(October 30, 2015 at 1:51 am)AtlasS33 Wrote:

(October 29, 2015 at 10:26 am)Rhythm & TubbyTubby Wrote: So do christians and hindus...I guess all of these faith traditions are simultaneously right while making mutually exclusive claims.  lol.  

Atlas, if you have evidence that your faith is true...present it.  Make that thread, make that case.  That's step 1.  Claiming to possess evidence, and claiming to have validated your religion by it, is skipping that all important step 1, it's also pretty douchey.

It's a dream I had that came true.
The sura is Sura 12. It's not the same dream of Joseph, but the dream came true.

Insane ? maybe. But the dream came true.

Study up on conginitve biases. Like robvalue alluded to, confirmation bias is one of them.

(October 29, 2015 at 1:44 am)AtlasS33 Wrote: From my understanding the Qumran texts date to the last 2 centuries BCE & a century forth in CE. The MT is compared against the Qumran scrolls more than anything in terms of similarity; my problem is who wrote them, how, and to serve whom.

In other words : the original version itself that was kept in the temple mount can be itself forged. That if there was a kept original version in the first place.

Who can say for certain, that they are the same tablets of Moses peace be upon him ? the Jewish texts themselves, points a finger to the sins of Moses's followers : the golden calf story. How many Aaron were there to forge after Moses's death ?

That for Old Testament though.. how many Aarons could there be within Jesus's followers ?

I get sick of explaining this to you over and over. You are in the position that your religion teaches you that the original form of the Bible was correct, but that it has since been corrupted. This is the same teaching followed by Orthodoxy which continues to teach that "the LXX" is the correct form of the Hebrew scriptures despite overwhelming modern evidence to the contrary.

The MT's textual lineage without question goes back to the text used by first century Palestinian Jews. There are many pathways a text can be carried, and those can result in significant variants as in Samaritan Pentateuch. Its textual lineage is significantly different to that of the MT, and it diverged at some point before first century Palestine around the time that the Jewish sect emerged. It has specific variants (the so-called "Samaritan layer") that appear to have been introduced centuries earlier, intentionally, and yet when those intentional changes are discounted the text overwhelmingly agrees with the MT Pentateuch. So we have not just one, but two separate religious bodies that preserved their texts for many centuries - in fact millennia - without changing it.

So what we know, without any real doubt, is the text of the Hebrew Bible was not intentionally altered by the Palestinian Jews since around 200 BC.

As for the New Testament text, the exact text is even surer because we know with fairly good certainty when the books were written. Yes there can be wide disagreement about exactly when, but for the most part all the important books of the NT were written between the dates of 48 and 90AD with fairly strong certainty (that excludes 1-2 Peter, Hebrews and Revelation). Of even greater importance is the fact that scholars have texts appearing as early as the third century that show distinct textual lineage (just like Receptus vs Byzantine but earlier). The raw form of Receptus is around 99.5% accurate to the original content of the NT books, and the modern critical version (Novum Testamentum, first published in the 16th century) is at least 99.9% word-for-word accurate to the original first century autographs of the NT books.

(October 29, 2015 at 1:44 am)AtlasS33 Wrote: Being completed a "century" after his death, is a main disaster in terms of the accuracy of the text..I understand that this was never written directly; rather it was based on the memory of the writer..exactly like the Muslim "Hadiths".

And the Q source seems lost; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source

The year of the Q source is hypothetical, since the source itself is hypothetical.

Q is hypothetical, but what isn't hypothetical is that there was a written source older than the synoptic gospels that at least contained a number of sayings. That's not a hypothesis, it's a certainty. There is word-for-word accuracy between the three synoptic gospels in parts that can only be explained by there being a previous source. For example there are areas where Mark and Matthew are word-for-word identical - but Luke's account of the same event is different. There are areas where Mark and Luke are word-for-word identical and Matthew's account of the same event is different. And there are areas where Luke and Matthew are word-for-word identical and yet different to Mark's version. This is in such a way that the alternative theories can't explain. This goes beyond the scope of my reply, but whether Q existed or not is hypothetical - but likely. What is not hypothetical is that there was at least one written source containing information copied by all three authors.

Again, you are wrong. All the important texts were completed within 60 years of his death. All of them. And James, Jude, and the epistles of Paul were written before 60 AD - within 30 years of his death.

It doesn't matter when they were written anyway, since the Muslim faith teaches that they were "correct in the original form but were altered" . You have been shown repeatedly that this is not the case, the text that exists today can be demonstrated to be more than 99.9% word-for-word accurate to the original autographs. And if you were to exclude some of the books so as to only include the most relevant ones (James, Jude, Paul's undisputed epistles, the gospels and acts) then the accuracy would be nearly 100%.

This isn't a religious teaching I'm regurgitating to you, it's the view of modern scholars. Every individual text contains some error somewhere, and a few contain some additions. Nothing has been removed from the NT, and the critical text is for the most part indistinguishable from the original autographs that were written.

(October 30, 2015 at 1:51 am)AtlasS33 Wrote: It's a dream I had that came true.
The sura is Sura 12. It's not the same dream of Joseph, but the dream came true.

Insane ? maybe. But the dream came true.

I'm sorry, what?  You had a dream?  That's the evidence by which you validated your faith?  

You need to seriously reconsider your standards of evidence.

Yeah, I don't get it. If I had a dream about Lord of the rings, and then something similar happened in real life, is Sauron real? I don't see how a dream can prove anything here.

Abso-fucking-lutely Rob!  After all, that's why islam is true, some rando had a dream.......QED

Hmm. If they can't both be true, I wonder how we decide which one of us is wrong? Dream gladiators?

What if I have another dream that proves Harry Potter is real. Does that win over my last dream? Or are they both true now?

Basing any important life decisions on the insane ramblings of our brains while asleep, detoxifying and filing information or whatever they are doing, is a big mistake in my opinion.

Of course they can both be true.  Isn't this precisely what the faithful have shown us...that mutually exclusive propositions can all be simultaneously true provided that those propositions are religious in nature?

(October 30, 2015 at 9:23 pm)robvalue Wrote: Yeah, I don't get it. If I had a dream about Lord of the rings, and then something similar happened in real life, is Sauron real? I don't see how a dream can prove anything here.

No, it's the "symbolism". Sauron might be symbolizing something in your subliminal thoughts.
Like the story of Joseph : one of the guys in prison saw bread atop of his head the birds feed on; it pointed to his head being the FOOD of the bird; thus he got crucified and birds ate from his head..

His head turned into the birds' bread..Symbolism.

Irrational

I'm not a mental, irrational. Dreams come true, and dreams do show us the future sometimes.

Aractus

I never get sick from reminding people, that dates hold no true value.

Yes, parts of the bible and talmud are true, according to the Quran.
The forging touched many of it, that's the main reason why the Quran was descended anyways..

Revising the archaeological evidence, will never bring the dead back to testify. The body of Jesus was never found, and unlike Mohammed, even his tomb isn't known.

Until then,Aractus, the archaeological evidence is based on "copies" of the bible and the Torah, and until then that dates can never be trusted when it comes to the original versions.

Rhythm

To each of us his their path to believe. Though the Quran has many other verses. As the dream made me clinch to the faith more, if the other verses didn't make any sense that grip would've turned soft a long time ago.

Clearly, something about you turned soft a long time ago, just wasn't your grip.  Look higher.

(October 28, 2015 at 12:03 am)Rhythm Wrote:

(October 27, 2015 at 10:55 pm)Delicate Wrote: Are you sure you're remembering things correctly? 

What is the relevant difference between Catholics and Protestants on baptism that is not a matter of preference or practice?

Already been covered, I won't be repeating myself.  Are you done?

Don't have to repeat yourself, but you could point to where you talked about it before.

Odds are, you didn't though.

(October 27, 2015 at 10:50 pm)Thena323 Wrote:

(October 27, 2015 at 10:07 pm)Delicate Wrote: Granted. Perhaps I did adjust my challenge as I thought about the issue further. 

Which particular adjustment was unjustified?

It's not a matter of a particular adjustment being justified or unjustified. It's a matter of you creating an unfair scenario in which you can never be demonstrated to be incorrect. 

The general tone of your posts suggests that it's being done deliberately.

Every adjustment was predicated on a clearer understanding of what exactly atheists are trying to say, and what criteria need to be logically met in order for the claim to be true. 

The adjustments were fair, not unfair. If you disagree, show me some evidence.

In other words, put up or shut up.