of course, there IS something wrong with jumping to conclusions based upon incomplete data.
I wasn't jumping to conclusions.
And you know just as well as I do that the article at breitbart is intended to lead people who like to jump to conclusions that support their politics.
You mean the ASSOCIATED PRESS article at Breitbart?
The original article does have some additional data, for example, in addition to the "deliverative process" exemption going up to 70,779 from 47,395, total exemptions also went up, to 466,872 from 312,683. Most damning, though, seems to be that total requests went DOWN, from 493,610 to 444,924, which means that they cited more exemptions than they actually received information requests (I wonder if that's ever happened before).
Totally agreed. That it is from breitbart is utterly irrelevant. And the raw number is not too interesting unless you know the number of requests, and probably the specific agencies (and topics) the requests were for. Though while, yes, more years will reveal better data, there's nothing wrong with looking at it in-progress.
There's really only three responses for you to have.
One is that you are wrong and I am right.
Another is to actually back up your points instead of lying about what both of us say.
The last is to bow out gracefully, saying you would just prefer not to have the discussion.
Instead, you do the opposite of all of these: you continue to assert I am wrong, while not backing up ANY of your points, and lying about what both of us have said, and then instead of bowing out you continue to argue, while inventing bullshit reasons why you're bowing out, which you aren't doing.
The first 2 posts I gave you plenty of good facts and actual arguments and your response was simply "false".
You're lying. For example, the first "fact" you cited was "we don't have any roman records of Jesus." This was proven false (Tactius, et al). The second was "The only record of this story at all is the gospels themselves," but I noted that Josephus mentioned it.
Futher, you're lying that I simply responded to ANY facts or actual arguments you offered with 'simply "false."' Not a one. I did that only to your claim that the atheists were not belittling to others and that I am being unfair in judging them harshly. Neither of these is a fact, or an actual argument: they are mere assertions of your opinion.
The only other thing I responded 'simply "false"' with was your claim, For this to be evidence you have to *assume* that Jesus Christ is a real historical figure and that the events surrounding his life as depicted in the Bible were true. But that is not a fact, it's an opinion; and further, I did back this up in the next paragraph.
If your lies are so transparent, why bother telling them?
You have a clear blindspot
Back at you.
In your head, you're using facts and I'm not.
Shrug. You were wrong in those two facts, and in most others. You asserted that I was not referring to "historians," that "historians" wouldn't back up what I said. I proved that false. You claimed that it can be "proven" that Gensis was not written by Moses; I said this was false, but, of course, I can't prove a negative: it's up to you to prove (but you cannot). You claimed that "most of the gospels were likely written after the deaths of their namesakes," when it is generally accepted that at least half of them were not, and scholars are split on the other half.
You continually take my facts, and respond with "false" or simply ignore them entirely.
Nope. I responded with ACTUAL facts, which you were incapable of rebutting, and there wasn't a single one I responded 'simply "false"' to. I know of no fact I ignored; if you bring it to my attention, I can consider it, but I went over your points pretty thoroughly.
Meanwhile, your facts consist of vague declarations about "scholars".
I was FAR less vague than YOU were with your similar assertions, so you're just criticizing yourself here.
In only ONE instance have you actually cited a single name
And in NONE did YOU cite a single name. Not that I mind, since I am familiar enough with the literature that I don't need names, and I am familiar enough with how fallacies work that I don't care who says what, but, rather, I care about what is said. But for you to attack me for not providing more than one name, when you've provided none, is transparently hypocritical.
The third, valid response to your argument's is simply to point out that they are entirely tangential to anything of substance.
False.
This discussion was never, or was never meant to be, an argument over religion. You continue to try to draw it in that direction
False. I did no such thing. I discussed the historicity of the New Testament with you, and not religion. You're the one who kept conflating the two, such as with your (proven) ignorant statement about the "historians" versus "bible scholars."
and I simply am not interested.
Shrug. Blame yourself. I answered the questions you asked, and addressed the points you brought up,. and rebutted the "facts" you cited.
From every point of view of which I can conceive, offering to trade porn for bibles, does not count as "belittling people".
So? Why do you think this has anything to do with what I have said? Think a little bit more, please. Do yourself,
I can not stress enough that math contains no "reason" or "reasoning" or "logic"
Stress all you like, but you're wrong. That is literally ALL that math IS.
So the god that existed forever and a few thousand years ago created space and time is incapable of altering the fundamental structure of numbers (that she created)?
There's no "structure" to numbers. It's a universal and unalterable principle. If you have two of something, and then you have two more, you now have four. The symbols we use are, of course, irrelevant: these are simply universal and unalterable principles.
Perfect. Now of course the problem is you only have their word to go on. Reasonable?
Nope. I -- of course -- have MUCH more than their word to go on. Think about it a bit more. I have context, in all sorts of ways: history, tradition, current scientific knowledge, what I know about the person making the claim, and much more.
"By far, more murders were committed by explicitly atheistic regimes than religious ones in the 20th century"
Could you please expand on that? Are you referring to military, or something smaller in scope? I'm trying to identify if religion (or lack of) has anything to do with it...
I am referring to the mass murders by the regimes of the USSR and China, responsible for somewhere between 75 million and 100 million human deaths combined.
I would say atheism played a role in two ways: first, in that because atheism is itself an ideology, these fascist regimes were set on wiping out any ideologies that posed a threat. This is not unique to atheism, of course, but it's distinctly different from having a regime that has no ideology.
Second, in that because it was an atheist regime, as opposed to an explicitly pacifist ideology (such as some branches of Christianity or Buddhism, for example), there was no restraining factor within the ideology itself. But again, this is not unique to atheism.
While it is certainly wrong (given a linear numbering system) I don't see how there is any reason involved in it a all.
It's all reason. That is literally all it is. The question of what 2+2 is, and is not, is entirely about reason.
you are dodging the question
Absolutely not. If you want a more specific answer, you should ask a more specific question. I really have no idea what you're trying to get at.
I am asking for an example of an explanation for something that you would consider unreasonable given the context of the supernatural as reasonable.
I did not presume you meant in the context of the supernatural. Fine: one example an unreasonable view would be something that is literally impossible, such as a god that can make 2+2=5.
For example, one of your employees calls out because they have been abducted by aliens, from their car, on the freeway. Reasonable?
If it really happened, then of course it's reasonable. I hope you're not saying it's not possible.
However, of course, if it didn't happen, or if there's no reason to believe it did, then it's most likely not reasonable.
If a dictionaries isn't an authoritative sources for the definitions of words, what is?
There isn't any. That's now how language works. Dictionaries describe usage; they do not prescribe usage. Definitions change as the culture changes them, and dictionaries cannot be used to tell anyone that a definition is wrong.
A GOOD dictionary -- and they are few -- can tell people that a definition is standard or nonstandard, but not that it is wrong.
Sorry, I wasn't looking for clarification of your quoted statement. I was looking for another example. That is, given the belief in god is reasonable, what, if anything, can be considered unreasonable?
Why do you need ANOTHER example? Shrug. Fine: a belief that 2+2=5 is unreasonable.
Proof that a story survived does not mean that it is accurate.
I will reword your sentence to make it more obviously relevant to the discussion: Proof that a story survived [is not proof] that it is accurate
This is true. But we're not talking about proof, we're talking about evidence.
First of all people would need know of these events to be able to deny them.
There's no question the events were widely known.
At the time few people could read let alone write.
That argument has absolutely no relevance to this discussion.
I'd respond to your other statements but you provide absolutely no supporting evidence for most if not all your claims.
Shrug. All of them have evidence. I could write a book, or just point you to books. If you have a question on any of these obviously well-supported claims, ask it.
On the whole I find the whole thing terribly amusing. I spent most of my childhood with Christians attempting "convert" or force me into accepting their belief system.
I don't care. It has nothing to do with this discussion.
They don't seem to like it much when someone else rocks the boat the other way.
I don't like it when people, of whatever philosophy, are obnoxious... especially when they presume themselves superior while making a point of their ignorance.
You clearly have your own beliefs and they are clearly not what I would consider to be based on solid intellectual footing.
... and you can't back that up with arguments based on, you know, intellectual footing.
You clearly have confused, quite intentionally because it suits you, "biblical scholars" with "historians".
OK. So in your opnion, Sir Frederic Kenyon, the former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, is not a historian.
Again: you don't know what you are talking about. You could say Kenyon is biased, but you can't say he isn't a historian; that said, so what if they are biased? What matters is the arguments they make and the evidence they have, which is extremely strong. Indeed, nothing I've asserted is even controversial among most scholars: it's merely the analysis of the facts that is at issue most of the time.
They have created bodies of work which you have decided are credible despite very thin actual evidence supporting them.
Far from it. You simply don't know what you're talking about, which frees you to pretend that there's no actual evidence. You don't address my points because you're both incapable of doing so, and because if you try, I'll provide all the evidence necessary to prove you wrong.
For starters, I don't know where you got the "99% pure" idea from.
The aforementioned Sir Kenyon. Actually, he said 99.9%. Other scholars have said that, at worst, it is 98.33% pure.
But even if that were the case, apocryphal merely means we don't know who *actually* wrote it.
Just for clarification, there's several definitions. You're using one of the minor ones. In talk of the Bible, "apocryphal" means something else entirely: books that are not canonical. You certainly didn't mean that since we are discussing the canon, so I guessed you were using the -- by far -- most relevant definition to this discussion, whether the books we have today are authentic.
Frankly, the authorship of most of the Bible is irrelevant, except for some of the letters, especially those from Paul, but also a few others. So I didn't guess that was your point, since it's mostly an uninteresting point in this context.
That said, for most of the Bible, we know better who wrote it than we do who wrote ANY OTHER book from antiquity.
Authorship on most books of the Bible has been traditionally ascribed to specific individuals who in many cases we know for a fact did NOT write those books.
For the New Testament, which is the direct context here since we're talking about Christ and so on, the overwhelming evidence is in favor of the traditional authorship attributions. And where it's not known with very high certainty, we don't pretend we know (such as with the book of Hebrews).
For instance, Moses did not write Genesis -- that can be proven.
False. Again, you don't know what you are talking about. It's true he didn't likely write the actual text we have today, but that's irrelevant, since at the time, the books were not written down, but passed down orally. But even if you are right that he didn't write it, in fact, you can't prove it.
Even most of the gospels were likely written after the deaths of their namesakes.
False. You're making that up. Luke was almost certainly written by Luke, and there's no evidence to suggest Mark was not written by Mark. There's some healthy skepticism about the authorship of Matthew and John, but there's little-to-no theological significance to the authorship of either, so it's irrelevant.
At any rate, the atheists in this story are not being particularly obnoxious
For this to be evidence you have to *assume* that Jesus Christ is a real historical figure and that the events surrounding his life as depicted in the Bible were true.
False.
These 2 things alone are huge leaps of faith.
Not remotely. We have historically significant extrabiblical evidence that Jesus was a real historical figure; in fact, almost no scholar of any stripe denies that he existed, and that he was crucified for professing to be the Messiah.
And as to whether the events were true... that is completely irrelevant to the point here. It's about what is attested to, and how well, and whether people believed it, and so on, that matters.
How do you know there were 500 people present at the time of his resurrection? Because the bible tells you so?
I explained this to you in the previous comment.
The Romans kept great records, and we don't have any roman records of Jesus -- his execution or otherwise.
Jewish historian Josephus mentioned Jesus, as did the Roman historians Pliny the Younger, Tactius, and Suetonius.
The only record of this story at all is the gospels themselves.
Josephus, in fact, explicitly referenced the Christian belief of Jesus' resurrection. (You made reference -- I presume, from the context -- to the belief that Josephus' words were altered later, but you ignore the mainstream scholars' view of what those original words were, which explicitly referenced the belief of Christians that Jesus rose from the dead, before any supposed alterations.)
If this were a court of law...
History is not a court of law. By a court of law, almost everything before the last thousands years would be inadmissable as evidence. You're giving a nonsensical argument.
anecdotes of apocryphal origin are simply not *compelling* as evidence in a rational setting
You are saying the Bible is of apocryphal origin? Really? Maybe you don't know what "apocryphal" means? There is no book from antiquity that has less questionable authenticity than the New Testament. All serious scholars agree that the New Testament, in its current form that we have today, is better than 99 percent pure (compared to its original writing). We have complete copies of the New Testament dating from just a couple hundred years of their original writing, which by antiquity standards is extremely strong, not to mention thousands of copies over hundreds of years that have remarkably strong agreement with the oldest copies.
If the Bible is not admissable as evidence, then no book from antiquity is.
I'm not posting here to try to dissuade you from your own beliefs. I'm perfectly happy for you...
I honestly couldn't care less what you are posting for, or what makes you happy. No offense.
However, you have to understand that there are quite a few people in the world who are *not* happy to allow people to believe as they see fit and make it their mission to harass, belittle, and persecute those who do not share their beliefs.
Yes, and some of those people are atheists, such as the ones in question in this story.
I love watching fanatics argue, each pointing out the (potential) flaws in the others logic while failing to recognize the (potential) flaws in their own logic.
Of course, you are incapable of pointing out those supposed flaws.
this is their way of trying to draw attention to one *specific* argument against it
Yes, a straw man argument.
I think the point was "The bible has smutty content, but everybody has a blind spot for it."
Almost everyone recognizes a difference between adult content and porn. Only a fool would seriously try to equate the two. The latter is explicitly to facilitate sexual arousal. That is why it exists. No part of the Bible has this as its goal (not even Song of Solomon).
I don't think atheists really even "hate" the bible
Not all do, surely. Many, many do.
I think they just hate the way it's shoved in their face all the time by people who mostly have no clue as to 80% of it's content
So it's better for THEM to shove THEIR equally ignorant views about the Bible in THEIR faces? Yawn.
If you wanted to make a *faithful* movie version of all the Bible's content, you'd get, at best, an "R" rating
Yes, of course. So? No one ever said the Bible was a children's story. It's about humanity and all of its flaws, which is an obviously very adult subject. "The Passion of the Christ," which was a very good movie, was rated R. And I have no problem with that, nor does anyone else I know.
It is sort of shocking that people let their children read it . ..
Not at all. Again, you're pretending that porn and adult content are the same thing, or that movies and books are the same thing. Or both. A book explaining that David had sex with Bathsheba or that Adam walked around with his ding-dong hanging down (apologies to JoCo) is wildly different for many people -- and almost all kids -- than a movie that graphically depicts them.
Again, "The Passion of the Christ" was a very realistic portrayal, and as such, was rated R. But this is very different from reading a book that describes -- without graphic detail -- the same events, which easily could be rated PG.
Name one Christian doctrine that is "backed up by evidence."
I mentioned several in the other comments in this thread. One example: Jesus was witnessed by 500 people post-resurrection, and many of those people were alive when the gospels were written, and could have -- but didn't apparently, as there's no record of it -- denied that the gospels were accurate reflections of what they saw.
Is this proof? Nope. Evidence? Of course.
Isn't the idea of "evidence" sort of anathema to the very idea of "faith"? If you have evidence, then there's no need for faith.
Absolutely not. It's a very common misconception (mostly among people who don't have faith), but it is completely wrong. Faith is related to lack of PROOF, not lack of EVIDENCE. Indeed, the New Testament is filled with examples of people believing, and having faith, as the result of evidence. Paul talked often about proving himself to the churches he wrote letters to, and about the churches testing him and others based on the evidence before them.
Please keep in mind that the Bible is evidence of anything by itself . ..
Also false. That's like saying that I can't argue my own case before a court of law. Granted, external evidence is helpful, but I can make arguments in my favor apart from external evidence, and those arguments are, themselves, evidence.
God intends the Christian believe to be a very personal expeience and therefore you can't really win any heart and soul though arguments of religious doctorine
I never attempted to. I did not offer a single argument that the Bible is true. My goal was never to bring anyone to Christ, directly, through anything I said. I have a completely different goal here: to defend the reasonableness of Christianity, not to prove Christianity.
This is important for many reasons. For starters, it helps existing Christians who are struggling in their faith, but it also opens the door for non-Christians who may have been fooled into believing that Christianity is irrational.
No one is going to change their position
In a good debate or discussion, no one SHOULD change their position. The point is to be able to see things differently, not to change your mind. Changing your mind comes later after reflection and internalization.
except everyone are more pissed-off after the arguments
Good. People who get pissed off by what I say are either going to think twice the next time they try to spout their lies, or they are going to think twice about what was actually said and maybe grow to accept that Christianity is not as irrational as they thought.
we lose our ears to listen to conerns truely worthy of our time
I can think of nothing more worthy than defending the reasonableness of the Gospel. Can you?
slashdot is probaly not the best channel to discuss religion in general
Every place is the best place to discuss religion.
False. You obviously don't know anything about the Bible.
as a guide for living just look at the results of the Conservative Right.
You make an obviously fallacious argument there on several levels. King David was a man after God's own heart, and he murdered a man to steal his wife (whom he had adultery with). You really think that the Bible is intended to actually make people good, when King David himself did such things? You obviously don't know anything about the Bible.
Sex is the fundamental Human Act without it we get no more humans.
And neither the Bible, nor the Conservative Right, looks down on sex at all. You obviously don't know anything about the Bible.
We need vastly more sex and far less murder on TV
You're being completely illogical. Because sex is a fundamental human act... therefore we need to have it on TV? How does that make ANY sense? It is because sex is placed so HIGHLY and RESPECTED so much by many Christians, that they don't want it displayed in public. It is that casual public display of sex that degrades sex, in the minds of most people. I doubt you have any cogent argument that most people are wrong about this.
Porn is the ultimate free market product.
No one cares, because it has nothing to do with the argument. You could also make the argument that murder-for-hire is the ultimate free market product, using your exact same argument.
I think Porn Stars are sexual athletes and should be allowed into the Olympics
If you really believe this, then you're an idiot. Shrug.
Trade your Bibles in, get some porn, your spouse and a bottle of red wine and enjoy what God gave you!
What does porn have to do with that equation? Unless you can't get it up without porn... ?
An argument is not a strawman just because you believe it to be false.
Correct. A straw man is something completely different. It is not about whether the argument is false, but whether the argument is falsely attributed to someone. In this case, the graphic falsely attributed the view to religion that all outside evidence should be ignored. It's a textbook strawman argument.
Try reading a web site on logical fallacies to familiarize yourself with them. HTH! HAND!
It seems to me that most of the above is believed by the vast majority of Christians with no other evidence than "if it's written in the Bible then it has to be true".
Evidence does not have to be extrabiblical to be valid evidence. In the same way, the accused is allowed to plead his own case in court. I am not sure if you think otherwise, but just to clarify this up front.
As such, there's a difference between "it's written in the Bible" and "it's argued convincingly in the Bible." You seem to lump it all into the former, when often, it's the latter. Note that "evidence" obviously includes good philosophical argument.
Now, I am going to up front dispense up front with the notion that anything in Christianity is "not subject to examination." Everything is. Period. No exceptions.
As to the evidence:
The Trinity.
This is argued convincingly by Paul and others, and demonstrated through more ancient texts by Matthew and others, showing that the prophecies have been made manifest in Jesus Christ. Yes, Jesus prayed to himself, in the form of God the Father. When God became flesh, he emptied himself of many of his attributes (such as ominpotence and omniscience), and could not rely on his own power as man... just as we cannot (which is the whole point).
The difference between the Father and the Holy Spirit is simple and obvious: the Father -- who is the God we mostly see in the Old Testament -- is not one we can commune with directly. Just as Jesus came to Earth as a man to relate to us physically, the Holy Spirit dwells within us to relate to our spirits.
My point all along has not been that there is scientific proof of any of this, but that the Bible does not ask us to simply believe it: rather, it presents a case and asks us to examine it.
The death and resurrection of Jesus, and his ascension to heaven.
This has significant evidence for it, perhaps the most well-attested to evidence of any event in the New Testament. The text itself makes the case. Note that the first three gospels (plus Acts) were written while most of the people who witnessed the events -- including Jesus' appearance to 500 people after his resurrection -- and if there was a significant question about whether it happened, it's very unlikely that the gospels would have survived, as the 500 people would have raised questions about the accounts.
That's not to say it really happened, of course, but they certainly believed what they saw was the risen Christ. Not proof, but evidence.
Similarly, many of Jesus' disciples were martyred. Why would they give their lives preaching that Jesus was God, died and was raised from the dead, if they didn't believe it? And they were, apparently, there to see him raised from the dead.
Again: it's not that it happened, but that these are historical figures who almost surely had firsthand knowledge, who believed that it happened.
Christ's second coming and the Day of Judgement.
Obviously, this is prophecy, and hasn't happened yet. But -- obviously -- if everything else in the Bible is true, that in itself is evidence that future prophecies are true.
Even though if he already appeared several times to his disciples, that wouldn't be his second coming but his sixth or more.
To say so seems like you are being deliberately obtuse. I hope not. But obviously the reference to "second coming" is in the fact that he has come to Earth once, that he went back to heaven (as described , and that he will return a second time. It's not about numbers of appearances.
The concept of heaven and hell
The Bible doesn't actually describe hell as a place, except through analogy. Hell is described as "eternal death," where "death" means "separ
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit.
False.
You're giving attention and ad revenue to a political operative.
Bullshit.
of course, there IS something wrong with jumping to conclusions based upon incomplete data.
I wasn't jumping to conclusions.
And you know just as well as I do that the article at breitbart is intended to lead people who like to jump to conclusions that support their politics.
You mean the ASSOCIATED PRESS article at Breitbart?
The original article does have some additional data, for example, in addition to the "deliverative process" exemption going up to 70,779 from 47,395, total exemptions also went up, to 466,872 from 312,683. Most damning, though, seems to be that total requests went DOWN, from 493,610 to 444,924, which means that they cited more exemptions than they actually received information requests (I wonder if that's ever happened before).
Totally agreed. That it is from breitbart is utterly irrelevant. And the raw number is not too interesting unless you know the number of requests, and probably the specific agencies (and topics) the requests were for. Though while, yes, more years will reveal better data, there's nothing wrong with looking at it in-progress.
Just one more word for now:
You're the one who is having a hard time here.
There's really only three responses for you to have.
One is that you are wrong and I am right.
Another is to actually back up your points instead of lying about what both of us say.
The last is to bow out gracefully, saying you would just prefer not to have the discussion.
Instead, you do the opposite of all of these: you continue to assert I am wrong, while not backing up ANY of your points, and lying about what both of us have said, and then instead of bowing out you continue to argue, while inventing bullshit reasons why you're bowing out, which you aren't doing.
Seriously, grow a pair.
What you describe is antitheism, not atheism
False.
The first 2 posts I gave you plenty of good facts and actual arguments and your response was simply "false".
You're lying. For example, the first "fact" you cited was "we don't have any roman records of Jesus." This was proven false (Tactius, et al). The second was "The only record of this story at all is the gospels themselves," but I noted that Josephus mentioned it.
Futher, you're lying that I simply responded to ANY facts or actual arguments you offered with 'simply "false."' Not a one. I did that only to your claim that the atheists were not belittling to others and that I am being unfair in judging them harshly. Neither of these is a fact, or an actual argument: they are mere assertions of your opinion.
The only other thing I responded 'simply "false"' with was your claim, For this to be evidence you have to *assume* that Jesus Christ is a real historical figure and that the events surrounding his life as depicted in the Bible were true. But that is not a fact, it's an opinion; and further, I did back this up in the next paragraph.
If your lies are so transparent, why bother telling them?
You have a clear blindspot
Back at you.
In your head, you're using facts and I'm not.
Shrug. You were wrong in those two facts, and in most others. You asserted that I was not referring to "historians," that "historians" wouldn't back up what I said. I proved that false. You claimed that it can be "proven" that Gensis was not written by Moses; I said this was false, but, of course, I can't prove a negative: it's up to you to prove (but you cannot). You claimed that "most of the gospels were likely written after the deaths of their namesakes," when it is generally accepted that at least half of them were not, and scholars are split on the other half.
You continually take my facts, and respond with "false" or simply ignore them entirely.
Nope. I responded with ACTUAL facts, which you were incapable of rebutting, and there wasn't a single one I responded 'simply "false"' to. I know of no fact I ignored; if you bring it to my attention, I can consider it, but I went over your points pretty thoroughly.
Meanwhile, your facts consist of vague declarations about "scholars".
I was FAR less vague than YOU were with your similar assertions, so you're just criticizing yourself here.
In only ONE instance have you actually cited a single name
And in NONE did YOU cite a single name. Not that I mind, since I am familiar enough with the literature that I don't need names, and I am familiar enough with how fallacies work that I don't care who says what, but, rather, I care about what is said. But for you to attack me for not providing more than one name, when you've provided none, is transparently hypocritical.
The third, valid response to your argument's is simply to point out that they are entirely tangential to anything of substance.
False.
This discussion was never, or was never meant to be, an argument over religion. You continue to try to draw it in that direction
False. I did no such thing. I discussed the historicity of the New Testament with you, and not religion. You're the one who kept conflating the two, such as with your (proven) ignorant statement about the "historians" versus "bible scholars."
and I simply am not interested.
Shrug. Blame yourself. I answered the questions you asked, and addressed the points you brought up,. and rebutted the "facts" you cited.
From every point of view of which I can conceive, offering to trade porn for bibles, does not count as "belittling people".
So? Why do you think this has anything to do with what I have said? Think a little bit more, please. Do yourself,
I can not stress enough that math contains no "reason" or "reasoning" or "logic"
Stress all you like, but you're wrong. That is literally ALL that math IS.
So the god that existed forever and a few thousand years ago created space and time is incapable of altering the fundamental structure of numbers (that she created)?
There's no "structure" to numbers. It's a universal and unalterable principle. If you have two of something, and then you have two more, you now have four. The symbols we use are, of course, irrelevant: these are simply universal and unalterable principles.
You're free to disagree, but I doubt you're going to solve the problem of universals here.
Perfect. Now of course the problem is you only have their word to go on. Reasonable?
Nope. I -- of course -- have MUCH more than their word to go on. Think about it a bit more. I have context, in all sorts of ways: history, tradition, current scientific knowledge, what I know about the person making the claim, and much more.
Btw. this one statement caught my eye...
"By far, more murders were committed by explicitly atheistic regimes than religious ones in the 20th century"
Could you please expand on that? Are you referring to military, or something smaller in scope? I'm trying to identify if religion (or lack of) has anything to do with it...
I am referring to the mass murders by the regimes of the USSR and China, responsible for somewhere between 75 million and 100 million human deaths combined.
I would say atheism played a role in two ways: first, in that because atheism is itself an ideology, these fascist regimes were set on wiping out any ideologies that posed a threat. This is not unique to atheism, of course, but it's distinctly different from having a regime that has no ideology.
Second, in that because it was an atheist regime, as opposed to an explicitly pacifist ideology (such as some branches of Christianity or Buddhism, for example), there was no restraining factor within the ideology itself. But again, this is not unique to atheism.
While it is certainly wrong (given a linear numbering system) I don't see how there is any reason involved in it a all.
It's all reason. That is literally all it is. The question of what 2+2 is, and is not, is entirely about reason.
you are dodging the question
Absolutely not. If you want a more specific answer, you should ask a more specific question. I really have no idea what you're trying to get at.
I am asking for an example of an explanation for something that you would consider unreasonable given the context of the supernatural as reasonable.
I did not presume you meant in the context of the supernatural. Fine: one example an unreasonable view would be something that is literally impossible, such as a god that can make 2+2=5.
For example, one of your employees calls out because they have been abducted by aliens, from their car, on the freeway. Reasonable?
If it really happened, then of course it's reasonable. I hope you're not saying it's not possible.
However, of course, if it didn't happen, or if there's no reason to believe it did, then it's most likely not reasonable.
...You're an idiot.
Shrug. You're the one who doesn't understand how language works.
If a dictionaries isn't an authoritative sources for the definitions of words, what is?
There isn't any. That's now how language works. Dictionaries describe usage; they do not prescribe usage. Definitions change as the culture changes them, and dictionaries cannot be used to tell anyone that a definition is wrong.
A GOOD dictionary -- and they are few -- can tell people that a definition is standard or nonstandard, but not that it is wrong.
Sorry, I wasn't looking for clarification of your quoted statement. I was looking for another example. That is, given the belief in god is reasonable, what, if anything, can be considered unreasonable?
Why do you need ANOTHER example? Shrug. Fine: a belief that 2+2=5 is unreasonable.
Proof that a story survived does not mean that it is accurate.
I will reword your sentence to make it more obviously relevant to the discussion: Proof that a story survived [is not proof] that it is accurate
This is true. But we're not talking about proof, we're talking about evidence.
First of all people would need know of these events to be able to deny them.
There's no question the events were widely known.
At the time few people could read let alone write.
That argument has absolutely no relevance to this discussion.
I'd respond to your other statements but you provide absolutely no supporting evidence for most if not all your claims.
Shrug. All of them have evidence. I could write a book, or just point you to books. If you have a question on any of these obviously well-supported claims, ask it.
On the whole I find the whole thing terribly amusing. I spent most of my childhood with Christians attempting "convert" or force me into accepting their belief system.
I don't care. It has nothing to do with this discussion.
They don't seem to like it much when someone else rocks the boat the other way.
I don't like it when people, of whatever philosophy, are obnoxious ... especially when they presume themselves superior while making a point of their ignorance.
I could go point by point in my response
... and I'd rebut each of your points once again.
You clearly have your own beliefs and they are clearly not what I would consider to be based on solid intellectual footing.
... and you can't back that up with arguments based on, you know, intellectual footing.
You clearly have confused, quite intentionally because it suits you, "biblical scholars" with "historians".
OK. So in your opnion, Sir Frederic Kenyon, the former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, is not a historian.
Again: you don't know what you are talking about. You could say Kenyon is biased, but you can't say he isn't a historian; that said, so what if they are biased? What matters is the arguments they make and the evidence they have, which is extremely strong. Indeed, nothing I've asserted is even controversial among most scholars: it's merely the analysis of the facts that is at issue most of the time.
They have created bodies of work which you have decided are credible despite very thin actual evidence supporting them.
Far from it. You simply don't know what you're talking about, which frees you to pretend that there's no actual evidence. You don't address my points because you're both incapable of doing so, and because if you try, I'll provide all the evidence necessary to prove you wrong.
For starters, I don't know where you got the "99% pure" idea from.
The aforementioned Sir Kenyon. Actually, he said 99.9%. Other scholars have said that, at worst, it is 98.33% pure.
But even if that were the case, apocryphal merely means we don't know who *actually* wrote it.
Just for clarification, there's several definitions. You're using one of the minor ones. In talk of the Bible, "apocryphal" means something else entirely: books that are not canonical. You certainly didn't mean that since we are discussing the canon, so I guessed you were using the -- by far -- most relevant definition to this discussion, whether the books we have today are authentic.
Frankly, the authorship of most of the Bible is irrelevant, except for some of the letters, especially those from Paul, but also a few others. So I didn't guess that was your point, since it's mostly an uninteresting point in this context.
That said, for most of the Bible, we know better who wrote it than we do who wrote ANY OTHER book from antiquity.
Authorship on most books of the Bible has been traditionally ascribed to specific individuals who in many cases we know for a fact did NOT write those books.
For the New Testament, which is the direct context here since we're talking about Christ and so on, the overwhelming evidence is in favor of the traditional authorship attributions. And where it's not known with very high certainty, we don't pretend we know (such as with the book of Hebrews).
For instance, Moses did not write Genesis -- that can be proven.
False. Again, you don't know what you are talking about. It's true he didn't likely write the actual text we have today, but that's irrelevant, since at the time, the books were not written down, but passed down orally. But even if you are right that he didn't write it, in fact, you can't prove it.
Even most of the gospels were likely written after the deaths of their namesakes.
False. You're making that up. Luke was almost certainly written by Luke, and there's no evidence to suggest Mark was not written by Mark. There's some healthy skepticism about the authorship of Matthew and John, but there's little-to-no theological significance to the authorship of either, so it's irrelevant.
At any rate, the atheists in this story are not being particularly obnoxious
For this to be evidence you have to *assume* that Jesus Christ is a real historical figure and that the events surrounding his life as depicted in the Bible were true.
False.
These 2 things alone are huge leaps of faith.
Not remotely. We have historically significant extrabiblical evidence that Jesus was a real historical figure; in fact, almost no scholar of any stripe denies that he existed, and that he was crucified for professing to be the Messiah.
And as to whether the events were true ... that is completely irrelevant to the point here. It's about what is attested to, and how well, and whether people believed it, and so on, that matters.
How do you know there were 500 people present at the time of his resurrection? Because the bible tells you so?
I explained this to you in the previous comment.
The Romans kept great records, and we don't have any roman records of Jesus -- his execution or otherwise.
Jewish historian Josephus mentioned Jesus, as did the Roman historians Pliny the Younger, Tactius, and Suetonius.
The only record of this story at all is the gospels themselves.
Josephus, in fact, explicitly referenced the Christian belief of Jesus' resurrection. (You made reference -- I presume, from the context -- to the belief that Josephus' words were altered later, but you ignore the mainstream scholars' view of what those original words were, which explicitly referenced the belief of Christians that Jesus rose from the dead, before any supposed alterations.)
If this were a court of law ...
History is not a court of law. By a court of law, almost everything before the last thousands years would be inadmissable as evidence. You're giving a nonsensical argument.
anecdotes of apocryphal origin are simply not *compelling* as evidence in a rational setting
You are saying the Bible is of apocryphal origin? Really? Maybe you don't know what "apocryphal" means? There is no book from antiquity that has less questionable authenticity than the New Testament. All serious scholars agree that the New Testament, in its current form that we have today, is better than 99 percent pure (compared to its original writing). We have complete copies of the New Testament dating from just a couple hundred years of their original writing, which by antiquity standards is extremely strong, not to mention thousands of copies over hundreds of years that have remarkably strong agreement with the oldest copies.
If the Bible is not admissable as evidence, then no book from antiquity is.
I'm not posting here to try to dissuade you from your own beliefs. I'm perfectly happy for you ...
I honestly couldn't care less what you are posting for, or what makes you happy. No offense.
However, you have to understand that there are quite a few people in the world who are *not* happy to allow people to believe as they see fit and make it their mission to harass, belittle, and persecute those who do not share their beliefs.
Yes, and some of those people are atheists, such as the ones in question in this story.
I love watching fanatics argue, each pointing out the (potential) flaws in the others logic while failing to recognize the (potential) flaws in their own logic.
Of course, you are incapable of pointing out those supposed flaws.
this is their way of trying to draw attention to one *specific* argument against it
Yes, a straw man argument.
I think the point was "The bible has smutty content, but everybody has a blind spot for it."
Almost everyone recognizes a difference between adult content and porn. Only a fool would seriously try to equate the two. The latter is explicitly to facilitate sexual arousal. That is why it exists. No part of the Bible has this as its goal (not even Song of Solomon).
I don't think atheists really even "hate" the bible
Not all do, surely. Many, many do.
I think they just hate the way it's shoved in their face all the time by people who mostly have no clue as to 80% of it's content
So it's better for THEM to shove THEIR equally ignorant views about the Bible in THEIR faces? Yawn.
If you wanted to make a *faithful* movie version of all the Bible's content, you'd get, at best, an "R" rating
Yes, of course. So? No one ever said the Bible was a children's story. It's about humanity and all of its flaws, which is an obviously very adult subject. "The Passion of the Christ," which was a very good movie, was rated R. And I have no problem with that, nor does anyone else I know.
It is sort of shocking that people let their children read it . . .
Not at all. Again, you're pretending that porn and adult content are the same thing, or that movies and books are the same thing. Or both. A book explaining that David had sex with Bathsheba or that Adam walked around with his ding-dong hanging down (apologies to JoCo) is wildly different for many people -- and almost all kids -- than a movie that graphically depicts them.
Again, "The Passion of the Christ" was a very realistic portrayal, and as such, was rated R. But this is very different from reading a book that describes -- without graphic detail -- the same events, which easily could be rated PG.
Name one Christian doctrine that is "backed up by evidence."
I mentioned several in the other comments in this thread. One example: Jesus was witnessed by 500 people post-resurrection, and many of those people were alive when the gospels were written, and could have -- but didn't apparently, as there's no record of it -- denied that the gospels were accurate reflections of what they saw.
Is this proof? Nope. Evidence? Of course.
Isn't the idea of "evidence" sort of anathema to the very idea of "faith"? If you have evidence, then there's no need for faith.
Absolutely not. It's a very common misconception (mostly among people who don't have faith), but it is completely wrong. Faith is related to lack of PROOF, not lack of EVIDENCE. Indeed, the New Testament is filled with examples of people believing, and having faith, as the result of evidence. Paul talked often about proving himself to the churches he wrote letters to, and about the churches testing him and others based on the evidence before them.
Please keep in mind that the Bible is evidence of anything by itself . . .
Also false. That's like saying that I can't argue my own case before a court of law. Granted, external evidence is helpful, but I can make arguments in my favor apart from external evidence, and those arguments are, themselves, evidence.
If we assume religion (did you mean just Christianity?) is reasonable
I was not asking anyone to assume anything, and I specified only Christianity. I did not exclude any religions, but I was only talking about the one.
what, in your opinion, is unreasonable
For starters: saying that a belief in God is irrational just because you believe God's existence is unlikely, is unreasonable.
God intends the Christian believe to be a very personal expeience and therefore you can't really win any heart and soul though arguments of religious doctorine
I never attempted to. I did not offer a single argument that the Bible is true. My goal was never to bring anyone to Christ, directly, through anything I said. I have a completely different goal here: to defend the reasonableness of Christianity, not to prove Christianity.
This is important for many reasons. For starters, it helps existing Christians who are struggling in their faith, but it also opens the door for non-Christians who may have been fooled into believing that Christianity is irrational.
No one is going to change their position
In a good debate or discussion, no one SHOULD change their position. The point is to be able to see things differently, not to change your mind. Changing your mind comes later after reflection and internalization.
except everyone are more pissed-off after the arguments
Good. People who get pissed off by what I say are either going to think twice the next time they try to spout their lies, or they are going to think twice about what was actually said and maybe grow to accept that Christianity is not as irrational as they thought.
we lose our ears to listen to conerns truely worthy of our time
I can think of nothing more worthy than defending the reasonableness of the Gospel. Can you?
slashdot is probaly not the best channel to discuss religion in general
Every place is the best place to discuss religion.
Linda Lovelace (Deep Throat) said ...
I don't care.
The Bible is shoddy poorly written history
False. You obviously don't know anything about the Bible.
as a guide for living just look at the results of the Conservative Right.
You make an obviously fallacious argument there on several levels. King David was a man after God's own heart, and he murdered a man to steal his wife (whom he had adultery with). You really think that the Bible is intended to actually make people good, when King David himself did such things? You obviously don't know anything about the Bible.
Sex is the fundamental Human Act without it we get no more humans.
And neither the Bible, nor the Conservative Right, looks down on sex at all. You obviously don't know anything about the Bible.
We need vastly more sex and far less murder on TV
You're being completely illogical. Because sex is a fundamental human act ... therefore we need to have it on TV? How does that make ANY sense? It is because sex is placed so HIGHLY and RESPECTED so much by many Christians, that they don't want it displayed in public. It is that casual public display of sex that degrades sex, in the minds of most people. I doubt you have any cogent argument that most people are wrong about this.
Porn is the ultimate free market product.
No one cares, because it has nothing to do with the argument. You could also make the argument that murder-for-hire is the ultimate free market product, using your exact same argument.
I think Porn Stars are sexual athletes and should be allowed into the Olympics
If you really believe this, then you're an idiot. Shrug.
Trade your Bibles in, get some porn, your spouse and a bottle of red wine and enjoy what God gave you!
What does porn have to do with that equation? Unless you can't get it up without porn ... ?
An argument is not a strawman just because you believe it to be false.
Correct. A straw man is something completely different. It is not about whether the argument is false, but whether the argument is falsely attributed to someone. In this case, the graphic falsely attributed the view to religion that all outside evidence should be ignored. It's a textbook strawman argument.
Try reading a web site on logical fallacies to familiarize yourself with them. HTH! HAND!
It seems to me that most of the above is believed by the vast majority of Christians with no other evidence than "if it's written in the Bible then it has to be true".
Evidence does not have to be extrabiblical to be valid evidence. In the same way, the accused is allowed to plead his own case in court. I am not sure if you think otherwise, but just to clarify this up front.
As such, there's a difference between "it's written in the Bible" and "it's argued convincingly in the Bible." You seem to lump it all into the former, when often, it's the latter. Note that "evidence" obviously includes good philosophical argument.
Now, I am going to up front dispense up front with the notion that anything in Christianity is "not subject to examination." Everything is. Period. No exceptions.
As to the evidence:
This is argued convincingly by Paul and others, and demonstrated through more ancient texts by Matthew and others, showing that the prophecies have been made manifest in Jesus Christ. Yes, Jesus prayed to himself, in the form of God the Father. When God became flesh, he emptied himself of many of his attributes (such as ominpotence and omniscience), and could not rely on his own power as man ... just as we cannot (which is the whole point).
The difference between the Father and the Holy Spirit is simple and obvious: the Father -- who is the God we mostly see in the Old Testament -- is not one we can commune with directly. Just as Jesus came to Earth as a man to relate to us physically, the Holy Spirit dwells within us to relate to our spirits.
My point all along has not been that there is scientific proof of any of this, but that the Bible does not ask us to simply believe it: rather, it presents a case and asks us to examine it.
This has significant evidence for it, perhaps the most well-attested to evidence of any event in the New Testament. The text itself makes the case. Note that the first three gospels (plus Acts) were written while most of the people who witnessed the events -- including Jesus' appearance to 500 people after his resurrection -- and if there was a significant question about whether it happened, it's very unlikely that the gospels would have survived, as the 500 people would have raised questions about the accounts.
That's not to say it really happened, of course, but they certainly believed what they saw was the risen Christ. Not proof, but evidence.
Similarly, many of Jesus' disciples were martyred. Why would they give their lives preaching that Jesus was God, died and was raised from the dead, if they didn't believe it? And they were, apparently, there to see him raised from the dead.
Again: it's not that it happened, but that these are historical figures who almost surely had firsthand knowledge, who believed that it happened.
Obviously, this is prophecy, and hasn't happened yet. But -- obviously -- if everything else in the Bible is true, that in itself is evidence that future prophecies are true.
Even though if he already appeared several times to his disciples, that wouldn't be his second coming but his sixth or more.
To say so seems like you are being deliberately obtuse. I hope not. But obviously the reference to "second coming" is in the fact that he has come to Earth once, that he went back to heaven (as described , and that he will return a second time. It's not about numbers of appearances.
The Bible doesn't actually describe hell as a place, except through analogy. Hell is described as "eternal death," where "death" means "separ
That just might confuse them.