Why Should Someone Be an Atheist?

[Jacob(smooth)]

What an interesting thread.

I think there are a few things which would need to happen to convince our filthy heathen atheist friends (no offense :p) that the Bible constitutes evidence.

1. It's not fiction. The difference between delusion and hallucination is moot if it's simply made up.

2. It's documentary but it's not inaccurate documentary. There are documentary texts which state the Holocaust didn't happen. People have different and often weird perspectives.

3. It's documentary, and it's honestly and accurately recorded... But the people writing it are mistaken. People often are you know:/

Could go on.

Can I ask you a question wheat? Why do you believe in the bible? I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, that you should not, but when did you decide that you would? If you had a conversion experience or what you perceive as a supernatural experience, did your belief in the bible pre or post date that experience?

[savedwheat]

Why aren't the sources of the Bible for Jesus corroborating sources like other sources for other people?

[Zen Badger]

What makes you think the Bible is magic?

No, I think the bible is bullshit.

You think it is magical.

[savedwheat]

Why do you think it is bullshit? I am curious to know why you think that way.

[Cinjin]

Why aren't the sources of the Bible for Jesus corroborating sources like other sources for other people?

Obvious. Physical evidence found through multiple fields of archeology and historical research. None exists for your jesus.

[Jacob(smooth)]

Why aren't the sources of the Bible for Jesus corroborating sources like other sources for other people?

Because they are internal. The three books of lotr corroborate the existence of orcs, but they don't raise the text above fiction because they are from the same book. The council of nicea could have simply picked out the texts which agreed and ignored the rest. Or indeed written some new ones.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

So what phenomenon do you propose to which there is no other explanation than God?

Hold the phone, I've thought of one:

Without going into all the gucky details, I lost my left eye when I was 17 years old. Mind, I didn't lose the sight in this eye, I lost the physical eyeball itself. Just to hammer the point home, there is a hole in the left side of my face where the eyeball used to be, a complete enucleation.

If a group of Christians (or any other group of religionists) were to pray for my eye to spontaneously re-grow and be fully functional, and it actually happened, I can't imagine NOT being convinced that the god prayed to was responsible, given that there is no known way to re-grow an eye.

Boru

[Cinjin]

Why aren't the sources of the Bible for Jesus corroborating sources like other sources for other people?

Because they are internal. The three books of lotr corroborate the existence of orcs, but they don't raise the text above fiction because they are from the same book. The council of nicea could have simply picked out the texts which agreed and ignored the rest. Or indeed written some new ones.

I already explained this to wheat. He's asking the same questions until he gets the response he wants. Which of course is never going to happen. Which at that point, will be considered Flaming if he keeps it up ... which will get him banned.

[savedwheat]

Not all the sources for Jesus are internal. More than a dozen are external.

[Esquilax]

Why do you think it is bullshit? I am curious to know why you think that way.

Because it makes claims about the universe that are demonstrably false, and it frames those claims- that we know are false- as the testament of the ineffable creator of the universe who was literally there when those (wrong) things took place.