackery, and don't contribute anything substantial to showing that his hypothesis should be treated as a theory.

As I said, any decent presenter would have references on their slides - yet he has none at all. That's not academic, and if he's using other people's ideas (as he claims to be doing), or even his own published ideas, then it's plagiarism. So either he's making everything up as he goes along, or he's plagiarising - that doesn't make him very credible at all in my book.

This is one of his slides:



And this is how it should look, either like this:



Or like this:



Or of course you can use other referencing methods such as supertexts: "4. And other evidence forged in its place6" ... and then on your references slide have them ordered by number instead of author. But the fact is he didn't use any at all.

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I didn't know the standards for an historian to speak, with citations, in an on-stage event. It is something biologists sometimes do as well, but to be honest I never was around any of the ones that did, and we mostly did field work and published reports, so I'm out of my element with analyzing what he should have done. I'll defer to your word on it.

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I didn't watch the Carrier video you may be referring to; the ones I watched of him, some time ago, were informal small-group gatherings that did not look like conference speeches, though he did use slides that looked like the ones you're showing me, here. I believe what I believe about Paul for the reason you stated: it strikes me as the sort of thing you do not omit when writing to the early church about your experience, and I'm utterly convinced (particularly by Luke/Acts and then John) that they kept embellishing the stories as time progressed.  I just finished listening to Ehrman's interview on The Humanist Hour,  and I am happy to see he is still correcting himself on the fly. It is one of the reasons I rarely listen to evangelical "scholars", no matter what degree of expertise they express-- it is simply fatal to my willingness to listen to you if you show that you cannot change your mind in the face of better evidence. Then you're no better than a tape recorded message being put onto a new tape.

Finally, I don't think I'd go so far as to classify Carrier as "quackery" even though I disagree with most of his conclusions (in areas I know enough to do so), and reached conclusions surprisingly similar to Ehrman's. Based on what I read about Carrier on Ehrman's blog, he doesn't quite seem to consider him a quack, even though Carrier lampooned him pretty badly, just totally wrong and in need of some humility in carefully examining his position before he boasts about it. This is hardly unique in academia (though more common with department heads, to whom no one will say nay), and it might spark young Richard into refining his ideas. With citations

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It's standard academic practise in any field. And even if it's to a lay audience his slides should be coming from an academic level presentation he's used and therefore would be pre-referenced.

Look the problem with him - and he is a quack make no mistake - is that his arguments are all extreme. "Oh because this part references a supernatural event that means everything in all the Gospels is the work of deliberate inventions". That's simply not the case - there's a huge difference between the four gospels and other works which are purely based in Myth like for example Genesis and Exodus. And historians do the hard work to figure out what parts of the gospels tell you anything of meaning that is based on actual events and what has been embellished.

Let me give you an example. The mythist-naysayers sometimes point out "well we have nothing actually written from when Jesus was alive". Well true, now let's first note that his ministry lasted for about one year and then consider what we do have:

c. 43-58 AD: Epistle of James
c. 50-53 AD: Paul's epistle to the Galatians
c. 50-53 AD: Paul's epistle to the Thessalonians
c. 50-53 AD: Paul's second epistle to the Thessalonians (if genuine)
c. 53-57 AD: Paul's epistle to the Corinthians
c. 55-57AD: Paul's epistle to the Romans
c. 55-70 AD: Gospel of Mark/"proto-Mark"
c. 57-58 AD: Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians
c. 60-62 AD: Paul's epistle to the Colossians
c. 60-62 AD: Paul's epistle to the Philemon
c. 60-85 AD: The Gospel of Luke
c. 60-85 AD: The Gospel of Matthew
c. 61-85 AD: Acts of the Apostles
c. 64-90 AD: Epistle to the Hebrews
c. 80-95 AD: The Gospel of John

For the moment we'll ignore 1-2 Peter, 1,2,3 John, Revelation, Jude, and the pseudonymous- and pastoral- Pauline epistles. But I will say with the possible exceptions of 2 Peter and 1,2,3, John they all fit in the first century and of course Revelation tells us nothing useful, so in total out of the 27 New Testament books, we have 22 Books that date to the first century. 22 Books that span in composition time from c. 50-95 AD (ignoring James as the outlier). That's 45 years.

Do you see the problem?

We have a total of one Christian writing per two years. Yet Jesus only ministered for one year. And we know that since 50 AD -on many of John's previous disciples were converted to Christianity, and that the gospel had been spreading greatly at that time (Acts 14-15). So we have a much greater number of Christians in the 50's AD on than in the 30's or 40's AD. And still only 1 writing per two years, and only 7 distinct Authors (plus the pseudo-pauline author/authors).

Now let's reconcile this with Carrier's view. We know why there aren't more early writings - firstly there were but they didn't all survive because they weren't all copied as much as the New Testament - but secondly the writings that we have cannot be put into an artificial order that he proposes that has all the gospels and acts being written after all the pauline epistles. You can't do that - it's conjecture. Even among the scholars who think that the gospels were written late (as in after 70AD) they still think there was a proto-Mark that predates the fall of Jerusalem. Everything else that he's looking at - besides the short Epistle of James - is Paul's writings and is reflective of only one author. You can't answer questions about what the first century church believed simply by trying to figure out what one single author was thinking.

The "evidence" that the synoptic gospels are written after 70AD is that they all cite Jesus predicting the fall of Jerusalem. I dispute that theology because I think that if Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher and he mentions the one who is to come "the Son of Man" that he certainly should have and would have been expected to have also talked about the fall of the great Jewish city of Jerusalem. So it's consistent with his character, it wasn't merely a "lucky guess" - he knew that the city had been taken by siege and completely destroyed a few centuries prior, he was simply predicting this would happen again. Once you accept that Jesus in all likeliness make that statement - and that it doesn't require a supernatural explanation - it means that reasons for dating Luke-Acts to after c. 63 AD are diminished. Therefore Luke, Acts, Mark and probably Matthew are all written in the same period that Paul is writing - not afterwards.

How anyone can explain Matthew's gospel written after the fall of Jerusalem with an intended Jewish-Christian audience is beyond me. The entire Jerusalem church was destroyed by 70AD, there would be no one for "Matthew" to write it to. There's not a scrap of evidence that the gentile-orientated Christian church continued proselytising to Jews after that time; and there had to have been time for copies to have been made and circulated so it could survive into the later centuries. This all points to Matthew being written by c. 61AD. Of course we don't know exactly when it was written - but my point is we cannot simply assume to "know" that it's written after Paul's writings, that's nothing but conjecture. Either hypothesis is possible, and you can't mount solid theories on unproven weak-as-fuck hypothetical evidence.