My blog

[robvalue]

I've revamped the Logical fallacies section to gives examples of the fallacy next to each button to help you pick the right one.

All feedback welcome!

[ManMachine]

I'm just getting started with it, but I thought I'd share it with you guys. Feedback welcome!

http://robvalue.wix.com/atheism

I'm not qualified to critique a weblog but I did enjoy it.

MM

[robvalue]

That's ok I'm just making it up as I go along. Glad you like it

It was going to be a series of rants but it kind of turned into more of a resource.

[watchamadoodle]

@robvalue, I saw a typo on the scientific method page - "apparrent" (near the end).

I've only just started reading your blog. I like your description of the scientific method in familiar terms.

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On the "natural and supernatural" page, I think "predictable and unpredictable" or "deterministic and non-deterministic" is more meaningful. Billiards balls are normally predictable. Of course the atoms in the billiards balls are unpredictable, but that unpredictability is unlikely to trickle-up. On the other hand, certain systems might magnify the unpredictable behavior of the atoms. Maybe the human brain works that way, so that we could never predict human behavior with the same confidence as billiard ball behavior. IMO quantum mechanics says that nothing is purely predictable or unpredictable. Everything is a mixture. Maybe ultimately everything is deterministic, but we can't measure the states accurately enough to make predictions.

Scientists should recognize the unavoidable wooishness of reality and not be so conservative IMO

[watchamadoodle]

The "logical fallacies" were helpful to me due to my ignorance of logic.

The "what is an atheist" page is good.

There might be circumstances where an atheist is forced to choose based on probability, investment cost, and potential returns of a theistic claim. Maybe the atheist is sick and a faith healer will use some mumbo jumbo for a small fee. In your even/odd scenario, an atheist might bet against the theistic claim that the odds are not 50/50. Assuming the theist is delusional, then the atheist can take his/her money.

I used to have a problem with the idea of atheists believing nothing. How can atheists believe nothing, because we all are forced to make choices based on probabilities we assign to different theories? After debating this question on another forum, I finally came-up with a satisfactory answer. Atheists believe methodological naturalism. Theists believe methodological naturalism too, but they add some theistic beliefs to hide the gaps in our knowledge. It is very easy to have no beliefs about the gaps in knowledge. We don't know about these gaps, because they don't affect our lives very much. If these gaps affected our lives, then we would have enough data to close the gaps. So atheists believe nothing about the unknowns that don't affect our lives very much (such as an imaginary God who rarely does anything except helping people find their car keys sometimes).

(I'm not suggesting you change your blog of course - just telling you some things that used to bother me about atheism.)

[robvalue]

That's fantastic, thank you very much for your feedback. This is just what I want I shall correct those mistakes and have a good think about how to incorporate your suggestions.

I'm glad you like it! I know you can get info elsewhere about logical fallacies, but I wanted to make it accessible and fairly simple, so hopefully that is working

Thanks again!

[robvalue]

Musings.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that jesus mooters and mythicists are pretty much the same thing.

Mythicist: There was no actual person that jesus was based on.
Mooter: There probably was an actual person, but they didn't do any of the supernatural stuff, so it's irrelevant.

Say I take the role of a mooter, and that jesus is based on Jim. Now, what actions and dialogue in the bible can I confidently say that Jim actually did? As far as I can see, the answer is none at all. The gospels are the best sources available, and they are all hearsay. They're clearly not even independent, as anyone who has studied them will know. So I don't believe anything on hearsay, that is crap.

What else is there? A few references even later after Jim's supposed death, telling us what people believed about Jim. Bollocks. Hearsay about beliefs. Rubbish. Even if they mentioned a particular event, it's written so far after the fact that it's more likely to just be confirming the NT, which was available for them to read. Especially as we have a lot of suspicious forgeries and tamperings by christians, which further degrades the reliability of any of these sources.

Did I miss anything? Does anyone have a decent case for even one thing, put beyond reasonable doubt?

So in my conclusion, I cannot attribute a single event or spoken word, beyond reasonable doubt, from Jim to jesus. So where does that leave me? Jim could have been absolutely anyone from that time, as far as the comparison goes, and it would make no difference. I have no good reason to think the whole of jesus' story is anything other than mythical construction.

In the end, as a mooter, I come to the same conclusion as the mythicist: there is no good reason to think jesus, as in the jesus doing or saying any of the stuff in the bible, existed at all. Whether or not there was an irrelevant starting point is... irrelevant?

(I should note that I don't care what any historian's opinion is, unless they can back up that opinion with evidence.)

[watchamadoodle]

The more I think about it, the more I feel that jesus mooters and mythicists are pretty much the same thing.

Mythicist: There was no actual person that jesus was based on.
Mooter: There probably was an actual person, but they didn't do any of the supernatural stuff, so it's irrelevant.

For an ex-Christian, there can be a big difference. At a minimum a Christian probably believes that Jesus lived, instructed people to pray to him, ask him for forgiveness, promised life in paradise for his followers, or whatever. The physical resurrection and the miracles aren't essential. So the mythical Jesus claim is much more effective for helping a Christian see the light. Also the mythical Jesus claim offers certainty. Christians giving up their belief are afraid that they might be making a terrible mistake. The mootist claim leaves a lot of uncertainty and room for Christians to worry.

Unfortunately, almost all historians are mootists instead of mythicists. They mythicists are almost all lay people instead of academics. Robert M. Price is the only academic mythicist that I know about. But it seems that Price isn't actually a mythicist after all - even though he wrote a book about the possibility. Price is a mootist.

At the same time, Price cautiously concludes that "a genuine historical figure" ultimately lies at the root of the Christian religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Price

Even though I would be delighted to learn that the mythicist claims are true, I must accept that they are probably not. Instead, I have been trying to understand the beliefs and practices of the earliest Christians in hopes that they might differ fundamentally from modern beliefs and practices. Also I have been trying to understand how Christianity and Judaism evolved and changed fundamentally.

The strategy for deconverting Christians depends on the type of Christianity. Fundamentalists are easier to deconvert, because they claim the Bible is literally true. Liberal Christians are harder to deconvert IMO.

Some people benefit from the philosophical arguments such as the problem of evil. For some reason those arguments haven't worked for me. The philosophical arguments work better for very cerebral, Spock-like people. (I'm not one of those people unfortunately. )

[robvalue]

I see, thank you

Richard Carrier is a mythicist too, I've found his arguments way more convincing than any of the HJ crowd. It always seems to come down to an inference, leaning on motive or just giving too much credit to sources. I'll check out that link though, cheers Do you know what argument / evidence he uses?

A lot of people "conclude" there was a HJ but not once have I seen any actual evidence to back it up. It's always hand waving. That's why I'm trying to see if I've actually missed anything. Just saying "It can't have all been made up" isn't a very strong argument in my opinion. Because it absolutely could have all been made up.

[watchamadoodle]

I see, thank you

Richard Carrier is a mythicist too, I've found his arguments way more convincing than any of the HJ crowd. It always seems to come down to an inference, leaning on motive or just giving too much credit to sources. I'll check out that link though, cheers Do you know what argument / evidence he uses?

A lot of people "conclude" there was a HJ but not once have I seen any actual evidence to back it up. It's always hand waving. That's why I'm trying to see if I've actually missed anything. Just saying "It can't have all been made up" isn't a very strong argument in my opinion. Because it absolutely could have all been made up.

I'm not sure what Robert M. Price claims. Originally I thought he was a mythicist, because all the less academic mythicists point to Robert M. Price as their hero in the academic world. But, surprisingly, Robert M. Price isn't actually a mythicist. Price wrote some books that seemed to promote the mythicist view. Maybe he was a mythicist when he wrote the books and later moderated his view?

Here is a blog from Tim O'Neil about the weaknesses of the mythicist view as part of a book review for "Nailed". O'Neil seems very knowledgable to me. I was on another athestic forum where he joined our discussion and changed a lot of mythicists into mootists. I wouldn't be surprised if he has visited this forum in the past. Check-out his blog. It is very good IMO.
http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2011/...-show.html

Also, I realized that my claim that almost no academics are mythicists is an overstatement. Here is a quote about the Jesus Project. This scholarly project broke-up because the mythicist scholars could not work with the mootist scholars. Obviously there must be at least a few mythicist scholars:

The Jesus Project, announced in December 2007, was intended as a five-year investigation to examine whether Jesus existed as an historical figure. The idea was that a group of 32 scholars from a variety of disciplines would meet regularly with no preconceived ideas, funded by the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, part of the Center for Inquiry.
...
The project was halted in June 2009 when Hoffmann announced that in his view the project was not productive, and its funding was suspended. He wrote that there were problems with adherents to the Christ myth theory, the idea that Jesus did not exist, asking to set up a separate section of the project for those committed to the theory, which Hoffmann felt signalled a lack of necessary skepticism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Project