Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

Nick Park wrote: »

I think the word 'probably' would have been a slight improvement. Of course it would still have left you open for criticism for saying something was probable based on zero evidence. But I guess we should be grateful for improvements, no matter how small.

A far more sensible thing to say would have been, "There are any number of hypotheses as to what could have happened. He could have had sunstroke, been drunk, or even have eaten bad mushrooms." I don't think anyone would have batted an eyelid at that - you're perfectly entitled to your beliefs.

But when you made a statement that could not be supported by a single shred of evidence, then you opened the door. I simply went through it.

That you did, now how about letting it go and moving on with the discussion .

orubiru wrote: »

I will apologise for saying that you claimed Paul encountered Christ. You did not claim that and you do not claim that so I am sorry. Sorry.

However, you should be clever enough to know that RikuoAmero was not claiming that Paul had eaten bad mushrooms. I, and everyone else, assumed it was just a joke and not a serious claim. You'd need to ask RikuoAmero about that but I saw it as not actually being a claim that Paul had eaten bad mushrooms.

You basically misinterpreted the post as a specific claim when the clear intention was to state that Paul was probably experiencing a natural phenomenon, not supernatural.

Thank you for the apology. Are you also withdrawing the accusation that I am "REALLY dishonest"?

This is now twice in quick succession that we see the same pattern.

1. Someone makes a silly statement.
2. I point out the silliness of the statement.
3. Nobody responds by saying that it was a joke, or that it was tongue in cheek. Instead the original claimant, supported by others, try to defend the statement.
4. I persist in pointing out that the statement is indeed silly.
5. Numerous attempts are made to change the subject, to make stereotypical statements about religious people in general, to accuse me of playing games or being dishonest or indulging in gross misrepresentation.
6. I persist in pointing out that the original statement was silly.
7. Eventually, when even a blind man can see that the statement was silly, someone now claims that the statement was a joke or was tongue in cheek. thereby inferring that I am the problem and that I lack a sense of humour.

Do you see why this pattern of behaviour does not help your cause?

Nick Park wrote: »

Thank you for the apology. Are you also withdrawing the accusation that I am "REALLY dishonest"?

This is now twice in quick succession that we see the same pattern.

1. Someone makes a silly statement.
2. I point out the silliness of the statement.
3. Nobody responds by saying that it was a joke, or that it was tongue in cheek. Instead the original claimant, supported by others, try to defend the statement.
4. I persist in pointing out that the statement is indeed silly.
5. Numerous attempts are made to change the subject, to make stereotypical statements about religious people in general, to accuse me of playing games or being dishonest or indulging in gross misrepresentation.
6. I persist in pointing out that the original statement was silly.
7. Eventually, when even a blind man can see that the statement was silly, someone now claims that the statement was a joke or was tongue in cheek. thereby inferring that I am the problem and that I lack a sense of humour.

Do you see why this pattern of behaviour does not help your cause?

Er no

1 - Someone makes a point about the flaws in Christian teaching. They don't bother making the statement a legal statement devoid of any and all possible interpretation.

2 - You figure out the least plausible interpretation that allows you to claim it is a "silly" statement. You then hammer on about that while completely ignore the actual point being made

3 - People send pages upon pages telling you that you are missing the point. You don't let go demanding that the person admit that your particular interpretation of what they said is unsupported.

Sounds about right?

If you spent half the time dealing with the points being raised rather than arguing over syntax and your supposed interpretation you might actually look like you have serious responses to these criticisms of Christian teaching.

As it stands it looks like you prefer to argue trivialities than defend your religion's teachings. That speaks volumes IMHO

TheLurker wrote: »

Er no

1 - Someone makes a point about the flaws in Christian teaching. They don't bother making the statement a legal statement devoid of any and all possible interpretation.

2 - You figure out the least plausible interpretation that allows you to claim it is a "silly" statement. You then hammer on about that while completely ignore the actual point being made

3 - People send pages upon pages telling you that you are missing the point. You don't let go demanding that the person admit that your particular interpretation of what they said is unsupported.

Sounds about right?

If you spent half the time dealing with the points being raised rather than arguing over syntax and your supposed interpretation you might actually look like you have serious responses to these criticisms of Christian teaching.

As it stands it looks like you prefer to argue trivialities than defend your religion's teachings. That speaks volumes IMHO

I'm still waiting for you to link to the post where I committed a gross misrepresentation by pointing out that a 4th Century religious text wasn't really relevance in discussing the historical value of a 1st Century text.

Or will we wait a couple of days and then someone will say you were only joking?

orubiru wrote: »

Sorry, maybe I am misunderstanding you.

My understanding of what you are saying is that we have 2 documents.

Document A was written at Location A in Year X.
Document B was written at Location B, also in Year X.

?

So your argument is that if Document A and Document B are very similar

Not just very similar.
Document A and document B textually replicate each other

orubiru wrote: »

then the event described in the documents surely happened?

I haven't got to discussing what the documents say. Yet.

orubiru wrote: »

BUT if Document A was written in Year X and Document B was written in Year X + 2 then we have a problem because there is no reason whyYthe document writer could not travel from A to B or no reason why the tale could not be passed on from person to person and no reason why a copy of the document couldnt be made and transported.

Now, if the dates were very specific then I would have no reason to doubt.

So, how specific are the dates on these two documents?

Let's consider some points and I refer again to logistical issues in the 1st century.

Few people can read/write. Scarcity of ink/papyrus. Issues around how the gospel account is communicated from the person with knowledge to the person writing the document/text/manuscript. All of this applies to the compilation of document A and document B.

Then include the geographic distance between where document A is being compiled and where document B is being compiled.

The sceptic might say that document A was compiled in year X ,while B was compiled in year X+2. And that B simply transcribed and replicated what had been written in A.

The counter argument to that would be : in order for B to be created, the transcriber would have to be aware of the existence of A.
And that B would have to be in possession of A, in order to transcribe and to compile document B
Likely?
Likely despite diverse locations hundreds of miles from one another?
Likely given that manuscripts were highly valuable documents and retention of manuscripts would be paramount (would an owner allow access to their prized document)?
Likely given that few people who could read/write manuscripts?

I don't know how specific the dating of ancient New Testament documents are. As I understand it, fragments that have been found are given a date range.

Nick Park wrote: »

I'm still waiting for you to link to the post where I committed a gross misrepresentation by pointing out that a 4th Century religious text wasn't really relevance in discussing the historical value of a 1st Century text.

Here

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94642017&postcount=1515

Historians do not work by lining up works based on how close they are to the events described and then assigning weight. A 400 year work could easy be considered as reliable than a 100 year old work if the 100 year old work was written by a propaganda group. The weight of a document is based on many factors other than the length of time to the period it describes.

This has been pointed out many times to you using contemporary examples of propaganda

Nick Park wrote: »

Nonsense. If someone's post really has been misunderstood then the answer is simple. That person should simply say, "Well, no, I didn't really mean that I have any basis for believing that Paul ate bad mushrooms. I really meant that there were a number of different hypotheses that could equally explain what happened."

That wouldn't be hard, would it? Everyone would accept that.

That just gives you license to purposefully mis-understand every post and then ask for a clarification. More derailing. So no actually that would be very disruptive.

An easier solution is you simply stop being a syntax Nazi and actually deal with the points being made.

Nick Park wrote: »

Just people having a reasonable conversation.

If you want a reasonable conversation how about you start with dealing with any of the dozen points people have been making rather than irrelevant nonsense?

Nick Park wrote: »

There's no misrepresentation there, gross or otherwise. We were discussing the respective merits of a 1st Century text, one that relied on earlier sources. We were comparing it with a 4th Century text, one that apparently utilised no earlier sources. It is perfectly correct to say that, all other things being equal, historians would attach more weight to the evidence of the 1st Century text when both purported to speak of events that occurred in the 1st Century.

"All other things being equal"? That is a nice edition to the discussion :rolleyes:

All things are never equal. Historians take into account a whole host of factors when assessing the historical weight of a document, and you never get to strip all these factors down to just one axis. There are far more differences between Luke and Philip than just the length of time between them. There are far more differences between Luke and say a Roman document.

Christian apologetics insist on just dealing with the axis of time, but real historians take a huge number of other factors into account.

orubiru wrote: »

The issue here is why do you folks need to insist that your Jesus mythology is real? Why is it important to insist that it really happened?

Are the teachings of Jesus invalidated if His miracles are just stories? I don't think so.

If the miracles attributed to Jesus did not happen, then the charge concerning Jesus divinity becomes unsupportable.

I'm not here to validate or justify my belief. I'm not even here to try to persuade you to belief.

What I am doing is pointing at some extra curricular facts about the compilation of the early texts. And suggesting, before dismissing something, that you think about how those early texts came in to being, and that perhaps this might, might, persuade you to look further at the basis of faith/belief.

RikuoAmero wrote: »

You're of the persuasion that what's talked about in those texts really did happen, it's true (to a greater or lesser extent). For you then, (unless somehow I'm making the worst mistake ever here), establishing the veracity of those texts equals establishing the veracity of the claim that Jesus is divine/the miracles did happen, which would mean validating your belief.
You can't avoid it. If you're going to try to argue on any level whatsoever in favour of the texts, this automatically means validating or justifying your belief.

I'm in two minds as to whether this point is actually not getting through or just being ignored.

You have to ALREADY be a Christian believer to find the arguments that the New Testament is accurate convincing, because the argument rests on appeals to the power of Christian faith and interpreting the actions of the early Christians in the most positive light.

This interpretation of the events is what happens after you become a Christian but want to convince yourself or others than there is rational support for this stuff.

If on the other hand you start from a neutral position then there is nothing in the New Testament that even hints at a truly supernatural event. It is exactly what you would expect from a piece of propaganda from a early cult, following all the common themes repeated across religions and cults. If it wasn't the basis for a large religion that still holds huge power in the world it would be consider boring and barely worth interest.

These discussions always take a similar route. First it is put forward that the actions of the early Christians speak to the truth of the beliefs, based on the notion that people wouldn't die for this belief if it wasn't true.

When it is pointed out that actually people die all the time for things that are not true or nonsense, the claim shifts to how the specific Christian claim is different to all other claims. Yes people might kill themselves for David Koresh or Jim Jones, but Jesus was making a different claim, so people wouldn't have died if it wasn't true. That is just straw clutching.

The whole argument rests less on any supposed historical veracity of the gospels (after all books written a few years after an event can be false, just look at the Bush administration's books on the Gulf Wars), and more on whether or not you believe Christians would only act a certain way.

And the people who believe Christians act only a certain way are other Christians who wish to see their own faith reflected in the actions of the early Christians.

So it is circular. If you are already a Christian the New Testament will easily add support to a position you already hold.

To everyone else there is nothing to suggest it is anything more than a piece of religious propaganda, one of literally thousands of such works.