When atheists go too far

philologos wrote: »

In brief. It's probably better if you don't lump all Christian opinion into one here.

True, apologies.

I'm thinking to the scholarship of Bruce Metzger who has come to the conclusion that only 0.4% of the New Testament is in doubt (I.E differ to other manuscripts - and even then most of the differences are repetitions of other authentic narratives in other Gospels e.g Mark 16 which is in doubt and Matthew 28 which isn't) and that given the number of manuscripts (40,000) we have in Greek and in Syriac it would be nigh on impossible for people to distort it and not get caught red handed on a simple comparison. It's widely regarded that the New Testament is more authentic than the works of Aristotle or Plato for this very reason.

That's fair enough, obviously I haven't read up much on the topic (hence the links to Wiki articles :P) so 'benefit of the doubt' and all that.

bastados wrote: »

Most atheists lack imagination...they live in a 2D universe...mines in 3D.

Atari Jaguar Vs. Wii?

There's no competition there.

bastados wrote: »

Most atheists lack imagination...

Generalise much?

sensibleken wrote: »

Theres actualy 4 dimensions.

Supposedly 10 or 11 actually.

philologos wrote: »

I've linked to some reasons I gave a few years ago and I will refine these in time.

Let us look at those reasons shall we?

philologos wrote:

1) Messianic prophesy

I am aware of no such thing. I am aware of people retrospectively cherry picking vague lyrical text from the bible and making suggestion that they fit past events. However I am aware people also do that with Nostradamus. If you have lyrical text that is vague enough you will always fit it to events, especially if you have enough events from which to draw from.

If you want to pick say one of the "prophesy" at a time however and adumbrate your reasoning as to how it was prophesy and why you think it was fulfilled, in such a way as to show it was not merely the connection of vague text to vague events then I am happy to work through them one at a time with you.

A challenge of course is to establish that you did not fall into one of the two big pitfalls people fall into while doing this which are:

1) The prophesy was not self fulfilling. After all if a text days "The messiah will ride into town on a donkey" then anyone who wants to pretend to be the messiah will of course make a point of riding into town on a donkey.

2) The text of part 2 was not written specifically to make it appear it fulfills part 1. There is a reason after all that people are not wowed by the fact that the prophesy made in book 1 of Lord of the Rings was later fulfilled in books 5 and 6.

philologos wrote:

2) Christian history does not make sense without a Resurrection event

I can think of many ways in which it would make sense. Not just one but many. For instance the people involved could have been deluded. The people involved could have been DOING the deluding. The people involved may have dispersed but history re-written to suggest they saw things they never claimed to, such as the walking dead. It is amazing for example that the line in the bible which tells us that the graves all opened and the dead walked the earth seems to have... despite it being an incredible event.... made very little ripple in the texts of the time at all.

philologos wrote:

If you cannot explain to me conclusively how all 11 disciples went through to the lengths that they did in a reasonable manner, then this will always give credence to something extraordinary having happened to bring these men to those lengths.

You ask however to explain why 11 disciples went through what they did if there was no ressurrection. I find that easy to explain. We have fanatics today who do monumentally unusual things for things the rest of us clearly see are erroneous or a lie. That people can get fanatical and delusional is hardly a surprise or something that needs to be explained.

That a man claiming to be a god would a) attract and b) even seek out such people is also hardly a surprise.

Also you want an explanation for a mere 11 people. Childs play. Explain to me the massive and CURRENT dedication to Sathya Sai Baba. He even claims to be born of a virgin. His followers can be just as dedicated and just as fanatical as your mere group of 11. He had a birthday and a million people showed up.

You act like finding 11 fanatics that believe your guff is some kind of miracle that requires explaining. To me it is common as muck. Go look at the "Ten Commandments of God" sect. They believed strongly enough, and were fanatical enough, to go into a hut with their family and burn the place down around them in a suicidal expression of their certainty.

And you want a mere 11 unhinged, fanatically dedicated people explained? You are engaged in comedy here.

philologos wrote:

3) Creation without a higher power does not make sense.

What has SENSE got to do with anything?

Many things do not make sense. Go to a pub next time and ask everyone there how tall they thing a news paper would be if they folded it 100 times. The highest answer I EVER got was "As high as this pub". Do the maths however and you find the actual answer is so tall that light itself would take 1000s of years to travel it's length.

The universe, compared to our ability to comprehend it, is MASSIVELY Complicated. Even the simplest things like folding a page 100 times does not make sense to us. The rigours of things like mathematics makes sense of it however.

That a simple idea makes more "sense" to your, or our, simple mind tells us nothing about whether there is a god or not. It tells us EVERYTHING about how simplistic our minds are... and how difficult it is for us to comprehend even the most established truths.

All you say when you say it makes sense, is that simple ideas make sense to YOU. This is not, I repeat NOT evidence that such a creator entity actually exists anywhere other than in your mind.

philologos wrote:

The probability of the world coming into existence

You have fallen for the "2 decks of cards" trick I am afraid. Probability has nothing to do with it because the number of worlds in our universe balances the probability of our one having come about.

Secondly the probability assumes that our world is the only kind that could support "life" at all. This is something we do not know to be true. In fact we know it NOT to be true in some ways because we have found life on our own planet in places we previously thought impossible, such as life working on a silicon basis and life working in the complete abscence of sunlight, but getting its energy from chemosynthesis instead.

The 2 decks trick is this. Get 2 decks of cards. Deal one out randomly. Now pretend that the result is "special" and try and get it again. The possibility of you having got THAT arrangement of 52 cards is so remote that you could keep trying with the 2nd deck for the rest of your life... and your off spring for the rest of their lives for many generations... likely will not get the same arrangement.

In fact work it out. The average calculator breaks down before the probability of even getting the 15th card correct. That is how big the probability is.

This is the danger of "retrospective probabilities" and of thinking "What are the chances it should have happened this way" without recognising a) the number of chances it did have TO work out that way and b) the number of other ways it could also have worked out.

philologos wrote:

4) Spiritual experiences

Anecdote is not evidence. How, for example, is the spiritual experience of someone who thinks there is a god any different, or more credible, than that of someone who thinks they were abducted by aliens or that they are Napolean reincarnated.

How do you even verify that the anecdote is not made up, let alone applicable?

In essence as evidence for something you have no evidence for.... you are presenting other things you ALSO have no evidence for. 0 + 0 = 0 I am afraid.

philologos wrote:

5) Historical sources for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth

Irrelevant. You were asked for evidence that god exists. Not that a man called Jesus existed. I am not sure what the evidence for Jesus existing is, but I do not doubt it is very likely. Even if a person with such a name was real, this says nothing about whether a god exists. In fact there are many people in Spain right now that exist and are called Jesus.

philologos wrote:

6) Archaeology, Geology and History backing up the Bible. 7) Authenticity of the Bible

These two are essentially that same. This is the one that makes me laugh the most, the hardest and the longest when I hear it. Most Fiction is set against real world events, places and people. This is just how fiction works!

2000 years from now for example there will be Archaeology, Geology and History backing up the Bourne Identity. The reason for this is that although the Bourne Identity is fiction, the cities in it, the political occurrences within it, the politicians named there in, the companies by which Jason Bourne traveled from place to place, the products he ate and drank…. They were all real and existed.

Fiction is almost always set against reality, so you will ALWAYS find Archaeology, Geology and History backing up the contents. This is, again, how fiction works.

So showing that a number of places, events and people in the bible are real in NO WAY suggests that the entire story is real and that there fore god exists or Jesus had magical powers.

So really your 7 reasons are not just lacking, but POWERFULLY lacking.

sensibleken wrote: »

Theres actualy 4 dimensions.

I was speaking in a metaphorical sense and not literal..and actually you cant prove most dimensions exists..I did a years theory in college on the same subject.

Most atheists I know are dull people lacking any real intellectual or instinctual depth. Granted religion doesn't offer any real answers to anything relative in this day and age but if you're looking for answers you'll find them . Dawkins talks about religious cowardice while espousing a faithless bravery..its just ridiculous..plays havoc with my sensibilities as on a fundamental level our subjective reality is in itself a belief system that ties us to our being in the world.

look as an atheist you can look at the world and pronounce it death but I have never seen so much life and if you think in some bizarre way that life somehow discontinues because our bodies die then you really havent seen the world at all...again speaking in a heavily metaphoric sense.

Seachmall wrote: »

Also, you have not been to college.

idiot

MagicMarker wrote: »

Hey, that was his point!!

he could do with some viagra if thats the case

NTMK wrote: »

heres an explaination on the different dimensions
<YOUTUBE>uY_ZgAvXsuw</YOUTUBE>

In all honesty as explanations go that's pretty poor and somewhat misleading. Artistically good maybe.