A simple challenge for atheists

[Norman Humann]

Did you miss what I just said?

There was no jesus, I made him up. Sorry!

Is my testimony being ignored? :o Is it just your unsubstantiated claims that should be believed?

I'm gonna impugn all the way to the bank.

Looks like that went straight for the mental block list. Too bad

[FatAndFaithless]

...you bring up Neanderthal, a species for whom we have a genetic record, which is an objective indicator that it was a separate species from us.

If you look at a side view of both the Neanderthal and modern Australian Aboriginal skulls, you can basically overlay one on top of the other. Do you believe that modern Aboriginals are a separate species?

The fuck kind of scientific term is 'basically'?

[Tonus]

To summarize, if you can't impugn the beliefs of the people of the first century who really saw that Jesus was born, brought a radical message of love and redemption, died,

To this point, there's not much to impugn. A group of people knew a person named Jesus who preached and stirred up the locals by claiming to be their god-sent savior, and was killed for his trouble.

and rose again, then you cannot impugn those that hold the same view today.

That's where you run into a problem. Since dead people aren't in the habit of bringing themselves back to life outside of myths and legends and the occasional Marvel comic, you need a lot more than just "I saw it." Considering some of the things written in the gospels, the fact that no one seemed interested in writing down what happened for decades afterwards is odd, to say the least.

And references to Jesus outside of those gospels, if we accept them all as genuine, are equally uninspired. If Josephus really did write was is attributed to him regarding Jesus, he seems utterly unmoved by it, relegating it to a single paragraph and then going on about his business after describing a man who was actually god. Jesus made a pretty lukewarm impression, it seems, before Constantine decided that he was a pretty convenient big deal.

[Esquilax]

When you try to draw parallels with unicorns, Star Wars and your time machine, you are totally missing the point that Christians have the first Christians.

And the muslims have the first muslims, and the hindus have the first hindus, and the Thor worshippers have the first Thor worshippers. Every religion has the first practitioners of that religion, they didn't just pop into being fully formed in the modern era. Hell, we atheists even have the first atheists, so under your "logic" I guess that makes atheism correct. You spent a whole paragraph saying nothing.

If you look at a side view of both the Neanderthal and modern Australian Aboriginal skulls, you can basically overlay one on top of the other. Do you believe that modern Aboriginals are a separate species?

So, I point out that we don't just determine species separation based on the morphology of the skull, that we have more Neanderthal bones than just skulls, that we've sequenced the Neanderthal genome, and that the similarities between skulls is adequately explained by other factors, and your response is to ignore all of that and just go "yeah, but the skulls look alike"?

Do you find some profit in ignoring every cogent point anyone gives you?

[SteveII]

You can claim the first century Christians were wrong all you want. That does not make it so. You have failed to prove that either 1) they really didn't believe or 2) that they beleived but there was a better explanation than a miracle happened.

It seems like your only logical basis for thinking they were wrong is that Jesus could not have been raised from the dead. However, if people witness it and then act upon that information...Because you all love WLC:

"All that the scientist conceivably has the right to say is that such an event is naturally impossible. But with that conclusion the defender of miracles may readily agree. We must not confuse the realms of logical and natural possibility. Is the occurrence of a miracle logically impossible? No, for such an event involves no logical contradiction. Is the occurrence naturally impossible? Yes, for it cannot be produced by natural causes; indeed, this is a tautology, since to lie outside the productive capacity of natural causes is to be naturally impossible."

"...since a miracle is just as much a matter of sense perception as any other event, it is, in principle, provable by historical testimony in the same way as a non-miraculous event. Qua history, they stand exactly on a par. It is contrary to sound historical methodology to suppress particular testimony out of regard for general testimony. In the case of the resurrection, for example, if the testimony which we have in the New Testament makes it probable that Jesus' tomb was really found empty on the first day of the week by some of his women followers and that he later appeared to his disciples in a non-hallucinatory fashion, then it is bad historical methodology to argue that this testimony must be somehow false because historical evidence shows that all other men have always remained dead in their graves. Nor can it be argued that the testimony must be false because such an event is naturally impossible, for it may well be the case that history proves that a naturally impossible event has, in fact, occurred."

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-probl...erspective

[FatAndFaithless]

This guy is fucking useless to talk to.

[Tonus]

You can claim the first century Christians were wrong all you want. That does not make it so. You have failed to prove that either 1) they really didn't believe or 2) that they beleived but there was a better explanation than a miracle happened.

By the same token, their claims are just that, until actual evidence is provided. The extra-Biblical claims regarding Jesus are light on claims to divinity, and as I already said even the one that could be construed that way treats the subject casually. As if godhood were not something to get excited about.

I don't have to prove that some fellow running around claiming to be god wasn't god, or that he didn't rise from the dead. I can apply the same level of skepticism that you apply to every other claim of divinity, with the added bonus of being just a bit more consistent in my demands for proof.

[Esquilax]

You can claim the first century Christians were wrong all you want. That does not make it so. You have failed to prove that either 1) they really didn't believe or 2) that they beleived but there was a better explanation than a miracle happened.

We don't need to disprove your wild assertions. You need to prove them, and the desperation with which you're trying to foist that burden of proof on other people is a good indication that you just can't do that.

It seems like your only logical basis for thinking they were wrong is that Jesus could not have been raised from the dead. However, if people witness it and then act upon that information...Because you all love WLC:

"All that the scientist conceivably has the right to say is that such an event is naturally impossible. But with that conclusion the defender of miracles may readily agree. We must not confuse the realms of logical and natural possibility. Is the occurrence of a miracle logically impossible? No, for such an event involves no logical contradiction. Is the occurrence naturally impossible? Yes, for it cannot be produced by natural causes; indeed, this is a tautology, since to lie outside the productive capacity of natural causes is to be naturally impossible."

Sorry, but "it's okay because it's magic" is not a cogent argument, and neither is logical possibility the same as physical possibility. You're going to have to do better than that.

Incidentally, you do understand that WLC is a terrible source to go to for arguments here, because he's a presuppositionalist, right? He claims he has this "self authenticating witness" of the holy spirit that will lead him to believe in god even if he were given conclusive evidence that god doesn't exist. When you post a WLC link, you aren't posting evidence or an argument, you're posting the meandering ramblings of a man intent on bending over backwards to reach his preferred conclusion no matter what. It's effectively useless.

[SteveII]

To summarize, if you can't impugn the beliefs of the people of the first century who really saw that Jesus was born, brought a radical message of love and redemption, died,

To this point, there's not much to impugn. A group of people knew a person named Jesus who preached and stirred up the locals by claiming to be their god-sent savior, and was killed for his trouble.

and rose again, then you cannot impugn those that hold the same view today.

That's where you run into a problem. Since dead people aren't in the habit of bringing themselves back to life outside of myths and legends and the occasional Marvel comic, you need a lot more than just "I saw it." Considering some of the things written in the gospels, the fact that no one seemed interested in writing down what happened for decades afterwards is odd, to say the least.

And references to Jesus outside of those gospels, if we accept them all as genuine, are equally uninspired. If Josephus really did write was is attributed to him regarding Jesus, he seems utterly unmoved by it, relegating it to a single paragraph and then going on about his business after describing a man who was actually god. Jesus made a pretty lukewarm impression, it seems, before Constantine decided that he was a pretty convenient big deal.

How can you say that no one wrote down anything? Just because we don't have earlier writings than the gospels do not mean that there weren't any.

Most of the church's growth happened outside of Palestine so that fact that Josephus didn't speak more on it is understandable.

[FatAndFaithless]

Chessboard, meet pigeon.