djorno
Sophomore
@djorno
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Post by djorno on Jun 25, 2023 22:59:30 GMT
“So what if the Bible accurately features historical places. New York City is depicted in the Spider-man movies, doesn’t mean Spider-Man is real!”
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!”
“Philosophical arguments aren’t good enough, you need empirical evidence!”
“There are 45000 Christian denominations. Y’all can’t even agree amongst yourselves!”
“There’s just no evidence!”
“You’re just a Christian because of your parents!”
“Yeah well Jesus probably never even existed!”
“The Bible is hopelessly contradictory!”
“In order to use God as an explanation for something, you first have to establish that such a being exists!”
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The Lost One
Junior Member
@lostkiera
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Post by The Lost One on Jun 26, 2023 13:43:10 GMT
“So what if the Bible accurately features historical places. New York City is depicted in the Spider-man movies, doesn’t mean Spider-Man is real!” “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!” “Philosophical arguments aren’t good enough, you need empirical evidence!” “There are 45000 Christian denominations. Y’all can’t even agree amongst yourselves!” “There’s just no evidence!” “You’re just a Christian because of your parents!” “Yeah well Jesus probably never even existed!” “The Bible is hopelessly contradictory!” “In order to use God as an explanation for something, you first have to establish that such a being exists!” Why not provide a few counterarguments to these?
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monicah
Sophomore
@monicah
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Post by monicah on Jun 26, 2023 22:38:17 GMT
Where’s the lie tho?
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djorno
Sophomore
@djorno
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Post by djorno on Jun 26, 2023 22:47:47 GMT
“So what if the Bible accurately features historical places. New York City is depicted in the Spider-man movies, doesn’t mean Spider-Man is real!” We know Spider-man was written as a work of fiction. The people that were writing about Jesus wrote about him as if was a historical figure. Every early Christian, plus the likes of Tacitus, Pliny the younger, Lucian, Josephus etc, they all wrote about him as if he was a historical person. Secondly, during the time of Jesus, the disciples ie the first Christians were willing to die for Jesus and the truth of Christianity. You’re not gonna get people today willing to die for the truth of Spider-man. What’s considered extraordinary? How do we measure what’s extraordinary? Sounds completely subjective to the person. Give me empirical evidence for the claim that you only need empirical evidence? There’s different types of evidence. It’s perfectly possible, and, often the case, to come to reasonable conclusions without empirical evidence. So what? How many different views are there on the theory of evolution? Besides we can understand the reason for it biblically. The Bible teaches that we all have a sinful fallen nature and are self-centered and prone to wanting things our way so it makes sense that there would be some disagreements. Plus the numbers are blown widely out of proportion. Some of the so called different denominations are on trivial stuff like how to baptize or things that don’t at all affect salvation. All Christian churches agree on the fundamental core doctrines of the faith. Even prominent atheist philosophers admit there is evidence for Christianity and God, just that it might not be enough for them. You’re an atheist just because of your friends, you just wanna fit it! See how easy it is to simplify a worldview like that? Not only do we have great first century evidence for the existence of Jesus. There’s a reason almost every teaching historian at an accredited university thinks that Jesus existed. Only tinfoil hat wearing contrarians with an axe to grind like Richard Carrier think otherwise. Only contradictory if you fail to study the context of the Bible or the cultural context. We posit that God is the best explanation of the data available to us. There’s numerous examples of that from scientists and the metaphysical world. Why not provide a few counterarguments to these?[/quote] Done.
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jackbrock
Sophomore
@jackbrock
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Post by jackbrock on Jun 26, 2023 22:50:36 GMT
The only thing silly here is the fact that you made all of this up.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Jun 27, 2023 11:15:55 GMT
The people that were writing about Jesus wrote about him as if was a historical figure. Every early Christian, plus the likes of Tacitus, Pliny the younger, Lucian, Josephus etc, they all wrote about him as if he was a historical person. Secondly, during the time of Jesus, the disciples ie the first Christians were willing to die for Jesus and the truth of Christianity. You’re not gonna get people today willing to die for the truth of Spider-man. People have been prepared to die for a range of things down through history. No one would argue that necessarily made them right, either in action or belief. It is also necessary to distinguish between the claim for Jesus as an historical figure, (which I would argue, given the nature of the evidence, is ordinary enough), and the metaphysical and supernatural claims of the central Christian myths personified by him, a different matter... Never the less some things can reasonably be considered extraordinary by most people: walking on water for instance, being the son of God (or God incarnate even) and coming back from the dead before rising into the sky. After all if these things were so ordinary, then why do the faithful go on about it so much? Most possible and reasonable of course to those credulous enough to do so. People only speak of faith where there is no evidence. If the differences are so 'trivial' why is there such a history of bloody conflict and internecine strife down through history over those very core doctrines? In more recent times we have such surveys as this, where of 2067 adults surveyed, 43 per cent believed Biblical accounts of the resurrection to be a myth. Of Christian respondents, 25 per cent agreed with the statement. premierchristian.news/en/news/article/easter-eggs-more-important-to-brits-than-jesus-and-1-4-christians-say-resurrection-a-myth-study-suggestsor here which gives the same figure: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39153121 I am not suggesting this is definitive, but one can argue that the Resurrection denied is a pretty untrivial difference among professed Christians. Here I think you confuse 'evidence' with 'arguments'. Also, no one doubts Christianity exists. The evidence that one's religious beliefs are largely influenced by surrounding culture and one's parents etc is well known, EG: www.pewresearch.org/religion/2020/09/10/shared-beliefs-between-parents-and-teens/ Of course this is not always the case, but if it was not, one might expect religious belief of different sorts spotted around the world in an uneven pattern, rather than largely appearing in blocs, as it actually is. Asserting that atheists spring most often from atheist families (say) does not affect the observation about the map of religions and descent of belief, so noting it is not "stupid". Arguably, though, anecdote at least suggests a lot of atheists are often outliers within their home groups, sometimes having to hide - their true thoughts. For instance on Reddit I am always reading accounts by those individuals who made a painful decision to break away from kith and kin after their own intellectual rejection of a home faith. As mentioned already there is difference between considering the historical Jesus and a supposed Son of God on earth; the nature of the claims for each is of a different magnitude and consequently required different magnitudes of required evidence. Are you saying there are no contradictions in the Bible? Or that the many evident overall don't matter too much? By data one presumes you mean evidence. But did you not, just above, tell us that empirical evidence is not necessary? And, if by data you mean scientific data, than it is interesting that traditional religious belief is much less (roughly half as likely as the general public to believe in God or a higher power) among those working in the sciences who, presumbly, are closer to that data. www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/Science has nothing to say about the existence of a deliberate supernatural or not. There is no reason why something permanent and provoking cannot exist within nature, without need to invent a whole new level of reality to explain things for instance.
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Post by captainbryce on Jun 28, 2023 8:03:25 GMT
We know Spider-man was written as a work of fiction. The people that were writing about Jesus wrote about him as if was a historical figure. You’re missing the point. First of all…you don’t know WHAT the people who wrote about him were doing because you don’t know anything about those people, and have no access to their writings (much less knowledge of their culture or language). You have translations of COPIES of a story penned by anonymous authors. The reason we know that Spider-man is a work of fiction is because we know about the author Stan Lee! More to the point, the reason for the analogy isn’t meant to demonstrate lack of historicity - so it’s gone completely over your head. The point of the analogy is to show that a mention of historical names, places, or events in a written work does NOT demonstrate historicity of the story being told! So when you use the fact that the Bible mentions real places or real names, you’re not saying anything of value with respect to demonstrating that its overarching narrative is true. That’s the point! The people who wrote about Zeus and the Olympian Gods wrote those stories as historical figures as well, and they even built monuments to them. That’s not an argument that the stories are true! None of the people you mentioned have ever met Jesus before, much less witnessed a resurrection. You might as well be saying that Christians who write books about their faith write them as though Jesus was a historical person. WHO CARES? That doesn’t demonstrate that he was. It’s just an irrational BELIEF! But you ARE going to get people today who are willing to die for the “truth” of Allah, which you deny. The people who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center were willing to die for what they believed was truth. Do you believe that what they died for is true? If not, then you understand the same argument non-Christians are making about your martyrs. In a rare instance of a broken clock being right twice a day, you are correct! It is subjective because everyone has a different level of skepticism and different standards of evidence. However, I’d venture to say that any reasonable person would consider MAGIC to be extraordinary! So at the very least with respect to magical claims, there ought to be an empirical basis to warrant belief. And that’s the difference between being skeptical and being gullible. Faith is for the gullible - that is people who are essentially stupid and will believe anything you tell them, no matter how absurd. They tend to believe in things because they WANT then to be true, not because they make any sense. Magic is not real! Resurrections do not happen! And there is no rational justification for believing in “the supernatural” or accepting supernatural claims which cannot be tested or observed. To believe in such things would make you an irrational person! So the real question is, why are your subjective standards of evidence so low that you’re willing to accept that magic is real because of stories? This is literally how young children think, not grown adults who exercise critical thinking. Be that as it may, there is no rational pathway to reaching a conclusion that magic is real without a demonstration and examination of the magic. Outside of the scientific community, plenty! Within the field of biology, hardly any at all. The reason why evolution is considered factual is because of the empirical evidence for it. And the reason it’s the prevailing theory is because it’s the only theory that fits all of the observable facts and predictions. Yeah but it’s wrong, so who gives a shit? It’s literally teaching something that is false. We don’t have a sinful fallen nature because there’s no such thing as sin! Sin is an “idea” which is tied to the existence of a god which nobody can demonstrate. It exists only as a concept within the irrational minds. But, even if we operated under your theological worldview - dogs have disagreements with each other and don’t have a sinful nature. Angels had disagreements with other angels BEFORE Satan was outcast (and when angels did not have a sinful nature fallen nature yet). And Jesus disagreed with God when he asked for the burden to be lifted from him, and again when he asked why God has forsaken him. So obviously even in your own theology, the ability to have “disagreements” is not tied to having a sinful nature. Apparently you didn’t learn jack shit from the Bible except how to absorb nonsense uncritically! Bullshit! And the proof of that is that you literally just denied a fundamental core doctrine of Baptists! For some denominations, baptism IS necessary for salvation. It’s the whole point of baptizing babies, so they don’t go to hell if they die. Other denominations believe that baptism can only be done when the person willingly accepts Christ, or that there is an age of accountability, or that baptism is not necessary at all. You don’t get to say what the fundamental core doctrines are without resorting to a No True Scotsman fallacy. But this is yet another case of you missing the point. Even if they did agree on a core doctrines, the disagreements that you call “trivial” matter to anyone judging the veracity of the story. Inconsistencies along with the reliance of kettle logic does not convince skeptics. On the contrary, it convinces them that those who are believing have different excuses and different justifications (many of which contradict each other), suggesting that despite their claims to “knowledge” they don’t know what they’re talking about! Catholics, Baptists, Pentecostals, and Calvinists all believe very strongly that their doctrines are “true”, yet they all contradict each other in significant enough ways to show the fundamental problem of Christianity. I don’t care. Taking your claim at face value (since you’ve provided ZERO evidence to support it), they would be just as WRONG as you are. The fact that someone happens to be an atheist or a philosopher does not make them “correct” by default. You have to have valid and sound arguments - not just opinions and assertions. Yeah, but there are stupid simplifications that cannot be supported in a rational argument, and then there are legitimate simplifications that CAN be justified in rational arguments. Yours is the former, mine is the latter. That’s another claim which you’ve just asserted, but provided no evidence for. In any case I don’t give a rats ass if a man called Jesus once existed. I’ve met many people named “Jesus” before. It’s a common name in Spanish. The relevant question is, do we have a rationally justified reason for believing that any of them resurrected? And the answer is no! So whatever Jesus may have exited in history, it wasn’t the guy spoken about in your Bible who magically brought himself back to life. That never happened because that’s not possible, which means no such person existed. And if your retort is that “anything is possible with God”, then that’s not only a special pleading fallacy, but also a claim that carries its own burden of proof (which cannot be met). But it isn’t! Because God doesn’t “explain” anything at all. Appealing to the supernatural is not an explanation for anything, because there is no demonstration of the supernatural. We know that nature exists and affects the reality we experience. We don’t know that the supernatural exists; that’s just a belief some have. All naturalistic explanations have to be disproved and ruled out before you can consider a supernatural explanation. There’s a reason why we have a God of the Gaps fallacy. “God” is an assertion with no explanatory power! Even if we didn’t already have naturalistic explanations (which we do), you can’t solve a mystery by appealing to a greater mystery (you haven’t solved anything). All you’re doing is just pushing the mystery up to a higher level, which you cannot explain. You’re unnecessarily adding an entity into the set of variables in violation of Occam’s Razor. The more variables you introduce, the greater your chances are of being wrong. The metaphysical world is not the REAL world. It doesn’t matter what metaphysics says, we are concerned with reality! And science doesn’t assume the supernatural. It invests the natural world based on an assumption of methodological naturalism. The fact that some scientists happen to also be religious is not an argument for anything. There are no scientific arguments for the supernatural.
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Post by novastar6 on Jun 28, 2023 22:40:00 GMT
What gets me is the double standards of 'The Bible is a fairy tale for children/we must ban it because it's pornographic and violent and traumatizing to the same children who laugh at R-rated movies'.
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jackbrock
Sophomore
@jackbrock
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Post by jackbrock on Jun 28, 2023 23:48:27 GMT
What gets me is the double standards of 'The Bible is a fairy tale for children/we must ban it because it's pornographic and violent and traumatizing to the same children who laugh at R-rated movies'. I've always wondered why some people get all freaked out by nudity, same sex marriage and discussions of evolution, yet cling to the Bible for it's endorsement of slavery for non Jews, violence and general condemnation of non-believers. And plenty of sex and incest to boot.
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jackbrock
Sophomore
@jackbrock
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Post by jackbrock on Jun 28, 2023 23:50:37 GMT
“So what if the Bible accurately features historical places. New York City is depicted in the Spider-man movies, doesn’t mean Spider-Man is real!” “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence!” “Philosophical arguments aren’t good enough, you need empirical evidence!” “There are 45000 Christian denominations. Y’all can’t even agree amongst yourselves!” “There’s just no evidence!” “You’re just a Christian because of your parents!” “Yeah well Jesus probably never even existed!” “The Bible is hopelessly contradictory!” “In order to use God as an explanation for something, you first have to establish that such a being exists!” How about this one.... "Where's the silly little YouTube video filled with very muddled thinking?"
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Post by novastar6 on Jun 28, 2023 23:52:50 GMT
What gets me is the double standards of 'The Bible is a fairy tale for children/we must ban it because it's pornographic and violent and traumatizing to the same children who laugh at R-rated movies'. I've always wondered why some people get all freaked out by nudity, same sex marriage and discussions of evolution, yet cling to the Bible for it's endorsement of slavery for non Jews, violence and general condemnation of non-believers. And plenty of sex and incest to boot.
Implied sex and incest, not shown, not graphically depicted. Big ass difference, and even to get to that part of it one would have to have a considerable reading comprehension as opposed to just looking at porn or naked twerkers.
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jackbrock
Sophomore
@jackbrock
Posts: 119
Likes: 20
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Post by jackbrock on Jun 29, 2023 0:07:29 GMT
I've always wondered why some people get all freaked out by nudity, same sex marriage and discussions of evolution, yet cling to the Bible for it's endorsement of slavery for non Jews, violence and general condemnation of non-believers. And plenty of sex and incest to boot.
Implied sex and incest, not shown, not graphically depicted. Big ass difference, and even to get to that part of it one would have to have a considerable reading comprehension as opposed to just looking at porn or naked twerkers.
What about Noah and his family? Weren't they the only people left after the flood?
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Post by novastar6 on Jun 29, 2023 4:10:51 GMT
Implied sex and incest, not shown, not graphically depicted. Big ass difference, and even to get to that part of it one would have to have a considerable reading comprehension as opposed to just looking at porn or naked twerkers.
What about Noah and his family? Weren't they the only people left after the flood?
Yeah, him, his wife, their 3 sons and their wives.
And I'm sure now we're going to get into the very recent mindset of the abomination of cousins marrying cousins, something that was still considered socially acceptable even half a century ago during the height of sexual liberation, but again, 1. we have to speculate and draw these conclusions specifically because it doesn't say 'so and so married this cousin, that cousin', so again we're back to everything is implied and you have to be able to put the pieces together to figure it out, and 2. most kids are going to be bored to sleep trying to read through this role call, the ones that can actually sound out the names, which is going to be damn few.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Jun 29, 2023 10:17:05 GMT
I've always wondered why some people get all freaked out by nudity, same sex marriage and discussions of evolution, yet cling to the Bible for it's endorsement of slavery for non Jews, violence and general condemnation of non-believers. And plenty of sex and incest to boot. Implied sex and incest, not shown, not graphically depicted. Big ass difference...
Not such a big difference to stop it being banned in some parts of Utah though, it would seem.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Jun 29, 2023 10:28:02 GMT
And I'm sure now we're going to get into the very recent mindset of the abomination of cousins marrying cousins, something that was still considered socially acceptable even half a century ago during the height of sexual liberation Still pretty much acceptable today as well. For instance it's completely legal in the UK. In the United States, second cousins are legally allowed to marry in every state. However, marriage between first cousins is legal in about half of the American states (the others join N Korea and China etc in prohibition). In the Middle East and South Asia, cousin marriage is still strongly favoured, at least according to Bittles, Alan; Hussain, Rafat (2000) in "An analysis of consanguineous marriage in the Muslim population of India at regional and state levels". Many Arab countries display some of the highest rates of consanguineous marriages in the world.
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Post by Admin on Jun 29, 2023 23:59:30 GMT
"I don't believe there is no god, I lack the belief that there is one."
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Post by novastar6 on Jun 30, 2023 5:06:05 GMT
"I don't believe there is no god, I lack the belief that there is one."
Sounds borderline Patch Adams.
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Post by Admin on Jun 30, 2023 5:30:57 GMT
"I don't believe there is no god, I lack the belief that there is one." Sounds borderline Patch Adams.
The clown doctor?
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Post by novastar6 on Jun 30, 2023 6:47:55 GMT
Sounds borderline Patch Adams.
The clown doctor?
Yeah, the real one, not Robin Williams' character.
In his book Gesundheit he talked about in his youth he was so in love with science and he delighted in arguing and 'disproving' religious beliefs...and then grew up to be this man.
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Post by Admin on Jun 30, 2023 7:04:04 GMT
Yeah, the real one, not Robin Williams' character.
In his book Gesundheit he talked about in his youth he was so in love with science and he delighted in arguing and 'disproving' religious beliefs...and then grew up to be this man. Seems like a cool guy. Nice story.
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