God was created by a dude. I'd blame him on a woman, but back in the day, it was pretty much only guys who fucked things up that badly.

Quote:Who created your god?

Quote:God was created by a dude.

A Persian dude...someone who could actually benefit from giving the minor Canaanite god Yah a promotion.

(September 18, 2011 at 10:43 pm)padraic Wrote: I do not believe in gods due to the lack of credible evidence. This position is called agnostic/weak/ soft atheism. It is the most common position of most atheists here as well as high public profile atheist,such as Richard Dawkins.

I guess it's common among atheists with any scientific training and/or an understanding of some of the basic rules of logic:

IF I assert "there is no god" or "I believe there is no god", I make a positive claim ,and that attracts the burden of proof. I cannot prove there is no god, neither has anyone else been able to do so in recorded history. Therefore, I make no claims, asserting only "I do not believe" .In daily life, this position is moot, as I behave AS IF there are no gods .

Ah "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." argument. I don't personally subscribe to that line of thinking even concerning the question whether or not a god/s exist. However there is nothing wrong with it although.

Victor Stenger explained how in many cases an absence of credible evidence provides "robust" evidence of evidence. Stenger gave an example of elephants have never seen seen roaming in Yellowstone National Park. Stenger goes on further to say that even if such elephants were extremely secretive, we would know they existed through ample physical signs (droppings, crushed vegetation, bones of dead elephants etc). Hence Stenger argues that we can be confident that no elephants live in Yellowstone park.

Stenger was using this line of thought concerning the existence of Yahweh. However I can see it used for every deity humans currently believe in. Also I could use that line of thinking to disprove the existence of a deist god. Because even a deist god would leave some evidence (For example; if the use of the big bang was never explained). As a guy I once spoke to offline said once "If evidence for god was discovered, the person who found that evidence would win the nobel prize".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-ste...82169.html This is an article where Victor Stenger used the argument I outlined, his books God The Failed Hypothesis and The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason expand on this in much more detail.

God validates the authority of the bible, and the historicity of the bible attests to its accuracy.

Now you say God cannot exist because of quanitative infinity, but God isn't limited by that either. There is no procession of time in eternity. There is nothing to traverse, because there is no beginning or end. God is infinite in the sense that He cannot be measured, but He isn't literally all things, though He is transcendent of them. Infinity is not an attribute, but it could be applied in the qualitative sense of a lack of limits..such as being infinitely powerful.

(September 18, 2011 at 11:28 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(September 18, 2011 at 11:02 pm)lucent Wrote: Blah Blah Blah

You are speaking from a book with no authority or validation.

And your god cannot exist. Nothing, not even a god can traverse an infinity. So your god must be finite and limited which means it had to have a beginning. Who created your god?

(September 19, 2011 at 1:32 am)lucent Wrote: God validates the authority of the bible, and the historicity of the bible attests to its accuracy.

I would seriously consider you reading books such as The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts and books by Bart D Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them),
Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are and Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, then we can talk more on this issue.

I'm well versed on Barts objections, and secular arguments against it in general..if you want to discuss anything in particular.

(September 19, 2011 at 1:36 am)Justtristo Wrote:

(September 19, 2011 at 1:32 am)lucent Wrote: God validates the authority of the bible, and the historicity of the bible attests to its accuracy.

I would seriously consider you reading books such as The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts and books by Bart D Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them),
Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are and Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, then we can talk more on this issue.

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The argument is extremely non sensical. A lack of tracks through the park is actually positive evidence for no Elephants. So evidence is not absent in that example. It's a cheap trick of definitions and epistemologically invalid. The absence of evidence example is referring to a lack of any evidence, for or against, and it doesn't prove the existence or non-existence of anything.

(September 19, 2011 at 1:27 am)Justtristo Wrote:

(September 18, 2011 at 10:43 pm)padraic Wrote: I do not believe in gods due to the lack of credible evidence. This position is called agnostic/weak/ soft atheism. It is the most common position of most atheists here as well as high public profile atheist,such as Richard Dawkins.

I guess it's common among atheists with any scientific training and/or an understanding of some of the basic rules of logic:

IF I assert "there is no god" or "I believe there is no god", I make a positive claim ,and that attracts the burden of proof. I cannot prove there is no god, neither has anyone else been able to do so in recorded history. Therefore, I make no claims, asserting only "I do not believe" .In daily life, this position is moot, as I behave AS IF there are no gods .

Ah "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." argument. I don't personally subscribe to that line of thinking even concerning the question whether or not a god/s exist. However there is nothing wrong with it although.

Victor Stenger explained how in many cases an absence of credible evidence provides "robust" evidence of evidence. Stenger gave an example of elephants have never seen seen roaming in Yellowstone National Park. Stenger goes on further to say that even if such elephants were extremely secretive, we would know they existed through ample physical signs (droppings, crushed vegetation, bones of dead elephants etc). Hence Stenger argues that we can be confident that no elephants live in Yellowstone park.

Stenger was using this line of thought concerning the existence of Yahweh. However I can see it used for every deity humans currently believe in. Also I could use that line of thinking to disprove the existence of a deist god. Because even a deist god would leave some evidence (For example; if the use of the big bang was never explained). As a guy I once spoke to offline said once "If evidence for god was discovered, the person who found that evidence would win the nobel prize".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-ste...82169.html This is an article where Victor Stenger used the argument I outlined, his books God The Failed Hypothesis and The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason expand on this in much more detail.

Quote:God validates the authority of the bible, and the historicity of the bible attests to its accuracy.

Now you have just jumped over the line into abject stupidity.

Before your fucking god can "validate" anything you have to show that your fucking god exists.

As for the bible....it has been trashed by modern archaeology.

I echo the suggestion to read The Bible Unearthed" but the sad fact is you would never get past page #5 before sticking your fingers in your ears and shoving your head up your own ass. That's where it notes that "it is now evident that many events of biblical history did not take place in either the particular era or in the manner described. Some of the most famous events in the bible clearly never happened at all."

Of course, you'll never learn that if you keep your head stuck in that ridiculous old book of fairy tales.

(September 19, 2011 at 1:49 am)lucent Wrote: I'm well versed on Barts objections, and secular arguments against it in general..if you want to discuss anything in particular.

What do you think are the flaws in Bart Ehrman's arguments concerning the lack of historical reliability in scripture (particularly that of the New Testament)?

Even despite I am a fan of his work, I do believe that is not sceptical enough concerning the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. Because apart from the highly disputed paragraph written by Josephus. The earliest undisputed reference which survives outside the bible for the existence of Jesus was by Tacitus (around 105 C.E.) which he got clearly from here-say.

Indeed the lack of collaborating evidence from other sources (especially Josephus) about the events described in the gospels is pretty damning. If the events portrayed in the New Testament had actually occurred, Josephus would have written quite a lot about them.

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(September 18, 2011 at 8:21 am)Castle Wrote: 1. I can avoid the negative feeling and action of regret, jealous, anger and your God can’t.
2. Always manage money well, where your God’s always needs tax free money.
3. Never harmed or killed anyone where your God has killed more people in his name more than for any other reason in World's history, more people have been jailed and more wars have been battled.
4. I’m fearless and no one fears me yet your God warns everyone to fear him many times over.

1. Psychologically speaking it's not healthy to pass judgment on what you or anyone else feels. Feelings are indicators or emotional realities, they aren't good or bad.

2. The money you're referring to is the tithe, I assume, but it's not as if God needed it for anything. The purpose of the tithe was for people to take a manageable portion of their income in order to support those who would otherwise be unable to survive. Even an atheist should appreciate the value of sharing a little bit of their wealth to help people that live on less than 1 dollar a day.

3. Difference between pretense and cause. The "Wars of Religion" were basically between countries who were just picking whoever was most advantageous to attack. Protestants attacked protestants, catholics and protestants attacked other catholics. It's not like there were really teams. Crusades were imbued with religious overtones but sparked by the same basic Greek-Persian land struggle that had been going on for thousands of years. Then of course their are people who really just get worked up into a frenzy about killing people for some stupid religious reason. This is really unfortunate, but people are completely irrational when it comes to the in-group vs. out-group dynamic. It does really matter what the different sides are Muslim vs. Christian, Socialist vs. Capitalist, coke vs. pepsi, people can legitimately hate and dehumanize the people on the other side. This really reflects the human condition and not the teachings of Jesus.

4. The word "Fear" in Hebrew is incredibly nuanced and the meaning is not what people would think it is. It doesn't mean, "be afraid of" at all, but conveys the ancient concept of a sense of of awe and uncertainty in the face of something much greater than one's self.

(September 19, 2011 at 2:15 am)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:The earliest undisputed reference which survives outside the bible for the existence of Jesus was by Tacitus (around 105 C.E.) which he got clearly from here-say.

No one in antiquity cites the Tacitus reference, not xtian, not pagan. Much like the Testimonium Flavianum it appears to be a much later forgery. Part of it appears in a 5th century work called Chronica by Sulpicius Severus but without the "Pilate the procurator" reference which xtians like to wrap their scrotums around. Severus does not cite Tacitus as his source, either, which gives the impression that he was the original author of the piece.

Quote:You have never had the chance to read the works of an Australian New Testament scholar Dr John Dickson of Macquarie University.

Agreed but every apologist has basically the same line of shit, no matter how they say it. It basically works this way....




and it is a pile of shit.