Theists: What is the most compelling argument you have heard for Atheism?

[Pat Mustard]

I don't disbelieve categorically that miracles do not occur.  What I do however do is discount that a bunch of stories written during a time of superstition, credulity, and legend making constitutes sufficient evidence that a miracle has occurred.  That's just being plain gullible, and as noteed is a different standard than you hold other religions to account for.

I most certainly dismiss the word "miracle". That is simply another gap filling word. It is used because of the person having selection bias and sample rate error. It is being selective about what one wants as an answer instead of looking at a larger sample of similar events that do not have the same consistent outcome.

If a passenger jet crashes and only 1 person dies out of 300 they use the word "miracle". If 299 people die and only 1 survives they still use the word "miracle". When does the word not get used? When 150 survive and 150 dont? 

If a plane crashes and someone lives or dies it is a result of the countless conditions from pilot skill, weather, mechanical and angle of impact and seat on the plane. Neither surviving or dying are good luck or bad luck, but CONDITIONS.

The word "miracle" is pointless to me considering 50 to 60 million humans die worldwide per year on average, from everything you can imagine. We die in the uterus, stillborn, from childhood disease, famine. Adults die from disease, accident, crime, natural disaster and war and everyone dies from old age eventually. You can only try to delay death, but you cannot avoid it regardless. The word "miracle" is a bullshit superstitious gap filling word and is as hollow as the word "god".

It is pointless to gap full with a lucky horseshoe or rabbits' foot as much as it would to chalk your survival up to Apollo, so the word "miracle" is a junk word. There is only life then death, no "miracle" required to explain either life or death, it is simply nature. It is a gap word really that humans use to express a sense of relief but falsely attach it to woo/luck/magic or a god. There is no way to water down that word to use it in any real context of a scientific explanation.

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn't theirs.
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1. No, unlike Zeus, we have evidence that people actually saw him in person, recording his words, performing miracles. The additional evidence of significant numbers of followers spread throughout the empire within the lifetime of eyewitnesses strengthens the documentary evidence. It is a cumulative case.

No we don't. As I proved to you previously the first mention of Yeshua bar Yosef was in a book written at least 75 years after his birth and forty after his death, as a third hand account.

2. I don't believe I have inferred anything from Tacitus except my point that there were substantial numbers of Christians in Rome only 35 years following the Crucifixion.

And in that inferral you are also wrong. All we can reliably infer from Tacitus is that 1) the reference to Yeshua was an 11th century forgery and 2) by the time Tacitus wrote his histories there was a christian community of indeterminate (but probably tiny given other available evidence) size in the city.

3. The Thallus reference was about the darkness. The Talmud later talks of Jesus being an evil sorcerer. You forget that the vast majority of writers were interested in political history (politics, kings, emperors, military, territory). In the first century, they were not interested in what they saw as an offshoot of a minority religion in a region that would soon be crushed and dispersed.


The Thallus reference brings up a good point. How many histories were lost to time? Most could not read or write, materials had a short shelf life, the environments were harsh, and wars and politics moved things around over generations.

Yeah, and? We all know that christianity was essentially a minor jewish heresy until Constantine adopted and refounded it as Rome's religion in 325CE. And for histories being lost to time, well you can thank christianity for the loss of many major Roman and Greek historical works, they hunted down and burnt anything that disagreed with their invented story about their religion.

4. Are you denying that Josephus ever mentioned Jesus (which was my point)? If so, you are in the very small minority.

Yes. The Yeshua insertion into his Antiquities was obviously an insertion by Eusebius whose whole career was made from "finding" contemporary writings mentioning Yeshua. When Photios I, Patriarch of Constantinople (and the 10th century's leading scholar on christian writings) calls out a passage as an obvious fake, you can bet your arse it is.

5. Are you denying that Christianity had spread all across the Roman Empire? Seriously? How would you explain everything we have dated from the end of the first century through the second and third? There is a consistent thread that can be followed all the way from Paul and the Gospels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ea...an_writers

Yes, at the point of a sword. Christianity was a minor jewish heresy until adopted by the Roman Empire as it's official religion mid way through the 4th century. All other religions were wiped out in a bloodbath (which christian apologists later appropriated in order to create martyrs to bolster their credentials).

6. With Jersalem being leveled in 70AD. How much writing (which was scarce enough) would have been lost in such a time?

You're talking about the period in Principate history where the most abundant written documentation remains, and an area for which we have extensive records extant from that period. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we have a sufficiency to conclude that if Yeshua wasn't a complete invention, then he was a total non-entity until well after he died.

7. I think you overstate your case, but nevermind. This is only proof that people did not think an offshoot of a minor religion in the corner of the empire important during the first generation of its adherents.

Actually the proof that christianity was unimportant lies in the fact that it's adherence was tiny right up until it was appropriated by the Roman Empire for its own ends.

8. Are you throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks? There are tons of articles that examine every point you think you make by bring these things up. Pick one with some links if you want to discuss them separately.

You're the one with nothing, you're the one flinging excrement at windmills. We have a sufficiency of evidence for our opinions. You have not one shred of evidence for your beliefs.