(April 7, 2017 at 10:36 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote:(April 7, 2017 at 9:29 am)Harry Nevis Wrote: To me it depends on the reasoning. If you're a believer, you're emotionally involved and invested.
It seems to me a number of atheist get quite emotional and seem fairly invested (despite claims of only skepticism). Can I just dismiss everything they say as biased?
I can understand this position perhaps on an individual basis (if given reason to do so), but it doesn't seem right to assume it; on a general level.
Perhaps this is your bias showing?
Regarding Bart Ehrman, his work differs quite a bit, between his popular writings and talks, to his more scholarly work. For example here is what Ehrman say's in an interview found in the appendix of some versions of "Misquoting Jesus" (my understanding is that this is removed from later additions).
Quote:Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.
Frankly, I find most of the people that you here speak on a given topic be it religion, atheist, evolution, or Dr. Ehrman, are fairly involved and invested.
Here we go again. Your childish kneejerk reaction to bluntness "Emotional".
I love my mom, she remained a Catholic her entire life, but even she knew I thought the idea of eating a magic cracker was bullshit. Just like you don't buy claims of Apollo or Thor.
So if you had a personal friend who went around every single day constantly repeating "The New England Patriots beat the Chicago Cubs in the Stanley Cup", don't hand me any bullshit that that would not bother you to the point of wanting to correct them.
Yes naked assertions bother us. Yes we call bad claims out. Some of us are more blunt about it than others. Nobody wants you dead, nobody is going to have you arrested, we are not going to rape your women or eat your babies. We simply think you are full of shit.
Bad logic bothers us, yes and so what. Maybe you need to grow up.
