tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15919868476029252342024-03-13T23:11:59.488-07:00Another AtheistUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-48333812925918911322022-07-07T15:43:00.003-07:002022-07-08T16:19:42.395-07:00Michael Brown's Questions for Atheists<p><span style="font-family: arial;"> Evangelical Christian Michael Brown recently posed <a href="https://stream.org/some-honest-questions-for-atheists/">several questions to atheists</a>. These were framed as an 'honest' attempt to understand atheists.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I have provided my answers below.</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></h4></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em;">Is Your Atheism Based on Study or Experience?</span><br /><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">First, would you say that you are (or, were) an atheist based primarily on intellectual study or based on experience? Or did you never believe in God at all?</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I have never believed in your deity, or any other deities. I am old enough to be exposed to the arguments for the existence of your deity, and found the answers ranging from unconvincing, to fallacious, to downright dishonest. </span></p><p> </p><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></h4><blockquote><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Do You Have Purpose and Destiny?</h4><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Second, would you say that even as an atheist, you still have a sense of purpose and destiny in your life, a feeling that you were put here for a reason and that you have a mission to accomplish? Or is it primarily people of faith who feel like this, since we are simply the products of an unguided, random evolutionary process?</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Your leading question with evolution in it, belies your claim to honesty. The powerful and well-researched forces of evolution are not a synonym for random. I have a purpose, and it is a product of my own worldview and my indigenous culture. For example, kaitiakitanga drives the work I do in wildlife conservation, and affirms that I share a kinship (whakapapa) with all these animals. This is part of the legacy I leave for the future. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Christian idea my purpose is to end up, joyfully spending an eternity kissing your deity's butt while my unsaved friends and whānau are being tortured, actually fills me with utter disgust and horror. </span><br /><br /><br /><span style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em;">Does God Exist?</span></p><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Third, would you say that you are 100% sure there is no such being as God — meaning, an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being? Or would you say that, for all practical purposes you have concluded that this God does not exist, although it is impossible to prove such a negative with absolute certainty?</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I have concluded that deities are an outgrowth of our hunter-gatherer animistic beliefs, that evolved into focus points of these, first as nature gods and in some cultures, gradually evolving into High Gods and finally, Morally High Gods. Your deity is a very recent, in human terms, species of Moralising High God. Gods don't exist. They are the fantastic creations of the ancient era.</span></p><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></p><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></h4><blockquote><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Can Science Explain the Origin of Life?</h4><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Fourth, do you believe that science can provide answers for many of the remaining mysteries of the universe, including: how the universe began (including where matter came from and where the Big Bang derived its energy); the origin of life; and DNA coding?</p></blockquote><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That's an odd question. Research on the origin of life has advanced from showing some early chemical pathways for amino acids to form in the 1950s, to peptide chains (proteins), sugars, nucleotides, lipid membranes and protocells, and self-replicating macromolecules today. The explanation is incomplete but much more powerful than the idea a virgin-mating bloodgod did it instead.</span></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What science gives us is the most reliable method we have for discovering how things work. It does so by setting up ruthless contests between competing hypotheses, that are resolved by seeing which are wrong (falsification). Theistic claims that knowledge can be acquired instead by revelation is patently false, and the fact you simply have no reliable way to tell if your beliefs on origins are false, rule out your alternative explanations.</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Have You Questioned Your Atheism?</h4><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Fifth, have you had any experiences in life that caused you to question your atheism? Has something happened to you that seemed genuinely supernatural or otherworldly? Or have you been confronted with some information that shook your atheistic foundations, such as a scientific argument for intelligent design? If so, how have you dealt with such doubts about your atheism?</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">No. The longer I live, the more confident I am in my atheism and the more appalled I am at the damage generated by your religion. And there are no scientific arguments for intelligent design. What we have instead is a litany of falsehoods about genetics, molecular biology, statistics and the fossil record concocted by a small cadre of glib zealots. They have undertaken no original research to establish ID as a science. If anything Creationists (including Intelligent Design proponents) confirm how unscrupulous, how dishonest and untrustworthy your arguments are. I don't think you appreciate how badly Creationism discredits the your religion. </span></p><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></h4><blockquote><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Are You Materialistic?</h4><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Sixth, are you completely materialistic in your mindset, meaning, human beings are entirely physical, human consciousness is an illusion, and there is no spiritual realm of any kind? Or are you superstitious, reading horoscopes or engaging in new age practices or the like?</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">That's such a list of leading questions I'm not even going to bother answering it. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></p><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></h4><blockquote><h4 style="color: #456ca1; font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25em; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 1em 0px 0.3em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Would You Be Willing to Follow God?</h4><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;">Seventh, if you were convinced that God truly existed — meaning the God of the Bible, who is perfect in every way, full of justice and mercy, our Creator and our Redeemer — would that be good news or bad news? And would you be willing to follow Him and honor Him if He were truly God?</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If you could convince me the Abrahamic deity existed, I would accept it existed. The god of the Bible however, gave its followers instructions for beating slaves or executing non-virgin brides, but none for using soap. It promotes collective and inherited guilt, blood sacrifices and scapegoating, thought-crimes and threatens horrific torture with no chance of rehabilitation. That's not what a perfect or just entity looks like. </span></p><p> </p><p style="font-family: "Droid Serif", Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.3em 0px 1em; outline: none 0px; padding: 0px;"></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-63841407936169072462022-05-30T15:57:01.009-07:002022-08-17T15:47:49.565-07:00Cold-case Christianty: Review<h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Introduction</span></h3><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Popular apologetics has been around for a long time. The most popular of such apologists have found a unique selling-point that let them rise above the rest. For Lee Strobel it was the "former-atheist investigative-reporter" angle. For Frank Turek, it was the "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" angle, still being milked today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Recently a new entrant in this genre appeared. This is the J. Warner Wallace "investigative detective" angle with his book Cold-Case Christianity. This asserts that the tools of criminal investigation can be applied to the Canonical Gospels and New Testament (NT) to determine they're completely reliable accounts of Jesus' life. Rather convenient really, as it means you don't need to study the society, languages, beliefs and culture of the Roman world and its Eastern Mediterranean provinces. While this hasn't convinced a lot of experts in the Ancient Near East, it has persuaded a lot of internet Christians. Usually of the evangelical flavour. And at times atheists are assured that this book will provide the evidence we have been craving to show that Christianity is true. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So, in response to the belief that Cold-Case Christianity does provide compelling evidence for their deity, and to show I'm willing to read this stuff, I've written the following review. </span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: arial;">Note that this is just a review and not a point by point rebuttal. I don't have time for that. </i> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So what about this detecting approach?</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">This is wildly oversold by Wallace. What we really get is a lot of filler (the anecdotes from his past) which is best skimmed over, and some distillation of what he claims are key detecting principles. Unfortunately these are not at all insightful. It's just a matter of trying to avoid presuppositions, analysing all the evidence and reaching conclusions based on these. There is nothing here that being a Cold-case detective brings that is novel. This book is a triumph of marketing over substance.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Instead, what Wallace does is collect a lot of popular apologetic arguments and tries to link each to one of the detecting principles he's concocted. That's pretty much it. It's a litany of the same poor popular apologetics arguments we've seen many times before. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Wallace is not even consistent with the principles he espouses. The whole premise that witness accounts from a modern Western country are analogous to the theological literature from an ancient era is is one giant presupposition Wallace never addresses. In the first century, Judaea was populated by a largely illiterate population for whom politics, culture and religion were all one, who were chafing under Roman rule, and who expected a Messiah to appear and rescue them. This is a culture that depended on oral records and anything they wrote would have been through a theological lens. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Presuming these records would be similar to modern witness statements is a massive leap. If you're not convinced ancient and modern literature are comparable then Wallace's approach is wrong, all the way down. This is exacerbated by the fact we don't have the original crime scenes <i>sic</i>. Our earliest NT manuscripts are from the 2nd century, and these are both few in number and fragmentary. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Wallace quickly demonstrates the lack of rigour in his approach. The first is how he deals with contradictions. Contradictions always support his belief that the Canonical Gospels are eyewitness accounts. There is no level or number of contradictions that will ever budge his belief. Yet there has to be some trigger point, some number, where the credibility of the accounts is seriously diminished by the contradictions. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">One of the events that is plagued with contradictions is the account of the crucifixion and resurrection. A horizontal reading of the texts shows they contradict on the day of the arrest, when the women visited the tomb, which women visited the tomb, if the women visited the tomb (1 Cor. 15 vs the Gospels), what was seen at the tomb (and that's even if we restrict ourselves to the Canonical gospels), what they did after the discovery and where Jesus later appeared to his disciples. For the single most important event in Early Christianity, dismissing these contradictions as the kind we expect to see in eyewitness accounts is stretching credulousness to its breaking point. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">Wallace can only see the NT literature as either deliberate efforts at deceit, or delusions or describing actual events. Thus he never allows for an alternative theological motivation or the accretion of legendary elements over decades of different oral traditions in different groups of Early Christians. He's mired in presuppositions and an attempt to contort the evidence to match his view the NT is largely eyewitness accounts. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">A second important weakness is his <i>ad hoc</i> 'scene-artefacts' to explain away material not consistent with his view. Thus the errant cigarette butt at a crime scene is analogous to say, the later addition of the story of the adulterer in John. His principle is simply that if you feel something is out of place, it is. This has enough wriggle room to sail a cruise ship through. What's to stop say, someone concluding the dead rising from their graves in Matthew is an artefact? Or the 500 eye-witnesses Paul claims to have seen the risen Jesus? There is none. There is no rigour to this principle as it is simply an <i>ad hoc</i> means for Wallace to dispense with many arguments <b>against</b> the reliability of the Gospels. Others however could use it to dispense with any details Wallace relies upon, as it seems to them it is also out of place. History needs better standards than this. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">The third weakness is his claimed skill in forensic statement analysis are grossly inflated. Wallace never picks up for instance, that the style of writing and the topics of interest changes, in the many epistles regarded as pseudepigrapha. That is, they are fakes attributed to one of the original apostles by the writer. He never picks up the Gospel of John's Jesus differed in many significant ways from the Synoptics. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">He never picks up that Mark makes regular and creative use of irony in his account [1]. Or that Mark employs many Latinisms that a native speaker from Judaea is unlikely to use. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Mark includes Latin words like κῆνσος (census or poll tax), λεγιών (legion), κεντυρίων (centurion), δηνάριονb (denarius), units of measure such as μόδιος (modius), and ξέστης (pitcher) and legal terms such as σπεκουλάτωρ (executioner) and φραγελλόω (to flog) [2]. And this list is not exhaustive. There are also geographical mistakes in the Gospel of Mark (7:31- the journey to Galilee through Sidon). </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Or even that Mark has Jesus quote Psalm 22:1 as his final words. Instead he claims its what an early eyewitness account would look like. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">In other words, all the things that actual NT scholars use to analyse the Gospels is absent from Wallace's approach. Wallace fails to identify problems with the text that are widely known. He cannot distinguish pseudepigrapha from genuine epistles. He promotes Intelligent Design pseudoscience and rejects evolution (Chapter 3). This does not support Wallace's claim to be skilled at analysing evidence. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Addressing the Skeptics</span></h3><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The purported goal of apologetics to give good arguments to counter skeptic objections to Christianity. Wallace makes a big deal of being a former atheist and skeptic who was eventually won over. So how well does Wallace address skeptic arguments. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Curiously, Wallace seems to be an odd former atheist. Allegedly familiar with the works of Ehrman and the like, but claims he thought the Canonical Gospels were of a second-century origin when he was an atheist! And there is an odd thing about the sceptic arguments he takes on. A lot of these, like 'the swoon theory' to explain Jesus' escape from the cross, aren't very popular. Other arguments, such as why we think the Gospels were composed at a much later date are barely touched on at all. This would be understandable coming from a Christian apologist who was never a committed atheist. Their framework often doesn't understand what are considered the most trenchant criticisms. It is really odd however, for a former atheist. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Similarly, for a former atheist he reveals in Chapter 3 he lacked a rudimentary understanding of evolution and big-bang cosmology. He dispenses with 150 years of research in biology by quote-mining Dawkins to imply Dawkins agrees design occurs in nature. This is the exact opposite of what Dawkins argues. So Wallace not only fails to address skeptic and scientific arguments for why we are unconvinced a deity is behind the Big Bang or the diversity of life on the planet, he establishes a <b>shocking</b> level of <b>dishonesty</b> with his quote mine. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now let's consider the dating of the Gospels. Setting aside the academic debate on some aspects, it is (generally) accepted that Mark was composed first (around 65-70 CE), Luke and Matthew about a decade later, and John in the last decade of the first C. These are composed in fluent Koine Greek, not Aramaic, by highly literate writers. In short, the very people the original disciples were not. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Wallace argues that Luke should precede Paul's letters (so mid 40s CE) and Mark should be even earlier still, because Luke had some dependence on Mark. So how does Wallace deal with the arguments for the later dating? Mark is dated to 65-70 CE because Iraneus says it was composed after Paul and Peter had died (c65 CE). It describes the political milieu of this era- themes of suffering, persecution and martyrdom and alludes to the Jewish War that broke out in 67 CE.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> Wallace's counter is to just ignore Iraneus and the political context of the passages in the gospels. He accuses others of a bias against supernatural explanations and that Mark, really had prophesied the siege of Jerusalem. So he does not deal with skeptical objections at all. Rather he sets up a strawman. He argues scholars concluded Mark was from 65-70 CE because the authors are anonymous (true, but irrelevant) and have a naturalism bias. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Luke's date is based on the extraordinary assertion that Paul, clearly showed he was familiar with Luke. Paul's letters are largely the only NT documents that can be reliably dated. This argument depends on a short proverb of little theological import, and a shared reference to a common liturgical practice. This flies in the face of genuine scholarship, which wonders why Paul comes across as so unfamiliar with the Gospels. But you don't need to be a scholar to figure this out. Just try to reconstruct the main elements of Luke, using <b>just</b> the letters of Paul. You can't. There is no virgin birth, no healing miracles, no feeding of the thousands, no clearing of the Temple, no parables, no empty tomb, no women who discovered the tomb first etc. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So Wallace not only fails to establish his alternative time line has credence, he betrays a lack of awareness of the arguments and evidence for the actual dating. </span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So what about that resurrection?</span></h3><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The purpose of trying to shift the gospels as close as possible to the crucifixion, and assert they are eye-witness accounts, is to inflate the authority of the Canonical gospels. This in turns makes the central argument of Christianity, that Jesus was resurrected after his death, more compelling. After all, if all we had were first and second century non-biblical sources and early Christian sources like Paul's letters, the Gospel Jesus would vanish. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">There are no contemporaneous non-biblical accounts of the Gospel Jesus. Unlike say Julius Caesar or Cicero, Jesus appeared to have written nothing for others to read. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">We would have no way of reconstituting the fantastic events of the Gospels solely using other sources in this era. So apologists have to go 'all in' on the Gospels being accounts that are based in actual history. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Needless to say, Wallace presents nothing that would convince a skeptic that the gospels are eyewitness accounts and have an early date. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We are left with the resurrection, and if Wallace cannot convince us it is a real event, then there is no reason to accept this occurred. As your common, garden-variety skeptic I would agree, that assuming Jesus existed, some of his earliest followers <b>believed</b> he was resurrected soon after his execution. But I do not think it really happened. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Wallace tries to establish the credibility of the miraculous resurrection by asserting the 'minimal facts' as our starting point. Conveniently, this bypasses the skeptical arguments against the 'minimal facts'! </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For instance, I'm not convinced there was an empty tomb. The empty tomb isn't mentioned in any E Christian literature preceding the Gospels, which were composed decades later. For such an important detail to be not mentioned across thousands of written words and 3 to 4 decades, is extremely suspicious. The four decades from the crucifixion to Luke and Matthew is long enough for this embellishment to be added and accepted. We can see such embellishments continued, as in the <a href="http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/gospelpeter-brown.html">Gospel of Peter</a> from early 2nd C, who included giants and an animated, talking cross in his resurrection account.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">However unlikely one feels that Jesus being left on the Cross (as was the common if not universal Roman practice) was, or put into a communal grave pit, these are still plausible alternatives. Both would ensure there was no body and conveniently, help establish the legend of the empty tomb.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We can at least, agree that several of his closest followers soon after, believed they had seen a resurrected Jesus. And that motivated them to continue resume their proselytising, and they were after Paul joined them, recruit into Gentile communities effectively also. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I tend to the view that these early followers experienced grief hallucinations. This view has a number of proponents, including the late NT sc</span><span style="font-family: arial;">holar Gerd Lüdemann. Grief hallucinations are fairly common phenomenon among people who suffer a loss (I'm one of them). Auditory and even visual hallucinations of the deceased person are reported. These can be quite vivid but decline over time. This matches the overall progression of these resurrection appearances, which also fade away. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As an aside, epileptic seizures can also produce vivid religious experiences[3]. The very non-corporeal experience reported by Paul (mimicking a seizure) suggests early Christians were open to visionary, rather than physical appearances of Jesus. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Wallace however, does not consider the way grief can generate these hallucinations and jumps to the mass appearances (e.g. 1 Cor 15) to refute the hallucination argument. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Unfortunately Paul's epistle First Corinthians makes more problems for Wallace's mass-hallucination rebuttal than he acknowledges. The first is that it contradicts the Gospel accounts by having no appearances to any women first. The second is the 500 witnesses are problematic. Nowhere else does anyone describe an appearance to 500 people. What event, if it occurred, is a puzzle [4]. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And of course, the only way we can accept this mass appearance is to </span><b style="font-family: arial;">believe</b><span style="font-family: arial;"> that either Paul is telling the truth or that it wasn't a corruption of the text by a later copyist. So in the end, an event that we do not know the location or time of, or who was present, and is possibly a later edit [4], is not the slam dunk against the hallucination explanation Wallace desires. A skeptic is after all, skeptical. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So for the skeptic, Wallace's arguments against an hallucination explanation appear inept, and further ignores the role of memory distortion. We know that people misremember traumatic events. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">We are good at adding details to the story later that we think occurred as the following excerpts show. </span></p><p></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-family: times;">Crombag et al. led participants to believe they had seen the moment an El Al Boeing 747 crashed into an apartment building, killing 43 people. Although there was no film of the crash, there was considerable media coverage of the aftermath. Indeed, participants often elaborated on the original suggestion (e.g., the plane was already burning when it crashed). Importantly, and in line with the SMF, Crombag et al. opined that traumatic events might be more susceptible to memory distortion than benign events because they typically provide more avenues for mental imagery..<span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(33, 33, 33); color: #212121;">.</span></span></span></i></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;"><i>...Southwick et al. asked Desert Storm veterans at 1 month and 2 years after their return from service, whether certain events occurred during that service (e.g., sniper fire). They found 88% of veterans changed their response to at least one event; 61% changed more than one. Importantly, the majority of those changes were from “no, that did not happen to me” to “yes, that happened to me,” what has been termed “memory amplification.” -</i>Strange and Takarangi (2015) [5]</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This has nothing to do with dishonesty but how the mind works. Some early followers would have been shocked by the arrest and execution of Jesus, and there is no reason to suppose they would be immune to memory distortion. Grief hallucinations get misremembered. They become more vivid, more physical, and more details are added. And in an era where oral transmission was largely used to spread Christianity, those accounts that were more wondrous, more attention-arresting, would have been selected for. And grief hallucinations that evolve into physical appearances are explicable both in terms of memory distortion and oral retelling. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In the end, the fundamental problem with relying upon the Gospels is that the case for the physical resurrection becomes a circular argument. The Gospels have to be used to prove the (contradictory) accounts of the resurrection in the Gospels are true. There is no other way we can get to the Gospel resurrection claims without them. We can't get to it through other early Christian or non-Christian writing. </span></p><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Early Christian Motivation</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;">When Jesus died he left no instructions or guidance to his followers on doctrine. He'd left nothing in writing to use as an authority. There was no hierarchical Church structure where leaders got together to work through the problems. Early Christian groups ended up being a very diverse bunch. We only need to look at Paul's letters. He reveals he has points of difference with other original leaders (who seemed to see Christianity as a sect within Judaism), and his letters often have the theme of correcting what he considered, where wrong interpretations emerging in the Churches he helped establish. </span></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">By the time we get to Iraneus in the Second Century, we have 21 sects that he classes as heretical (this does not account for any that disappeared in say the Roman-Jewish wars in the late 60s and again in the 132 CE). These sects professed doctrines at odds with the view Wallace and others are trying to propagate. Gnostic Christians for instance (and there were multiple branches of these) held that the earthly world was corrupt, that Jesus was the manifestation of a spiritual being and Yaweh was not the true god but a malevolent deity [6]. The first chapter of John's Gospel which includes the words on logos, is suspiciously Gnostic in its perspective. We have many more Gospels than just the four the bible preserves and the Gospel of Peter I mentioned above. Orthodox Christianity with all its doctrines and structures did not spring into being in the first days of Christianity. It emerged after many decades in a contest with rival Christianities. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It is this background that we need to understand the motivation of the early Christian apostles and early Christian literature. And all of this is absent from Wallace. Rather, he gives the impression that Christianity emerges in its near mature form soon after Jesus' death. Instead he argues that the Apostles and Gospel writers had no motivation to lie or mislead others.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We see the tedious appeal to martyrdom that is common in popular apologetics. The Apostles were willing to die for their beliefs, and did so without recanting, when recanting would have saved their lives. Hence we are told, the apostles were telling the truth about what they witnessed. Obviously this would still hold in the grief-hallucination/memory distortion scenario also. But a closer examination of the martyrdoms of Apostles shows that the opportunity for recanting was not an escape from their executions. James was executed for breaking the law (cf. Josephus). Peter and Paul, who disappeared in Rome around the time of Nero's persecution, would have been executed (if they were) as scapegoats for starting Rome's disastrous fire. Saying they had made up the resurrection story would not have saved them. Outside dubious later Church tradition, we really know nothing about the other disciples. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The restricted set of motives Wallace employed excludes the theological motivation of the writers. It ignore the theological conflicts the early Christian Church had to work through. And it places a lot of credence on the writings of the early Christians. How do we know the Paul suffered great hardships establishing his Churches? Because Paul tells us so in his writings. Can we verify this? No. And given the horrendous numbers of abuse cases modern Christian leaders have kept from their followers, it would be an heroic assumption that such covert sexual predation was not occurring then. Paul may have been a really virtuous guy, but to rely upon his own writings to establish this, is as smart as using Ravi Zacharias' apologetics to establish he wasn't a vile rapist. It's not likely Paul would be confessing to such crimes in his epistles. Wallace is back to the circular strategy of using the NT to prove the NT. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Within the first 100 years of Christianity, many Christian groups did not share the orthodox beliefs captured in the Canonical gospels. For orthodox Christians, the value of the gospels was not their historical truth. It was what they saw as their theological truth. John for instance, moves the arrest of Jesus forward by one day. The theological motivation was clear, by doing this before the Passover, it ensured the doctrine that Jesus died for "our sins" as the Passover lamb was established. Wallace however doesn't see this as deliberate, but the kind of mistake an eyewitness would make. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For a culture who saw everything through a theological lens (unlike modern secular societies), this theological truth is what ultimately mattered. The NT Gospels, the epistles, and even the pseudepigrapha had value, not because they were historically true. They had value because they were theologically true. They established the 'correct' version of Christianity. That is why using them as largely historical accounts twists the goals of the original writers to conform to the far removed, modern orthodox Christianity. </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Conclusion</span></h3><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Wallace fails to see that there was a theological motivation for the Gospels, and the canonical ones were selected because they supported the view of Christianity that became orthodoxy. He fails to consider this because of a profound lack of understanding of how ancient societies differed from modern. Of how ancient literature was composed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">His claim to have examined the evidence critically is not supported by this book. Rather he takes such a credulous approach to popular apologetic arguments, that I feel he'd find evidence for the resurrection on the cooking instructions of a packet of soup. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And in the end, his approach shows it cannot honestly represent science, philosophy or history. It conveniently confirms a whole bunch of popular apologetics arguments and does not properly address the objections to them. I imagine Wallace will continue to be popular in evangelical Christian circles, but he has nothing that will persuade a moderately well-informed sceptic he is correct.</span></p><p><br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">References</span></h3><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">[1] Fenton, J. C. (2001). Mark’s gospel -- the oldest and the best? Theology, 104(818), 83–93.</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">[2] Latinisms are described in Incigneri, Brian J. <i>The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel.</i> Biblical Interpretation 65. Leiden: Brill, 2003</span><p><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">[3] Devinsky O, Lai G. Spirituality and religion in epilepsy. Epilepsy Behav. 2008 May;12(4):636-43. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2007.11.011. Epub 2008 Jan 2. PMID: 18171635.</span><br /><br /></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: arial;">"</span><span style="font-family: times;"><i>Several case reports and small series document religious or mystical experiences during partial seizures <a href="#">[30]</a>, <a href="#">[38]</a>, <a href="#">[39]</a>, <a href="#">[40]</a>. The nature of ictal religious seizures varies, including intense emotions of God’s presence, the sense of being connected to the infinite <a href="#">[37]</a>, hallucinations of God’s voice <a href="#">[30]</a>, the <a href="#">visual hallucination</a> of a religious figure <a href="#">[17]</a>, as well as clairvoyance and telepathy, or repetition of a religious phrase <a href="#">[40]</a>...</i></span><span style="font-family: arial;">"</span></blockquote><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">[4] Ftizmeyer (2008), First Corinthians. </span><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300140446/first-corinthians/" style="font-family: arial;">https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300140446/first-corinthians/</a></div><div><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">[5] Strange D, Takarangi MK. Memory distortion for traumatic</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> events: the role of mental imagery. Front Psychiatry. 2015 Feb 23;6:27. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00027. PMID: 25755646; PMCID: PMC4337233.</span><p></p><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">[6] A good introduction to the Gnostics is this<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01s4rhz"> BBC Religion Podcast</a> discussing it. </span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-22163065033296115382022-04-03T19:58:00.001-07:002022-04-03T21:45:52.552-07:00Braxton Hunter's 10 questions for atheistsApologist Braxton Hunter posed 10 questions for atheists, and in a slightly idle period, I thought I'd respond. <br /><br /><b>1. What facts about the real world does your personal worldview account for that mine as a Christian doesn’t account for?</b><br /><br />My worldview (<i>weltanschauung</i>) is derived from my experiences, education, secular society and indigenous culture. I have advanced degrees in biology and decades of field experience on different countries. From my perspective, Christianity has been a complete failure at explaining the authenticity of native people's religious experiences. And the divided opinions on the different branches of Creationism tells me its failed to explain the diversity and distribution of life on earth. <div><br /></div><div>Nonetheless, I don't know what your particular Christian worldview holds, but if it subscribes to some of the more popular science-denying branches, I'm good sticking with mine. <br /><br /><b>2. If your definition of atheism is merely that it's a lack of belief in God, and you're just waiting to be convinced, but then you speak of Him as though He's in some way synonymous with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or Fairies, doesn't that at least send the message to your listeners that you actually believe that there is no God?</b><br /><br />I let people who call themselves atheists, define atheism for themselves. I don't expect agreement with any others. Personally I have concluded that deities do not exist, that yours was concocted very late in human history by a minor ancient Near Eastern tribe, before it got promoted to the chief deity of a slave-owning society. For me atheism is not "a lack of belief in deities" but I don't assume that's the same for all. <div><br /><br /><b>3. Do you see why supporting things that believers see as sin upon becoming an atheist might make those believers think that played some role in your adopting an atheistic worldview?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I disagree that there is an atheistic worldview. Atheism is a product of worldview that often, draws on knowledge of your religion's past and comparative religion, a preference for acquiring knowledge via scientific methods rather than revelatory and the support of secular moral philosophy over religious dogmas. From this worldview, atheism is often the result. After all, it encompasses only one issue whereas a worldview encompasses far more. </div><div><br /></div><div>I didn't become an atheist. There was never a transition. Your deity never seemed any more real than my native <i>Atua</i> (dieties) or the gods of ancient Greece. And was a lot less interesting to be honest. I've always been an atheist.</div><div><br /></div><div>I might add that the Christian conviction in sin, drove them to suppress many of our pre-colonial beliefs and practices as these were regarded as sinful. So I am not bothered by what Christians now think of my support of these things. </div><div><br /><br /><b>4. Exactly what probability do you assign to the proposition that gods or God in particular exist?</b><br /><br />My Bayesian prior is 0. Humans lived as hunter-gatherers for about 200,000 years. Over much of the time we were animists (my own indigenous culture still has a strong grounding in animism). Deities really do not appear until after the human agricultural revolution and both High Gods and Moralising High Gods take centuries to appear. Deities are thus an outgrowth of our hardwired beliefs in animism. Nothing I've encountered about Christianity has caused me to revise upward this prior.<br /><br /><b>5. Does it bother you or worry you that non-theistic cosmologies offer unlikely-sounding or poorly specified explanations of the origins of the universe?</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>I disagree that say, a quantum perturbation acting on a super-hot, super-dense, minute particle is poorly specified. Nor does it seem unlikely, especially relative to a virgin-mating bloodgod conjuring it into existence.<br /><br /><b>6. Of the arguments for God’s existence, is there one that to you seems more interesting than the rest? Do any of them weigh in favor of theism?</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>None. Gods are the invention of ancient peoples and have earned no more credence than any other fantastic ancient creature from this period. <br /><br /><b>7. What sort of evidence, if any, would be enough to convince you? (Let’s take experimental reproducibility off the table.)</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>There's two tests that come to mind. The <i>Thomas test</i>- a physical manifestation of Jesus in a personal encounter, down to being able to examine the wounds on his body or the <i>Bruce Almighty test</i>- a temporary gift of some of your deity's divine powers. <br /><br /><b>8. To what extent did social and moral issues start you down your path to atheism?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Creationists often force biologists to take a position on deities. It was clear I couldn't be neutral in the face of their rank dishonesty. </div><div><br /><b>9. Can you name the last three academic books by theistic authors you read on the subject? How long ago did you read them?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>What do you mean academic book? Last book that has any impact on me was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prison. <br /><br /><b>10. If you knew that Christianity were true, would you accept God’s authority, repent of your sins, and trust Jesus as your king?</b></div></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>That's quite the loaded question and irrelevant! There is no overt act of rebellion going on here. I consider my own nature gods more plausible than your Near Eastern god of blood and death, and I know my deities don't exist. Gods are human constructs. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you want people like me to conclude your deity exists, then you need less loaded or leading questions. Try accepting that people have carefully considered your religion's claims and honestly found them unconvincing.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-40690019832804091682017-12-13T12:32:00.001-08:002017-12-13T12:32:08.547-08:00Whip it, whip it good<b>One of the cruelest legacies of the Abrahamic religions, was the normalisation of slavery</b>. Slavery in the Western Christian world persisted largely until the 1800s. Islamic countries did not ban slavery for the most part until the 1900s. Even then it survived in extremist groups as with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/diane-bederman/slavery-africa_b_3975881.html">Islamic militias in Sudan</a> or ISIS in Iraq and Syria.<br />
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This slavery presents a major problem for theists. It is in direct conflict with a range of claims. These include the moral character of their prophets. Abraham owned slaves. Mohammad owned slaves. The benevolence of God of Abraham and the origin of morality with this deity, does not survive the reality of slavery.<br />
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Christians throughout history have used two main arguments to defend slavery. These are that their version was more humane, and that slavery was in some sense, a necessary evil.<br />
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The Nice Version of Slavery Argument.</h3>
This is often seen in pop-apologist defenses of ancient Judeao-Christian slavery. Apparently all slavery in the ancients kingdoms of Israel was voluntary debt-bondage, of limited scope (rolls eyes). There's nothing wrong with slavery therefore, <b>if </b>it is practiced by ancient Israelites or Christians.<br />
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This is a completely made-up argument. The OT rules on slave ownership make it clear manumission-guarantees were limited to Jewish males. Foreign slaves did not get the right to be freed after 6 years. The OT also describes slaves taken in warfare. Exodus 21:20-21 contradicts alleged humane nature of this ancient slavery by sanctioning the beating of slaves, and more explicitly, defining them as <b>property</b> rather than human beings.<br />
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Despite many Christians today wanting to distance themselves from pro-slavery arguments, this 'nice slavery' defense is echoed in later centuries. The motif of the kind slaver-owner, solicitous of their slaves' welfare, was commonly employed to defend slavery.<br />
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"<i>We ought to consider whether the negroes in a well regulated plantation, under the protection of a kind master, do not enjoy as great, nay, even greater advantages than when under their own despotic governments</i>" - Michael Renwick Sergeant</blockquote>
This tries to justify slavery as welfare-enhancing. While slavery isn't a good thing <i>per se</i>, the slaves are better off than in their own countries. Or even better, by being exposed to Christianity they would become Christian and so, save their souls. Slavery was a small, temporal price to pay for an eternity in heaven. And with such justifications, moral slippage occurs.<br />
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<i>The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name</i>.<br />
- Mark Twain <u>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court</u></blockquote>
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The Necessary Evil Argument</h3>
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This argument is duplicated by slavery apologists, both modern and historical. Arguments from the 18th (and 19th Centuries in antebellum US) were that slavery had benefits. It civilised or Christianised the barbaric and pagan peoples of Africa. </div>
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<i>The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. - </i>Robert E Lee. </blockquote>
Modern apologists do not balk at similar arguments. Slavery was necessary for ancient societies and economies. <br />
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<i>Noting that Jesus did not instruct followers to abolish slavery ignores the fact that slavery was often voluntary and civil <b>and a component of societal functioning in Biblical times </b>- </i><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/whip-it-good-sjt-takes-on-slavery.html">Pop-Apologist Stephanie Thomson</a></blockquote>
I note that there are other forms of 'unfree' labour that ancient economies could use instead. Ancient Egypt and China used a corvee system of mass labour conscription in agricultural slack-months, to undertake public works. And while slavery did exist in Ancient China, there were attempts to abolish it. The Han emperor Wang Mang did so in 9 CE- <b>during</b> the lifetime of Jesus. Serfdom in various forms was also possible. Slavery was not necessary.<br />
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But wait, Christians ended slavery</h3>
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It seems always odd the Christians also want plaudits for ending slavery in the West. While I appreciate the efforts of all who were involved in abolition movements, the reality is they were also strongly opposed by Christians. Some were still defending slavery when the Federal Army's guns reached Richmond. Most people for much of Christendom's history, were not like Wilberforce. </div>
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One thing that also struck me is how much the abolition arguments emphasised the cruelty and brutality of slavery, rather than Christian arguments for ending it. It seems odd that if the argument against slavery really was theological, that this was employed so rarely. </div>
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The problem is also that Christians <b>had</b> to end slavery because no-one else could. They had the political power in the West. It wasn't the Atheists or Buddhists in Western countries that could abolish slavery. They had no power to do so. And when slavery has been legal for say, 90% of your religion's history, it's not earning the religion much credit to finally abolish it. That's taken far too long and the agonising suffering slavery produced reached too great a scale. </div>
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Summary</h3>
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It seems ironic that modern apologists use arguments that mimic those from people they claim to oppose. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was terrible. Antebellum slavery was not wonderful. Both were defended by Christians for centuries. </div>
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Overall, I find the arguments defending historical slavery inadequate and unconvincing. They lack a proper moral justification. It seems instead they require a degree of moral slippage that people outside these faiths, would balk at. In ancient times, few had the courage and moral character to seek the abolishment of slavery. Moses, Jesus and Mohammad were not among them. I <b>cannot reconcile</b> slavery with the alleged morality of the Abrahamic prophets and deity. </div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-52131433871505028372017-11-29T13:01:00.002-08:002017-12-04T16:40:03.036-08:00Atheism and the meaning of lifeI had a recent conversation on Twitter with a Christian on whether my life has meaning. Many such theists seem to believe that life can have <b>no</b> meaning for atheists. The fact that we can be out there, enjoying life and the experiences it offers, seems impossible for some to grasp.<br />
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Problem 1: The Permanence Assertion</h3>
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The first problem is that argument is built on an <b>assertion.</b> The assertion is that an experience has to be <b>permanent</b> for it to have meaning. The assertion is never proven, it is obstinately accepted by fiat by the theist. Yet, I know that holding my daughter the moment she was born, was an extremely meaningful experience. It still provokes a powerful reaction in me. That eventually I'll be dead, does not alter the fact that I felt something real, that it did have meaning for me. It doesn't have to be a permanent experience to have meaning.<br />
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If I don't have the belief that permanence is a prerequisite for meaning, it's not enough to keep repeating that assertion. You need to produce a strong argument, not insults, to establish it. I've never heard such an argument.<br />
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Problem 2: An eternal afterlife makes this life meaningless</h3>
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This can be established by comparing the different outcomes under different assumptions about an afterlife.<br />
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Lets suppose however, that each experience in Heaven gives a payoff of B, you average an annual level of happiness of b when you're alive in the mortal realm, and that each torment in Hell gives you a payoff of -H. With Heaven being superior to this life, and Hell being worse, let's simply say the B > b > -H.<br />
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Both Heaven and Hell are eternal, and thus provide you with an infinite benefit (or harm) stream.<br />
Hence the actual payoff to being in heaven is ∞B and the payoff to being in hell is ∞(-H). With these being infinite streams, then the B and and -H is not really relevant. Heaven has an infinitely positive good payoff, Hell an infinitely negative payoff. This is largely the logic behind Pascal's Wager. In that wager doesn't matter how unlikely you think Christianity is true, you will always win by being a Christian (or feigning being one). The size of the payoff completely dominates the probabilities.<br />
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Your earthly existence, assuming you generally enjoyed life, has a payoff of <i>tb</i>, where <i>t</i> is the number of years you lived. This has to be <b>finite</b>. Nobody is immortal.<br />
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So the ratio of payoffs of of your mortal life to heaven is<i> tb</i>/∞, or zero (0). In short, your mortal life is such a tiny fraction of your total existence that all your earthly experiences vanish to nothingness. You may as well shuffle off to the afterlife as fast as you can.<br />
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If we change the assumptions to an atheist one, then there is no afterlife. All the afterlife payoffs drop to zero. Which means the ratio of payoffs to a mortal life, to the after life, is <i>tb</i>/0. With denominator being 0, the ratio is ∞. In short, every experience now is of profound value when we recognise its finite. The <b>only way life can have meaning, is if it is finite in nature.</b><br />
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Problem 3: the Omniscience Dilemma</h3>
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It gets worse if the deity is omniscient (all-knowing) as is attributed to the Abrahamic god Yaweh. Now its not just short, finite life you face that produces meaningless. Because this deity knew before you were born, where you would end up after death. If you're Hell-bound, because say you voted for Hillary Clinton or had some gay friends, Yaweh knows you can't change anything to escape Hell. You'll exist for an insignfiicant fraction of time, before suffering horrible torture. The same argument applies to heaven. Life isn't really a test if your deity already knows you're going to pass and get to Heaven. What possible meaning can life have, if there's not a single thing you can change to avoid your eternal fate?<br />
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Summary</h3>
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The argument atheists can have no meaning to their life is not based on rational deliberation. I suspect rather, it's based on being intimidated by mortality and hoping a pact with an ancient god will allow the theist to escape this. People do derive however, meaning from their lives in varied ways. Living according to the values of some ancient Near Eastern pastoralists doesn't really satisfy the goals of all. Indeed, I'm surprised anyone finds it satisfying.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-21775120835909591492017-07-06T17:56:00.000-07:002018-11-29T13:22:34.540-08:00Let's Run<h3>
Introduction</h3>
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This isn't so much a blogpost on running. It's a personal account, that includes running. Maybe it's important. Maybe it's not. But it gives some perspective at least, on myself. If anyone is interested.<br />
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The Human Runner</h3>
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The human body is well adapted to running. We have relatively long legs, a narrow pelvis, a valgus knee and a rigid toe. Within the animal kingdom, we are superb endurance runners. Many of us can, and will run 42 km without stopping. Few animals can match that. We do it because its fun. We do it because it's a challenge.<br />
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I find running to be calming (running does produce good things). It gets you outside, the kilometers pass by your running shoes, for a time modern life is shut out. You don't have to think, to interact, just settle into a rhythm and run. You're out feeling the sun, or the wind, or the rain. That inner African plains ape is released.<br />
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<b>The Teenage Runner</b></h3>
I wasn't particularly athletic before then. I hit the teen years though, as family-life took a hit. It's somewhat too personal to go into here, and there's nothing unique about the teenage years being rough. Still, one relationship has never recovered. Running was therapeutic. It was an escape. I started to win races. <br />
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Later we moved. It was to a rural village. There wasn't a lot of things to do there. By the time I was 15, there were 5 other boys my age there. By the end of the year, only 2 of us were left alive.<br />
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J took the longest to die. He was smart. Really smart. He was probably smarter than I was (and I've got a PhD so not lacking there). He got leukemia though. The bad kind. He withered away over the months and died.<br />
<br />
His sister committed suicide a few years later. <br />
<br />
I stayed in contact with his mother for years afterward.<br />
<br />
K was also my age. A gangly kid teenage boy. Got on well with lots of people. He died suddenly. One day he was catching the bus to school with us. Then he wasn't. He swung some irrigation pipes over his shoulder at his farm. They hit power lines.<br />
<br />
I never saw his mother smile again.<br />
<br />
I wasn't close to the other two. They died in a car crash. Old cars, rural roads and teenage boy drivers aren't a good combination. It was still a shock. There were too many funerals that year.<br />
<br />
I ran a lot. It helped. There was an isolated lake over
some hills I could reach if I wanted to. I could disappear for a while.
Feel the dry summer grass crunch under my shoes. Feel the sun on my
skin. I ran a practice marathon once, just to see if I could do it. And I
got fast and fit. By the time I'd finished High School I'd got several
athletics awards and cups.<br />
<br />
I met the only other survivor of that year, G, years later at his mother's funeral. He was the one with the prison guard. He'd been let out for the occasion. He'd got fat. Teeth were missing. We locked eyes, but he didn't recognise me. I remembered though. <br />
<br />
I still think of J. He'd already won scholarships at his age. He should have lived. <br />
<br />
<h3>
The Raw Runner</h3>
I'd got back from university for a summer break. Xmas had past. I was at remote beach in NZ. R was also there. Older than I was. Wife had died a bit earlier. That was the catalyst. <br />
<br />
He drowned himself. <br />
<br />
It was before cellphones hit the market, not that we'd have had coverage out there. Getting to a landline took time. That sense of panic is still there, despite the years. It took 3 hours from the drowning, to when emergency services arrived at the beach.<br />
<br />
That's not an optimal duration to be left with a dead body. <br />
<br />
The nightmares started soon after. Sleeping crashed. Being asleep was worse than being awake.<br />
<br />
I ran in the night instead. If you push your body to the limits of physical exhaustion, you can over-ride the brain. You'll get some sleep. My feet quickly got blisters. The blisters would burst or bleed. And I'd keep running.<br />
<br />
After a while the insomnia wins. There are vast holes in my memory from that year. I'd hallucinate stuff. <br />
<br />
That was the first time I used therapy. I was practically ordered to by the University. There were things outside my friends' experiences. Outside their comprehension. It needed something for the experts. <br />
<br />
<i>Edit: I've only ever told one other person the full story of those hours at the beach. And that was my therapist. Nobody else really knows. Not my parents. Not my wife. I can't. </i><br />
<br />
I didn't stop running. But I eased back on the damage.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Everybody Hurts </h3>
<br />
I wasn't ignorant of what it was like to parent a child with a disability. My uncle R was born late in my grandparents lives. He had <i>spina bifida</i>. And significant intellectual impairment. It was tough on my grandparents. It was from an era where there was little social support for such problems. He died when he was a teenager. As my parents were starting their family. All that is left of him is a few scattered memories and a name on a tombstone.<br />
<br />
At the very end, my grandmother would dream of him and her late husband. Despite the gulf of the decades, and numerous children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren, it was R she came back to.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Something is Wrong</h3>
He didn't talk. That was the first sign. I read to him every night. It was part of the therapy. Sometimes my wife would come in to find us both asleep, book open in my hand. It exhausted us. <br />
<br />
Along the way there was the trips to the hospital. The school years, when nobody ever invited him to a birthday party, or to hang out after school. The sudden collapses and seizures without warning. You entered the world of MRIs, and of specialists. Of teetering on that edge of uncertainty of whether it was a terminal illness or not. Of battling the system for the promised support, that never seemed to be as timely or as fulsome as promised.<br />
<br />
And along the way, your friends and family find reasons not to visit as often.<br />
<br />
Eventually you notice they don't come at all.<br />
<br />
It's not just the people with disabilities who get marginalised, and pushed to the edges and cracks of society. Their families get carried along with them. <br />
<br />
I like to run. It takes me back to those years when I was running as a teenager. That for a period of time, the world is calmer and simpler. I'm slower than I was then. But the calm of eating up the kilometers in running shoes remains.<br />
<br />
So I run.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-77794265586466284572017-05-25T16:13:00.002-07:002017-07-06T18:33:29.719-07:00On the side of the angels?<h2>
Or, a closer look at Morality</h2>
One of the popular arguments for deities (specifically the Abrahamic god) is based on morality. This has always surprised me. The argument that our morality is derived from this deity seems absurd. The idea that we'd get morality from an ancient blood-god that commanded and committed genocide, seems, well, beyond ridiculous. It's way out there in cloud-cuckoo land.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, it merits a deeper response. Many theists seem fond of it. I'm even accused of borrowing my morals from Christianity (rolls eyes). One assumes if I was to borrow my morals from some other belief system, it wouldn't be one with a body-count as high as Christianity. Or Islam. <br />
<br />
The argument roughly is that humans have objective morals, objective morals can only come from gods that need living creatures killed to deter its retribution, therefore this god exists.<br />
<br />
<h3>
1. Objective or Subjective Morals?</h3>
The first problem is that a <b>false dichotomy</b> is created with morals. Borrowing from axiology (philosophy of values) it is asserted that locus of morality is either the object, or the subject. If morality is objective, all the subject need do is recognise what is moral in that case. Morality is external to the subject. <br />
<br />
If morality is subjective, the subject applies their values to the relevant case. It is thus the subject that determines if something is moral. Morality is internal to the subject. <br />
<br />
The crucial difference is that we would not disagree on what is moral, it it is objective. It can't change. It's a property of that case. We can only disagree if morals are subjective.<br />
<br />
This however, is not the only way morals could be classed. We could also distinguish that is authoritarian, and that which is rational. The challenge for theists is explaining why their morality is objective, rather than authoritarian.<br />
<br />
Let's illustrate. The bible contains the edict to kill witches. Exodus 22:18 - "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". For centuries, thousands and thousands of people were killed by Christians for witchcraft. It continues in some parts of the world. It is a merciless and cruel act, tragically based on a fictional crime.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-57xvkCuVZCI/VdPKPm7AagI/AAAAAAAAAb8/m63JyBwRIx8o0qeeulDAz8quWedMLLQFQCPcB/s1600/People_burned_as_heretics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="504" height="227" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-57xvkCuVZCI/VdPKPm7AagI/AAAAAAAAAb8/m63JyBwRIx8o0qeeulDAz8quWedMLLQFQCPcB/s320/People_burned_as_heretics.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
It's clearly not an application of a subjective, or rational, moral philosophy. If the only option is objective, then it must be the objectively moral thing to do. It is also vile and repugnant. In truth, it is not objective. It is <b>authoritarian</b>. And for most of Christianity's history, it was <b>also </b>the right thing to do. So, no, I don't borrow my morals from Christianity!<br />
<br />
<h3>
2. Do Objective Morals Exist?</h3>
What would it take to show that morals are objective? This requires finding a moral rule that we agree is moral, but is inexplicable by other means. I can conceive of a minimum of two tests.<br />
<br />
<h4>
a) The Evolutionary Test</h4>
Evolutionary biology provides several mechanisms to account for why humans would adopt rules and behaviours we would class as moral. These include kin-selection and reciprocal altruism. In addition, some behaviours can be Evolutionary Stable Strategies. Their evolutionary advantages make them stable and are selected for in successful societies.<br />
<br />
Parental care is easily explained by kin-selection mechanisms. Charity toward others also appears to be an ESS. Early human societies would have suffered from a lot of food variance. Being willing to sharing food acts like an insurance policy for all. An unwillingness to share would be punished by others refusing to share. This would hurt the selfish during times they suffered food shortages. <br />
<br />
In short, we expect certain rules and behaviours to be selected for because they are <b>evolutionary stable </b>or <b>advantageous</b>. They benefited humans, in the communities they lived in.<br />
<br />
<h4>
b) The Rawlsian Contractarian Test</h4>
Rawls is not an explicit Contractarian. Rather he is a hypothetical Contractarian. Whether a rule is moral or not, can be evaluated <b>rationally </b>by all parties. If the parties agree on the rule, it can be considered moral. To prompt rational consideration, Rawls uses the veil of ignorance. Nobody knows whether they will be the victim of such a rule, or a benefactor. This ignorance forces everyone to consider everyone. <br />
<br />
Hence, a Contractarian would argue that say, killing people for witchcraft or owning blacks as slaves, is immoral. The parties would not agree such acts are moral out of concern they could be victimised by the rule.<br />
<br />
This makes Contractarian rules, neither purely subjective nor objective. It makes moral rules a rational product of human societies. <br />
<br />
<h4>
c) Do such rules exist?</h4>
There are many Christian rules that fail the tests above. The problem is they're <b>also immoral</b>. Whether it is the public execution of non-virgin brides, or the killing of Sabbath stick-gatherers, they don't appear moral.<br />
<br />
<h3>
3. Objective Morals Don't Exist</h3>
The morality argument fails on its first premise. Objective morals don't appear to exist. What is considered moral changes. Our attitude to slavery has changed, in many parts of the world, so has attitudes to divorce, gay marriage, women's suffrage and capital punishment. Applying the brutal and authoritarian morality of the slave-owners of the biblical era would get you arrested today.<br />
<br />
These changes in morality are more consistent with an explicit Contractarian moral philosophy. We debate what is moral. We try to consider the welfare effects not on us, but others. And what was once moral, like slavery, becomes immoral. What was once immoral, like homosexuality, is no longer.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
4. Conclusion</h3>
The argument that the Abrahamic god is the source of our moral sense is ridiculous. It relies on a false dichotomy between objective and subjective morals. It confuses authoritarian, or evolutionary stable rules, as objective morals. And it turns a blind eye to the atrocities undertaken, and commanded by the Abrahamic god.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-12497218114353453432017-05-17T12:20:00.000-07:002017-07-06T17:06:21.210-07:00Index: Brave ChristiansI read and debunked SJ Thomason's (aka @lead1225 on twitter) "<a href="https://christianapologistweb.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/why-were-early-christians-so-brave/?frame-nonce=6d2fbf6b44">Brave Christian</a>" argument for god, so you don't have to<br />
<br />
Basically, it ignores contemporaneous martyrdom in other Jewish sects, provides a very low body count of early Christians, ignores natural explanations of Paul's vision and conflates an historic Jesus with the gospel Jesus.<br />
<br />
The long versions:<br />
Part 1: <a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/introduction-christian-sj-thomason-runs.html">Not a fan of Carrier</a><br />
<br />
Part 2: <a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/are-we-there-yet-sjt-tries-to-find-some.html">Will the brave Christians standup?</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-2884741539215314652017-05-11T17:26:00.000-07:002018-03-27T15:24:56.244-07:00Death and Legend in Judea<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Introduction</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Well, Easter has come and gone again. That seems to be a good time to talk about the resurrection. Because many Christians have been talking about it. How else can we explain the empty tomb if Jesus wasn't magically resurrected via the power of an ancient bloodgod? It's the only explanation that makes sense! (rolls eyes)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The problem with the question is its loaded nature. The empty tomb is presented as a fact. This has some major credibility problems.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Problem 1: Timing</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The empty tomb isn't used as proof of Jesus' divinity and resurrection until we get to the gospels. The (genuine) letters we have from Paul do not mention it. Nor is it present in other early NT letters. For something that's supposed to convince us all that Jesus was divine and resurrected, <b>its absence for decades in early Christianity literature is astonishing. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The gospels are <i>generally</i> reckoned to be written after Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans (70 CE) because they're not referenced in earlier Christian documents. Paul seems completely unaware of them. And prophecies of Jerusalem being sacked are <i>always</i> easier to make <i>after</i> the event...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The sequence for the gospels is usually reckoned as Mark, followed by Luke and Matthew, and finally John. This spans around 30-40 years. And all are long after the alleged event. The gap between when the empty tomb alleged occurred and when it's first mentioned is extraordinarily large.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Edit: this alone persuades me that the empty tomb was a later contrivance. </i></span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Problem 2: Inconsistencies</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Despite the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) patently using the same sources, they can't keep the empty tomb story straight. Throw in John and it gets worse. The number of women who went to the tomb, when they went, what they saw at the tomb, what they did afterward, whether they were believed or not are all inconsistent across the gospels. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Apologist gambit is to assert that this is what we expect with eye-witness accounts. No. It's consistent with a bunch of people who didn't balk at making things up to sell their religion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: helvetica neue, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Edit: the women are not the only inconsistency of course. E.g. Matthew has guards and a seal that everyone else seems to forget. The accounts are more what we'd expect with oral traditions and attempts to establish the orthodoxy or early doctrines over several decades.</i></span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Problem 3: It conflicts with Roman practice</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As far as we can tell Romans did not normally allow crucified victims to get buried in tombs. Crassus left thousands of ex-slaves rotting on crosses after the suppression of the Slave revolt. Normally crucified victims were left aloft to be picked clean by birds and the like. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To be buried, and buried ceremoniously instead of in a common pit, is a deviation that begs for explanation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Edit: this is the weakest objection I have, and one that Richard Carrier has explained to my satisfaction. It is highly likely Romans allowed the locals to maintain their traditional burial practices. </i></span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Problem 4: Joseph of Arimathea</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It has always struck me how much of a <i>Deus ex Machina </i>Joseph plays. In order to get Jesus from the cross, into a tomb and in the time available, requires a very powerful and capable character. There's nobody in the disciples capable of pulling this off.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Enter Joseph. He fixes all the problems with the plot. First, he's politically powerful. He's part of the council that condemned Jesus. But like all superhero fiction, he has a secret identity. He's also a disciple of Jesus. He's influential enough to persuade Pilate to take the body off the cross. He's also rich. This is also necessary for the plot. They have to buy linen cloth and 100 pounds of myrrh and aloe that evening. He's also <i>already</i> got a tomb ready. Every plot-hole (bar one) is immediately fixed. Evening might be approaching when he asked Pilate for the body, but Jesus is lying in a shroud, in a tomb, with a stone covering the entrance in time for his resurrection. Phew!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The remaining plot hole of course, is there isn't enough <a href="http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2007/06/joseph-of-arimathea-was-probably.html">time to get this all done in the time available. </a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Joseph's appearance in the story is dramatic. He's not mentioned in the gospels before this. And he disappears just as dramatically. He's never mentioned again. He's not mentioned in Acts, he's not mentioned in any of the letters preceding the gospels. Paul, Peter and James have no recollection of him at all. He's a powerful and connected guy with massive influence, and nobody mentions him?! Amazing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Joseph only has one job. He appears at exactly the right time to fill in a bunch of critical plot-holes, and then disappears. He has the traits of a <a href="http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2007/06/joseph-of-arimathea-was-probably.html">literary invention </a>that appears decades later when the empty tomb story gets added to the Jesus legend- not the traits of an historic person. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Edit: Even the locale of Arimathea appears made up. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(If you want a much deeper analysis of Joseph of Arimathea, I recommend<a href="http://www.debunking-christianity.com/2007/06/joseph-of-arimathea-was-probably.html"> John Loftus' blog</a>).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Conclusion</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I don't feel that I need to explain the empty tomb, because I don't think there was one. Early Christendom was plagued with doctrinal problems. Hints of this are preserved in the letters of Paul, James and others. This also created a range of heretical sects, such as the Arians. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The gospels weren't written to be histories. They were written to convince people that Jesus was the Messiah and of divine origin. And by drawing on the authority of Jesus and the early disciples, they could be used to <b>resolve</b> doctrinal disputes. Was the resurrection a mostly spiritual personal visionary event? Or was it a physical event? For anyone who believed in a physical resurrection, the canonical Gospels make a perfect argument. And they get more elaborate the later the gospel is composed. It's the last gospel, John, that introduces Thomas as the clincher for the physical resurrection. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So either major scientific laws were broken to miraculously bring the offspring of an ancient god and virgin back to life. Or the belief that the resurrection was a physical event evolved slowly in a community that was willing to add embellishments that showed this, in retelling, over decades. It's not really difficult deciding what's the least plausible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-48415158985777921282017-04-08T16:58:00.001-07:002017-04-08T16:58:27.068-07:00Are we there yet? SJT tries to find some brave Christians<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Part 2: Are we there yet?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Short Version</span></h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT quotes a lot of <b>secondary sources</b> to claim persecutions were common, still only comes up with Nero's persecution in Rome in 64 CE, makes some stuff up (Christianity was illegal until Constantine) and provides a pitiful body-count to support her early Christians were brave claim<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Long Version </span></h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Carrier’s blog opines that the apostles “died for a vision.” He then proceeds to refer to a debate he had with Bass, stating that “He couldn’t even establish that they could have avoided their deaths by recanting. Or even that what they died for was their belief in the resurrection, rather than their moral vision for society, or (I could have added) some other belief they wouldn’t recant—such as their already-Jewish refusal to worship pagan gods, the only thing Pliny really ever killed Christians for (the resurrection was never even at issue); and that’s the <b><i>only explicitly eyewitness account we have of any Christians being killed for anything in the whole first hundred years of the religion</i></b>. (my emphasis added)”</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As reported by Wawro (2008) in the Historical Atlas, the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus reported that “Nero punished Christians for their role in the April 64 CE fire in Rome’s Circus Maximus using the following means:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He had them covered with animal skins and let them be eaten by dogs.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He had them nailed to crosses.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He had them burned as torches for light after sundown” (Wawro, 2008, page 85)</span></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. Tacitus was born in the provinces in 56 or 57 CE. He <b>wasn't </b>an eyewitness. And these Christians were killed as scapegoats. So Carrier's reasoning is sound, recanting wouldn't have done a thing. So you have one persecution, from Rome, in 64 CE. Which is about 30 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. I'm dubious a lot of the converts there witnessed the resurrection decades earlier in Jerusalem. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: In Tacitus Annals 15,44, Tacitus states “Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dross of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Carrier is still correct. Tacitus is not <b>explicitly an eyewitness</b>. Recanting would have not saved them as they were scapegoats. They weren't killed for believing in the resurrection, but the claim they started they fire in Rome. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The major flaw in your argument is you cannot identify any early Christians who 'witnessed the resurrection' sic who were killed by Nero. Which is going to be hard because it is 30 years later and a long way from Jerusalem. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Irrelevant: <strike>“Despite persecutions for the next 150 years, the new Christian Church spread into France, Spain, North Africa, and Mesopotamia. The once small sect devoted to Jesus Christ grew to between 5 and 6 million by 300 CE. By 350 CE, the number of Christians in the Roman Empire was over 33 million, and Christianity had become a universal religion” (Wawro 2008, page 85). </strike></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: In other words, between 5 and 6 million Christians were willing to worship Jesus illegally in the first few hundred years following Jesus’ resurrection. In 312 AD, Constantine had a vision of a Christian symbol, which led to a battle victory and the legalization of Christianity, ending the persecutions of early Christians.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. And now you're just lying. Christianity was only illegal briefly during the reign of Valerian over <b>200 years later </b>than the alleged resurrection. One brief persecution in Rome under Nero does not mean Christianity was illegal up to Constantine. Most of your 5-6 million Christians would never have witnessed the resurrection either. They would have lived in the wrong time period, or the wrong location. </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Does it seem reasonable to determine that millions of early Christians would risk their lives by worshipping illegally to follow a “vision” or “hallucination” by a tentmaker named Paul? </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. If they knew it was an hallucination, sure, that'd be unreasonable. If they thought it was a genuine religious experience- such as you do- why not? And you have failed completely, to show that it was a risky religion to belong to. Josephus doesn't mention anything about them being persecuted and he's pretty good at covering Jewish sects between 35 and 70 CE. Now the Zealots. <b>That </b>was dangerous to belong to. The body count at Masada alone seemed much higher than anything described in Acts. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It took over 30 years after the alleged crucifixion before Nero decided to persecute some Christians in Rome (and there's no evidence that this went wider than Rome). That's pretty good compared to the regular religious violence recorded in Josephus in Judea. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Additionally, Paul’s supposed hallucination did not include the gospel accounts of Jesus and accounts of the many miracles He performed, including the Resurrection. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. Bingo. His hallucination didn't include any corroborating detail about the <b>gospel Jesus</b>. Like the gospel Jesus never existed... </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is the miracles, including the Resurrection, which drove Christians to risk their lives. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6. 1 Corinthians, written by Paul decades before the gospels were compiled, has this little nugget</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom...</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Somehow Paul was oblivious to the signs the Jews wanted? No fulfilled prophecies? No miracles? The gospels are full of them. Yet he doesn't tell people people to believe because of miracles. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You <b>still haven't shown</b> it was a risky religion to belong to. </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Paul’s supposed vision, or hallucination, of a celestial Jesus obviously excluded same.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Below I’ve listed some of Jesus’ miracles:</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">8. This is so boring. These aren't actual facts you can use. These are what early Christians came to believe. The fact there is no corroborating extra-biblical evidence for these miracles, and Paul earlier seemed unaware of them, ruins their credibility. That and the fact they're impossible<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">!</span> The gospels were written decades later than the alleged life of Jesus. That's plenty of time for various legends and myths to be promoted and adopted as 'true' by the time the gospels were composed. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus turns water into wine (John 2:1-12)</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus heals an official’s son without going to see the boy (John 4:46-54).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus heals a crippled man on the Sabbath (John 5:1-17).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus feeds 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish (Matthew 14:19-21; Mark 6:30-34; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-14).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus walks on water (Matthew 14:22-32; Mark 6:47-52; John 6:16-21).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus heals a man born blind (John 9:1-41).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-44).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus heals a bleeding woman (Matthew 9:2-7; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus calms a storm (Matthew 8:23-27; Mark 4:37-41; Luke 8:22-25).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus heals a paralyzed man (Matthew 9:2-7; Mark 2:3-12; Luke 5:18-26).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jesus resurrected from the dead (Matthew 28:5-6; Mark 16:6; Luke 24; John 20).</span></strike></li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Additionally, does it seem reasonable that a tentmaker invent his own tale of Christianity when the rewards of crafting such a story did not exist? </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">9. Just because he <b>believed</b> he had a genuine encounter with some manifestation of Jesus, does not make this a fact. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Paul boasted about his suffering because he truly believed in a greater purpose, which was glorifying Jesus and advancing in heaven. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10. Right, because people who start religions are so trustworthy and reliable when it comes to what they say. Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Jim Jones. People who were as straight as an a arrow. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You're putting a lot of faith in the words of guy who seemed oddly ignorant of much of the gospel Jesus. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Paul suffered great peril, as documented in the books he wrote. This suffering occurred after his conversion from a Jewish persecutor of Christians to a Christian persecuted by Jews.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">11. Again. So what? If he <b>genuinely </b>believed his <b>vision</b> was the correct manifestation of Jesus, that works. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Paul, the author of thirteen New Testament books, offers one of the most compelling stories of a transformation. Paul (known as Saul) was on the road to Damascus in his effort to identify and arrest early Christians for illegal worship. “Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me.’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked. ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’ (Acts 9-1-6). Paul immediately converted to the Way and became one of its most ardent followers who was beaten, imprisoned, and eventually beheaded all in Jesus’ name.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">12. You have a sample size of one! You describe an event that has a suspiciously odd similarity to a seizure. This when epileptic seizures are known to cause increased religious experience and conversions. And you've got exactly <b>one </b>prominent Christian killed between the alleged crucifixion and the sack of Jerusalem. And this is a guy who could <b>never</b> have witnessed the resurrection. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />In 2 Corinthians 16:26-27, Paul states: “I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.” 2 Corinthians 12:10 adds: “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Clearly, Paul was not living an easy life once he decided to follow Jesus.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">13. Again, your sample size of early Christian bravery is stuck at a <b>sample size</b> of <b>one</b>. Even if you throw in James and Stephen (noting Stephen was a later convert who didn't witness the resurrection either), that's about one prominent Christian a decade. Only one of which, could have experienced the resurrection of Jesus. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And speaking as someone whose field-work in conservation in developing countries has entailed a lot of that above, I'm not sure why Paul's "sacrifice" should mean anything. At least he believed he was securing for himself a wonderful afterlife. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT:<strike> As C.S. Lewis said, “I didn’t go to religion to make me ‘happy.’ I always knew a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">14. All arguments can be improved by <b>not</b> quoting CS Lewis. </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Carrier points to times in history in which people have been “gullible,” thereby generalizing all gullible people into a basket of gullibles into which he throws early Christians. He implies that the gullible within the “Heaven’s Gate Cult” are similar to early Christians and that all Christians are “gullible.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">15. No, you're misrepresenting that point. The reality is that ancient peoples who were semi-literate, had little scientific knowledge and saw the supernatural- including gods- everywhere- aren't a hard sell. Even Julius Caesar got to be a god. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We do know that people have been willing to make enormous personal sacrifices, down to death, for their gods. Whether it is the Zealots fighting Vespasian, or the Ismailian assassins operating out of 12th C Syria, or kamikaze pilots during World War two, or suicide bombers in the Middle East, it happens. Dying for religious beliefs is depressingly common. </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: More boring bits deleted:<strike> I agree that some people are gullible within every group, as were the adherents to atheist despots like Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, and Stalin, yet I would never make the assertion that the gullibility of Stalin’s followers applies to atheists today (following Carrier’s logic that all atheists are “gullible”). I also know that the vast majority of atheists today abhor the acts of Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse Tung, so I would never throw them into a basket of atheists with Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse Tung.</strike><strike>Carrier states: </strike></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Thus countless people die for a ‘lie’ in the sense that they don’t know that what they are dying for is false. This is most obviously true for non-eyewitnesses, who die merely for trusting someone else’s word (many religions have many examples of this happening, from Mormonism to Islam to Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, and beyond). But it’s also true for “eyewitnesses,” whose own minds have lied to them. And also, of course, eyewitnesses who are being conned (and indeed many a person has been fully convinced of something that was in fact a perpetrated sham). And also witnesses who aren’t sure of what they saw, but who believe they will gain eternal life if what they saw is what they are told it was, or want it to be—convincing themselves it must be true, merely to avoid personal despair.”</span></strike></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strike>Rather than dig into the psychology behind the movement of early Christians, Carrier implies that their minds have lied to them, they are following a perpetrated sham, and that the early Christians (who, again, were burned and nailed to crosses), believed to “avoid personal despair.” </strike>Other more honest atheists with whom I’ve had these conversations acknowledge that early Christians truly believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">16. Again, I don't have a dog in this fight. Believing in the resurrection is part of the beliefs of Christianity. Becoming Christian means accepting that. It doesn't make the resurrection true, or early Christians brave. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Early Christians weren’t merely following the hallucination of Paul. They believed Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. Jesus’ birth was predicted in the scriptures, as noted here:</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">17. Oh please. You're doing that amateur apologetic thing of finding allegorical and vague verses that can be manipulated into matching the gospel Jesus. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strike>Isaiah 9:6 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.</strike> stuff deleted </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Roman history books included references to Jesus, as noted here (Miller, 2007, page 346):</span></blockquote>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Antiquities of the Jews, </i>by Joseph (about 93-94). “There was a wise man who was called Jesus, and His conduct was good…Pilate condemned Him to be crucified…His disciples didn’t abandon their loyalty to Him. They reported that He appeared to them three days after His crucifixion that He was alive.”</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">18. This is from the <i>Testimonium Flavianum </i>and much of it is thought to represent later Christian editing. Note that Josephus was not an eyewitness and wrote the Antiquities nearly 60 years after the events.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He also didn't mention that the early Christians were brave, nor corroborates the miracles or the resurrection. </span></div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Annals of Imperial Rome</i>, by Tacitus (about 55 – 120). “Christ suffered the ultimate penalty at the hands of procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberius was emperor of Rome.”</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">19. The Annals were written in the early 2nd Century. It does not corroborate the resurrection of Jesus, any miracles, or mention the conspicuous bravery sic of the early Christians. All it mentions is something early Christians already believed, which Tacitus could easily got from them. </span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>The Lives of the Caesars, </i>by Suetonius (about 70-130). “Chrestus caused the riots in Rome in AD 49. This is probably a reference to Christ and to the hostility that erupted when traditional Jews clashed with Jews who believed Jesus was the promised Messiah. Acts 18:2 supports this theory, reporting that Claudius Caesar expelled all Jews from Rome during this time.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">20. This is very vague. You have to equate Chrestus with Christ, and overlook that he's being described as <b>still</b> alive. Still no corroboration of the gospel Jesus, resurrection or bravery of E Christians. </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Carrier goes on to state that “it’s also possible for people to die for what they know is a lie.”<br />Yes, this is possible if the death were unexpected, yet for Carrier to suggest that early Christians, whom either expected or acknowledged the possibility of death, beatings, or imprisonment, knew in their minds that what they were doing was in vain obliterates any rational theories of human behavior and psychology.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">21. Wow, what a Strawman Argument. Here's a simple concept. Early Christians believed they same way you and other Christians believe. They were told a story and they bought it. They didn't believe because they personally witnessed anything. They believed because conversion tactics in that period worked.</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">People of sound minds make decisions that maximize their outcomes.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">People of sound minds weigh benefits against drawbacks when making decisions.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">22. And as Pascal's Wager reminds us, Christianity is supposed to generate an enormous benefit for belief in the afterlife, and a horrific cost if they don't. </span></div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Early Christians wanted to maximize their chances of going to heaven by following Jesus.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">23. And martyrdom pretty much gives you an automatic pass into heaven.</span></div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Early Christians weighed the benefits of going to heaven and following Jesus against the risks of imprisonment and death.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">24. So one on side, we have an infinite eternal benefit stream, and on the other a fairly trivial risk of death and persecution. That pretty much ensures the Benefit-Cost ratio is all on the joining Christianity side. </span></div>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Had early Christians determined the risks outweighed the benefits (and considered it all a lie), they would have recanted their testimonies in support of Jesus.</span></li>
</ol>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">25. Where do you get that anyone thinks they all knew it was a lie? <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> thought </span></span>Carrier argu<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ed the basis of</span> Paul's belief was an hallucinat<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ion</span>, not lied. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“In the centuries that followed, the believers in Jesus, called Christians, braved horrible persecution to found communities across the Roman Empire” (Belt, 2014).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">26. And another<b> secondary source</b>. That actually lists<b> zero </b>persecutions. Here's an idea. The reason the early church grew quite happily, is they weren't persecuted by and large. They were tolerated. Christians didn't start insurrections. They paid their taxes. They weren't worth the effort of persecution. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Carrier then questions whether saints such as Peter, Jesus half-brother James, Stephen were (1) martyred and if they indeed were martyred, he questions whether they (2) were martyred for what they believed or for what they saw.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">27. And Carrier's criticisms stands. He addressed your concerns below.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to the <i>Antiquities of the Jews, </i>written around Flavius Josephus mentions the death by stoning the brother of James the Just, “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">28. Problematic because both James and Jesus were pretty common names, no identification is made with the early Church- other than the disputed "who was called Christ" passage. It's thought this likely an later Christian edit as Josephus, as a non-Christian Jew, would not have given out this title. Nor as Carrier explains, was the motive for the death sen<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">tence</span> clear-cut. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to Acts 12:2, King Herod put the apostle James to death with the sword.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">29. Herod reigned from 41-44 CE. So we've gone about a decade since the alleged crucifixion before James has been killed. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to Acts 7:55-58, Stephen was stoned. “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city, and began to stone him.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">30. Not exactly a story brimming with credibility. It has a lot of fantastic elements and an amazing tolerance for a hostile crowd to listen to a lengthy diatribe, that gets recorded at an amazing level of detail<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> to be written <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">years later.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is even if we assume that Acts is a credible source in the first place. Which SJT has not established. </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Other accounts of the deaths of the disciples are based on tradition. The most commonly accepted traditions are as follows: (<a href="https://www.gotquestions.org/apostles-die.html">https://www.gotquestions.org/apostles-die.html</a> unless otherwise noted).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">31. Yeah, so no actual primary sources for this. Just tradition from an organisation that exploited martyrdom to market its beliefs. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So in the end, the body count of apostles, of believers who were even present during the alleged life of the gospel Jesus, is very low. Much lower than what we'd expect for a group of people at constant risk of death, and martyred at a regular pace. Compared to the Jewish zealots, early Christians seem to have been absolutely wimps. The Zealots knew how to kill and die for their beliefs. </span><br />
<ul>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Matthew suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, killed by a sword.</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bartholomew was flayed to death by a whip (Johns, 2014).</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross in Greece. The cross is now known as the cross of St. Andrew (Johns, 2014).</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Thomas was stabbed with a spear in India</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Paul was tortured and beheaded by the Emperor Nero in 67 AD.</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Peter was crucified upside-down, in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy (John 21:18).</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">James the Lesser was either beaten or stoned to death, while praying for his attackers (Johns, 2014).</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Philip was reportedly crucified upside-down in Hierapolis, Turkey. In 2011, archeologists in Hierapolis discovered what they believed to be Philip’s tomb (Johns, 2014).</span></strike></li>
<li><strike><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Matthias reportedly preached in the “land of the cannibals” (Johns, 2014).</span></strike></li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Though we only have traditions that offer glimpses of the specific ways that most of the early Christian disciples died, we can infer from the fact that Christianity was considered illegal</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">32. No, you haven't established it was illegal</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> and Christians were persecuted that no matter the means by which they passed, their lives were not easy and their faith in the way, the truth, and the life was strong.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">33. You have neither the body-count nor the actual attested-to persecutions to support this claim.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The disciples preached, despite the risks, because they believed that a humble carpenter is the Son of Man and Savior of the world. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">34. Believing something doesn't make it true.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Had they not seen Him resurrect, they wouldn’t have preached that He resurrected. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">35. Why not? Neither Stephen nor Paul witnessed the resurrection. They had no difficulty preaching it. They were persuaded it happened. In one case, probably <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">via</span> a seizure. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Had they not seen Him perform miracles, they wouldn’t have preached that He performed miracles. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">36. Rubbish, Paul doesn't care about the miracles. That's the line from 1 Corinthians again. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Had they not been filled with the Holy Spirit, they would not have been so brave.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">37. If risking their lives is the metric for true belief, then the Zealots are more entitled to have their faith accepted as true. There's nothing here that marks the Early Christians exceptionally brave.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Platitudes deleted)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“The great difficulty is to get audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity simply because you happen to think it true.” – CS Lewis</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">38. What a stupid thing to say. Of course we realise you believe it is true. </span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Conclusion</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A lengthy and delusional polemic <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">that hopes wild exaggeration will stand in the place of evidence and logic.</span></span> </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></h4>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-88437122919220818892017-04-08T16:56:00.005-07:002017-05-04T18:06:06.545-07:00Not a fan of Carrier: SJT tries to be an historian<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Introduction</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christian SJ Thomason runs a blog and active twitter account to proselytize for her faith. She's also engaged Matt Dillahunty on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmKTUOzXRkI&t=139s">Atheist Experience</a>. One of the linchpins of her argument for Christianity is the <strike><a href="https://sjthomason.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/why-were-early-christians-so-brave/"><i>bravery of early Christians</i></a></strike> (now <i><a href="https://christianapologistweb.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/why-were-early-christians-so-brave/?frame-nonce=6d2fbf6b44">christianapologist</a></i>) sic. I had sort of promised to respond to it. Her post is long, and necessitates a two part response from me. </span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Ex<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ecuti<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ve Summa<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y</span></span></span></span></span></span></h4>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> main problem with <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the SJT post is it <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">dances between<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> two arguments. First, she trie<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s to debunk Carrier's<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> 'mythical Jesus'. Second<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, she tries to argue that the early Christians were brave <b>and</b> this was a product of witnessing the resurrection. This makes her blog post a complete mess to wade through.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The only e<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">vidence</span> supplied of this bravery, is the<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> deaths of three<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">early</span> <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Christians between <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">alleged crucifi<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">xion and <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Vespasian's capture of Jerusalem. </span></span></span></span></span> </span></span>That's <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a pretty <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">mild body count for a period of <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">sustained religious violence in the province. One per decade on average. Atheist blo<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ggers in Bangladesh suffer a higher attrition rate<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">!</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Persecutions of early Christians are wildly <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">exaggerated</span>. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nero's scapeg<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">oating of Christians in Rome does not genera<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lise to the rest of the Empire, up to <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Constantine. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Because the<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">bravery of early Christians <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">sic is not established, th<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is argument for Jesus fails on its first premise.</span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An underlying flaw is <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">not <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">reali<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s</span>ing</span> <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the <b>gospel Jesus</b> and <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">an <b>historical Jesus</b> are not the same thing. </span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
Part 1: She's Not a Fan of Carrier</span></h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: The intention of the following blog is to offer support for
Christians who encounter people who believe Jesus is merely a myth,
perpetuated by the early Church. One such mythicist is Dr. Richard
Carrier. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> 1. So, nothing really to do with the bravery of the early Christians. This is going to be a long ride. Seriously, I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't care if there was an historical Jewish dude who thought he was the messiah, or whether he was a complete myth. What I'm unconvinced by is the <b>gospel Jesus</b>- the offspring of a Judaean god who mated with a virgin, who performed miracles and was inconvenienced by the Romans for a few days, by being attached to a couple of sticks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: I have had a number of delightful interactions with Carrier on
Twitter, which alerted me to his thoughts on Christianity, Jesus, and
the Bible. He is an historian with a Ph.D. from Columbia University who
has written numerous books and blog posts refuting the existence of
Jesus.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Unlike Carrier, supporters of major world religions outside of
Christianity do not question Jesus’ existence. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. I'm going to guess that these supporters aren't generally historians with doctorates from Columbia University. It's a bit early to try the <i>Argumentum ad populum</i> fallacy surely? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: For example, Jews and
Muslims do not claim that Jesus didn’t exist. While Jews do not accept
Jesus’ divinity, they acknowledge His existence and crucifixion. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">3. Not accepting the miracles and resurrection is just evidence they don't believe in the <b>gospel Jesus</b>. Which is the version of Jesus that Christians market.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT<strike>: According to Muhammad, Muslims consider Jesus a prophet whom God took to
heaven prior to the crucifixion (leading some to conclude that someone
else took Jesus’ place on the cross).</strike> Carrier denies Jesus walked the
earth, stating in his Twitter posts that Christianity was born out of a
“hallucination” by Paul of a “celestial Jesus.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">4. Well Paul did have a vision of Jesus rather than ever meeting the magic carpenter dude when he was alive. Epileptic seizures are also associated with religious experiences and hallucinations. See below:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>The nature of ictal religious seizures varies, including intense emotions of God's presence, the sense of being connected to the infinite, hallucinations of God's voice, the visual hallucination of a religious figure... Devinsky & Lai, 2008, p638 </i>[1]</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It doesn't seem unreasonable to conclude that Paul, who never met Jesus- if and when he was alive- had a temporal lobe epileptic seizure and hallucinated the event. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[1] </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Orrin Devinsky, George Lai, </span>Spirituality and Religion in Epilepsy<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span>Epilepsy & Behavior</i>, Volume 12, Issue 4, Pages 636-643 <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18171635">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18171635</a> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: According to Carrier’s webpage, his research focus is on the “origins
of Christianity,” yet he has tweeted that the Bible is “propaganda” and
the only historical texts one can rely upon are extra-Biblical.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">5. I can't comment on Carrier's webpage, but as I understand it, trying to understand the motives of the ancient writer is part of historical analysis. The gospels have a very clear propaganda function. They're a tool for converting people to Christianity*. That does imply one should be more cautious about accepting these accounts. As extra-biblical sources won't have this bias, that helps their reliability.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">* During a brief period of curiosity as an undergraduate, I attended some bible-study classes on campus organised by a local Christian group. They promoted the gospel of John. It was intended to win converts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fallacious use of <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> argument follows: SJT: <strike>Let’s consider that point. If I were going to write books on the
“origins of Muslims,” wouldn’t it make sense for me to incorporate the
Quran? If I were going to craft a history of any countries within the
Arab region, wouldn’t I want to take the Quran into account? The Quran
certainly offers historical accounts of Muhammad, Muslim beliefs, and
Sharia law. Muhammad is an extremely influential prophet among Muslims,
so excluding him from any discussions about Arab history seems
nonsensical. Applying Carrier’s logic to this situation would require
that I obtain extra-Quran accounts of Muhammad’s life before admitting
he even lived.</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">6. Clearly Carrier does use the bible (as a check of his website shows), he's just very critical about it. Just as someone who used the Qur'an might be critical too. Or even of ancient biographies of Julius Caesar. Nobody is going to believe that Muhammad split the moon, or Julius Caesar really was the descendant of the goddess Venus, without some compelling additional evidence. We have the same expectation for Jesus. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Look at my shiny secon<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">dary<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> sources</span></span></span></span>
</h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u><i>Argumentum ad populum</i> </u>fallacy follows: SJT: <strike>Note that the Guinness Book of World Records has indicated: “Although
it is impossible to obtain exact figures, there is little doubt that
the Bible is the world’s best-selling and most widely distributed book. A
survey by the Bible Society concluded that around 2.5 billion copies
were printed between 1815 and 1975, but more recent estimates put the
number at more than 5 billion” (<a href="http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction">www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction</a>).
Furthermore, the Bible has been translated into 349 languages. Such
figures indicate strong support for the Bible from all over the globe.</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">7. Popularity is not a metric of historical reliability. This is a really weak argument!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Massive <u>Non sequitur fallacy</u> ahead! SJT: <strike>William Lane Craig’s website includes the following comment:
“Archaeology is the greatest defender of the accuracy of the Bible.
Archaeologists, when in Israel, still rely on the Bible to determine the
location of tell sites which reliance has proved to be remarkably
accurate. Historians have long acknowledged the accuracy of place names
and events recorded in the Bible despite so-called “higher criticism”
and skepticism. In fact, the Bible is now a standard historical text for
archaeologists in the Middle East, Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and
Macedonia. </strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">8. This shows that <b>some</b> of its <b>geography</b> is correct, not that its <b>history</b> is correct.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u>Appeal to authority fallacy</u>: SJT: <strike>The great names of Archaeology, including Dr. Flinders
Petrie, Dr. William Albright, Dr. J.O. Kinnaman, Ira M. Price, Professor
Sayce of Oxford, and Sir William Ramsay have gone on record to say that
archaeology confirms the accuracy and reliability of the Bible. Dr.
William Albright, who was not a friend of Christianity and was probably
the foremost authority in Middle East archaeology in his time, said this
about the Bible: ‘There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed
the substantial historicity of the Old Testament.’”</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">9. Seriously? No archaeological evidence of the Noachian flood or Exodus, a persistent lack of evidence that the Kingdoms of David and Solomon were as described in the OT? If you're going to claim archaeology supports the OT, supply <b>some relevant </b>actual evidence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is also starting to be a massive red herring. If you want to convince people that there was an <b>historic Jesus</b>, and this was the <b>same </b>as the <b>gospel Jesus</b>, some Canaanite archaeological digs won't get you there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: “Sir William Ramsey, one of the greatest archaeologists of all time,
spent 30 years of his life trying to disprove the New Testament,
especially Luke’s writings. After much intensive research with many
expecting a thorough refutation of Christianity, Ramsey concluded that
Luke was one of the greatest historians of all time and became a
Christian based on his archaeological findings.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">10. That's a nice appeal to authority. Note that Ramsay did the bulk of his archaeological work in the <b>late 1800s</b>. What do modern archaeologists think? How is this relevant? And Luke's screw-up with the date of the birth of Jesus isn't a good advertisement for his reputation.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: <strike>Extensive evidence of the Bible’s historicity exists, derived from
the Dead Sea Scrolls, stone inscriptions, and archeological findings
from regions described in the Bible. For a more extensive review, visit <a href="http://www.reasonablefaith.org/two-recent-archaeological-discoveries#ixzz4XfDkyKvG">http://www.reasonablefaith.org/two-recent-archaeological-discoveries#ixzz4XfDkyKvG</a>In addition to the support from archeologists, secular historians
support the historicity of the Bible. One example of a history book in
which the history of early Christianity and Jesus is documented is
“Historical Atlas: A Comprehensive History of the World” written by
forty-five academic contributors from prestigious universities from all
over the globe.</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">11. Blah blah. If you want to establish that archaeology supports the <b>gospel Jesus</b>, then you need excavations and the like, that corroborate this. Some of the bible is undoubtedly historical. Some of it is also allegorical, or mythical or legendary. Some of it is outright propaganda. This isn't a binary "all historic" vs "zero historic" decision. The dead-sea scrolls don't prove that the gospel Jesus existed. They don't even prove an historical Jesus existed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: The Historical Atlas states: “In fact, it came to pass that Jesus’
death was the foundation of Christianity as we know it. Rather than
running scared, Jesus’ followers grew into thousands. This early
‘church’ ran into very strong opposition in Jerusalem and around 35CE
great persecution took place there. Around this time, one of the most
decisive turning points in world history occurred. The early church
began to accept those who were not of Jewish origin- the Gentiles”
(Wawro, 2008, page 84).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">12. So not really primary source material, nor has any relevance to the existence of the gospel Jesus? It reflects perhaps an orthodox view that there was an historic Jesus. And sadly for you, it attributes the growth of the Church to its opening up to non-Jews (dropping dietary and circumcision requirements), not the bravery of the apostles. Let me repeat this for emphasis. <b>It contradicts your whole thesis</b>. </span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/are-we-there-yet-sjt-tries-to-find-some.html"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Part 2 follows </span></a><br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-75573023862149360252017-04-03T13:16:00.000-07:002017-05-01T18:53:08.413-07:00<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Index of Posts Responding to Christian SJ Thomason</span><br /><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">SJ Thomason composed a <a href="https://sjthomason.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/a-christian-rebuttal-to-kaimatai-an-atheist/">response to my 10 reasons</a> (edit: now moved to a <a href="https://christianapologistweb.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/a-christian-rebuttal-to-kaimatai-an-atheist/?frame-nonce=4866b436b0">christianapologist</a> website) for why I was not a Christian. Given the length of her post, I broke down my replies into the different topics supplied. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Note that my <a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2016/12/10-reasons-why-im-not-christian.html">original post was an explanation</a> of why I am not a Christian. In that context it is <b>not</b> a list of reasons why Christians should become atheists, or even why <b>all</b> atheists aren't Christians. It's an account of my personal objections.</span></span><br />
<h3>
</h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">1. Never mind the Punc Eq, where's Adam and Eve?: SJ takes on genetics</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/the-sj-thomason-responses-genetics.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/the-sj-thomason-responses-genetics.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">2. They call him Mr Fantastic: SJ builds a strawman</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/the-sj-thomason-response-fantastic-deeds.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/the-sj-thomason-response-fantastic-deeds.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">3. Soapy Red Herrings: SJ takes on soap</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/the-sj-thomason-responses-soap.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/the-sj-thomason-responses-soap.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">4. Will the real JC stand up? SJ takes on the gospels</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/will-real-jc-stand-up-sj-takes-on.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/will-real-jc-stand-up-sj-takes-on.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">5. Not feeling the power: SJ takes on prayer</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/not-feeling-power-sj-takes-on-prayer.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/not-feeling-power-sj-takes-on-prayer.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">6. Whip it good, SJT takes on slavery</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/whip-it-good-sjt-takes-on-slavery.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/03/whip-it-good-sjt-takes-on-slavery.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">7. God kills black people for love: SJT takes on disasters</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/god-kills-black-people-for-love-sjt.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/god-kills-black-people-for-love-sjt.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">8. Hell and the Heavens: SJT takes on Erastothenes</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/two-for-one-sjt-takes-on-hell-and.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/two-for-one-sjt-takes-on-hell-and.html</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">9. Dream big little god: SJT takes on parochalism and freewill</span><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/dream-big-little-god-sjt-takes-on.html">http://kaimatai.blogspot.co.nz/2017/04/dream-big-little-god-sjt-takes-on.html</a></span></span></span></span><br />
<h3>
</h3>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Summary</span></h4>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's not really a rebuttal if my objection is ignored</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Bible verses are not rebuttals</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My, Ross is astonishingly ignorant of the basics of biology</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">All arguments can be instantly improved by not quoting C.S. Lewis </span></li>
</ol>
<h3>
</h3>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-67762391778102090852017-04-02T21:09:00.000-07:002017-04-02T21:19:27.173-07:00Dream big little god: SJT takes on parochalism and freewill<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Introduction</span></h4>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The last two responses (I refuse to call them rebuttals) by SJ Thomason can be summarised briefly as, "you're ignoring my objections <b>again</b>". I'm so surprised...</span></div>
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Number 9</span></h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><br /></u></span><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>My objection.</u> It is inescapable that the events of the bible are restricted to a tiny part of the world. Most of Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania are excluded. For a universal deity, this is suspiciously parochial. It is according to the Abrahamic religion capable of communicating in all kinds of ways. There are burning bushes, talking donkeys, angels etc. But only a small tribe of pastoralists are selected for this direct communication. In particular, a tribe that whose accomplishments were so minor, they had little ability to communicate their god to others. While civilisations around them developed maths, astronomy, engineering, democracy and philosophy, ancient Judea developed, well, penis modification.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even within that context, only a small part of the population is considered worthy of this message. This part being men, of course. For a universal deity that considered all to be equal, this incredible favoritism does not make any sense.</span></i></blockquote>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you've no argument, quote the bible.</span></h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SJT: The most famous Bible quote, John 3:16, states: “For God so loved the WORLD, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” If God were only trying to appeal to a small segment of the world, He wouldn’t have made this declaration.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No, <b>if he was a universal deity</b> he'd have been appearing to the ancient Greeks and Romans, Egyptians, Persians, Indians and Chinese. He'd have been appearing in the Americas, in Oceania, to Aboriginal Australians. Appearing to one minor civilisation in the Eastern Mediterranean only makes sense <b>if that culture invented him</b>. Bible verses don't trump history. The god of ancient Israel does not manifest himself anywhere else. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SJT: Furthermore, in Mark 16:15-16, Jesus says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” “Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed His word by the signs that accompanied it.” Such passages call attention to the call from Jesus to grow Christianity in all parts of the world.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Noting their idea of the world was pretty much the ancient classical world, and they never made it to China, or the Americas etc. Ideally, an appearance during the Achaemenid Empire, or Alexander the Great's empire <b>centuries earlier</b>, would have spread the Christian word sooner, faster and over a wider area. Both the Achaeminds and Alexander were in contact with India afterall. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A far less parochial manifestation of this universal deity, and to states that were capable of propagating the Christian message sooner and faster, makes sense. You're not explaining why earlier opportunities were dropped, or why a simultaneous manifestation was eschewed. You're not even explaining the bias toward appearing to men. From Abraham to Jesus, and perhaps Paul, the universal deity has a strong preference to men. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his book, On Guard, William Lane Craig cites a study by David Barrett, which notes that in 100 A.D., the ratio of non-Christians to committed Christians in the world was 360 to 1. In 1000 A.D., the ratio was 220 to 1. In 1500 A.D., the ratio was 69 to 1. By its final count in 1989, the ratio was 7 to 1. In other words, for every 7 people on the planet, one is a Christian. Christianity is slowly but surely closing the gap.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So even after 2000 years, 6 out of 7 people on earth aren't Christian. This is the problem. If the bloodgod that appeared to the ancient Israelites wasn't so parochial, if it had manifested and communicated with more than one culture in ancient times, then it would have acted like a universal deity. More of the planet would have been Christian, sooner. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Number 10 - Free Will</span></h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Free Fallin’ </i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The problem with an all-knowing (omniscient) god is well known. It makes free-will a fantasy. If a deity knows everything I’m going to do and say over my life-time, there’s nothing I can do to change that. If Abe’s god knows I’m going to have sushi for lunch, then I cannot choose anything else. That extrapolates to every other action I take, to very word I utter. I cannot choose anything, choice is always following a single course of action. I can only say the lines I was given. I can only play the role I was destined to play.</i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Life in this case, is meaningless. If I am going to hell, then, nothing I do over my life will change that. I can only undertake the actions this deity already knows I’ll take. All life is, is a brief moment where I can change nothing, followed by an eternity of hell. There’s no point to this life at all. This god may as well put those destined to hell, straight there. Because nothing will change that destiny.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blah Blah </span></h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sins of humanity are the result of God’s gift of free will, </span></blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's not forget that picking sticks up on the Sabbath is a deadly sin, but owning another person as a slave, or executing a nonvirgin bride isn't. Seems to me that sin is more likely to be the concoction of some filthy ancient slave-owners who needed a rationale for oppressing others. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SJT...which underscores God’s generosity and love in giving such a gift as He knew the implications. He knew that by giving the gift of free will, He would also need to make a tremendous sacrifice to give the gift of eternal life, as free will in a world of temptations and challenges often leads to sin, which leads to death.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given free will is disputed, blathering on about it as if it is a fact, is just ignoring my objection</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strike>C.S. Lewis says, “If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div>
Vacuous and irrelevant. </div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</span><h4>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Strawman Gambit</span></h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SJT: Kaimatai asserts that if God is omniscient, we cannot have free will. This assertion is untrue as it conflates our free will to make choices with His control over our choices. Omniscience refers to “all knowing,” not “all controlling.” God does not control our actions, which is the essence of free will.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> No. You are grossly misrepresenting my objection. That is not what I said at all! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is nothing in the objection about your deity <b>controlling</b> actions.</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is that any choice or action is an illusion in the presence of omniscience. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because every time someone thinks they have a choice, they <b>can only act</b> in the way your god knows they'll act. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">E.g. I don't buy sushi for lunch because your deity controls my purchase.</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I buy sushi because your god knows I will. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I can't deviate from that. </span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's not a single thing I will do, that can deviate one bit from god's omniscience. I cannot make <b>any choice</b> that will alter my eternal afterlife. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If your god's omniscience means he already knows I'm going to end up in hell, that's not a single thing I can do to change that. I will end up in hell.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That makes freewill an illusion. You can't have freewill when your actions and choices are already known and unalterable. </span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strike>SJT: To understand God’s omniscience and our free will, we need to understand that God is unbounded by time. The reason God knows our future is not because He’s controlled our future, but because He’s witnessed our future. Just as a journalist can skip through the pages of the newspapers in which she has published, moving back and forth in time, God can move back and forth in time. So, the real time that constrains us does not constrain Him. He sees our decisions and actions and knows whether we’ll be in the Lamb’s Book of Life, not because He’s predetermined our destiny, but because He has watched us as we exercise our free will through the lens of unbounded time. Furthermore, God is always in the present, yet He is unbounded by linear time so He is concurrently in our future and our past. According to Revelation 1:8, the Lord God “who is and who was and who always will be.”</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Blah blah blah. It's not about god predetermining our destiny. It's about every choice we make being an illusion of a choice. That we could not at that moment, choose to do anything other than what your god knew we were going to do. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's say for argument's sake, your god had foreknowledge I'd go to hell when I was born. It knew I wouldn't believe you when you said he was real. Could I choose to believe you instead now? Could I make a decision now, that deviates from what your god knows I will do, and change my afterlife? In other words, could your god not know the choice I was going to make? </span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strike>SJT: C.S. Lewis described this concept in his book Mere Christianity in this way: “Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along; and there is room for very little in each. That is what time is like. And of course you and I take it for granted that this time series – this arrangement of past, present, and future – is not simply the way life comes to us but the way things really exist…But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in time at all: later the philosophers took it over: and now some scientists are doing the same. Almost certainly, God is not in time…If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty – and every other moment from the beginning of the world – is always present for Him.”</strike></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vacuous rubbish</span></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a difficult concept for some to grasp, but according to C.S. Lewis, it fits within Christianity. People may choose to ignore the concept, which is fine, yet it serves to understand the relationship between free will and omniscience.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />You didn't address my objection. At all. It doesn't matter how your deity is omniscient. Once you concede it knows every event in my life, then I'm bound to act only in ways that comply that knowledge.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-15871135176183050422017-04-02T15:14:00.006-07:002017-04-03T13:02:49.659-07:00Hell and the Heavens: SJT takes on Erastothenes<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Introduction</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The next two responses are fortunately short. I'm not even sure SJT was reading my objections at this point in her "rebuttal". The topics are hell and god's odd trait of knowing as little science as the average ancient slave-owner of the era. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Kaimatai writes:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<ol start="7">
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Baby I call Hell</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><u>My original:</u> Like everything to do with the afterlife, Hell is difficult to pin
down. Is it a place of heinous torture as described by Dante and other
evangelical pastors? Or is it an eternal separation from this deity?
Given the wide-spread dogmatic belief that it is torture (and I’ve been
threatened often enough with it), then it’s irreconcilable with a just
and loving deity.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>The infraction against this god is transitory in nature. All I have
done is not believe it existed. That merits an infinite punishment- one
that is unusually cruel, barbaric and inhumane.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Hell and a loving, just deity cannot both exist.</i></span></blockquote>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Hell is the punishment for independence</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: What we know of God is that (1) He is the source of our absolute
moral standard; </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> You're not rebutting. You're preaching. You haven't established there is a god yet, and you're making up his properties already! There isn't even an absolute moral standard. That's why Christians didn't have a problem with slavery for 90% of <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">it</span>s history. And even if there was an absolute standard, it wouldn't be based on the infant-killing, genocidal bloodgod some ancient pastoralists invented.</span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(2) He is the source of fairness and justice and </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Not according to the OT.</span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(3) He
is love (1 John 4:8). </span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Not according to the OT or the existence of Hell. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Accordingly, we know that the punishment will fit
the crime. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">No we don't. We don't know your god exists first. So you're committing a massive 'affirming the consequent' fallacy. We don't have anyway to verify what happens in an afterlife, if such a thing really exists. And given Sabbath stick-gatherers are supposed to be executed, we can be certain punishments don't fit crimes. Pick up sticks... and you fucking die. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We also know that God wants all of His children to be with
Him as demonstrated by the lengths to which He goes to celebrate the
return of His prodigal sons and to bring back His lost sheep.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That's a parable and not a real event you know? And if he really wanted all his children to be with him, he'd supply me with the evidence I needed to be convinced he exists. He hasn't. So either you're wrong, or I'm right and he's made up. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What we know of hell is that (1) hell is the separation from God’s
love and (2) people have a choice not to go to hell. The people who
voluntarily choose separation from God’s love are those who rely on
themselves and their egos. Such people have more faith (trust) in their
own beliefs than I have in mine.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If I really knew there was a loving deity who could give me an escape from mortality, why wouldn't I choose it? There's no voluntary choice because that option isn't credible. Basically your only defense of hell, is to say, "yeah, well people who go to hell shouldn't be all independent". You haven't touched the imbalance on the infraction and punishment at all.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>I never heard of Erastothenes</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Kaimatai writes:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ol start="8">
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>She blinded me with science</i></span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>
</i></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><u>My original:</u> I appreciate that ancient people could not have had with their
knowledge, the language of concepts to describe the world in scientific
terms. Nonetheless, it seems odd that many ideas about the world are
simply and blatantly wrong. The microscopic world, the scale of the
universe, that earth is not its centre, that life originated billions of
years ago and then evolved are in conflict with many religious dogmas.
It’s not a good advertisement for these beliefs to be true.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>S.J. Thomason responds:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Around 2,200 years before Copernicus proposed a heliocentric system
in which the planets revolved around the sun (and hence, the earth was
not flat), </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Umm, heliocentrism and the shape of the earth isn't the same thing. About 3 centuries <b>before </b>your magic carpenter appeared, Erastothenes had proven the earth was a sphere, and estimated its circumference, with just a stick. A stick. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The dominant <b>geocentric</b> model of the solar system before Copernicus was the <b>Ptolemaic</b>. This isn't a flat-earth model! By the way, one of the reasons Christianity has not managed to rid itself of flat-earthers is stories like Satan taking Jesus to a mountain top to show- and promise him- all the kingdoms of the world. Which only works if the earth is flat. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Isaiah (40:22) called attention to the “circle” of the earth.
The Hebrew word he used to describe this circle was khug, which appears
in Proverbs 8:27 and Job 22:14. The word translates to either a sphere
or a vault, which implies dimensionality and not flatness.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It translates to circle, which is why biblical experts who translate the bible us<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">e</span> "circle" and not "sphere"... Isaiah also describes the earth has four corners. And is atop pillars. So first, you're obviously <b>cherry-picking</b>. Second, this has nothing to do with heliocentrism. Which is why for roughly 80% of Christianty's history teaching heliocentrism was a heresy. Third, it's a pretty mundane claim. Anybody looking toward horizons can see them curving away. You don't need to be told by the super-intelligent, all-knowing ruler of the universe to <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">deduce a sphere<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Apparently just an ancient Hellene with a stick...</span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I will give you partial credit for <b>actually</b> taking on one of my objections. But you obviously didn't do any research at all if you confused flat-earth with geocentrism. </span><br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-34195461011367053302017-04-01T17:20:00.001-07:002017-04-01T17:56:28.734-07:00God kills black people for love: SJT takes on disasters<h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Introduction</b></span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By now SJT is running out of steam. There's not a lot of bible verses left she wants to throw at me. The next response is actually shorter than my objection. This is on the distribution of suffering caused by natural disasters. The burden of this falls on poor communities the most. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Most theists handle this poorly by taking on the existence of suffering instead. That's wrong. I've already given religion a 'free pass' on the existence of suffering. The dilemma is to explain the unjust distribution of suffering- caused by natural disasters. Assuming the Christian god sees suffering as necessary, than a just probability distribution would fall on all uniformly. A strong bias needs explaining. <b> </b></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Kaimatai writes:</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span></span>
<br />
<ol start="6">
<li><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A peculiar dislike of poor black people</span></span></li>
</ol>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My original: One appreciates that life on this planet is a little chaotic. That
means natural disasters happen. I’m not quite sure how a loving deity
allows people to die in natural disasters, as the freewill argument
seems moot in these cases. The deaths and suffering are not caused by
human agency.</span></i></span><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nonetheless, the real point is how unjust these disasters are. They
impact the poorest and most vulnerable communities the most. In 2010 a
magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti. The death toll was somewhere
between 100,000-300,000 people. The same year a 7.1 earthquake hit
Christchurch in NZ. One person died of a heart-attack, that might have
been caused by it. The effects are not equal.</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If we’re going to propose any kind of argument that humans have to
put up with natural disasters, at the very least, these should not be so
manifestly unjust. Having a system that harms those communities least
able to cope contradicts the alleged characters of the Christian deity.</span></span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>S.J. Thomason responds:</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: As I live relatively close to Haiti, I am well aware of the many
difficulties, natural or otherwise, that the country has faced in my
lifetime. </span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> My objection wasn't about Haiti. It was the distribution of the burden of suffering from natural disasters. Haiti is just one example where the poorest and most vulnerable communities suffer the highest burden. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Killing people is ok if the church benefits</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: I recall a good number of earthquakes and hurricanes that have
devastated the country. I also recall and have witnessed the way such
disasters serve to unite the church community through mission trips and
outreach. </span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">God kills poor black people more often than wealthy people because their deaths motivate the church? Don't you think people should have a greater purpose than being canon-fodder for the spread of religion? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And why does Haiti need missionaries where it is over 80% Christian, whereas NZ does not when it has less than 50%? Do you have a better predictor than where natural disatsers occur, other than your god has an intense dislike of poor black people? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Poor black people must die for a better society</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Taken in the context of fulfilling our spiritual purposes and
developing a stronger relationship with God, such events can serve
as catalysts for the betterment of society as they fuel empathy,
compassion, love, and a passion for humanity.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I can't tell if this is the most evil, or the most stupid thing you've written. God worries you're getting a bit low on empathy, so he kills thousands and thousands of kids and adults. Because you're important, and obviously they're not. And besides which, they're getting in the way of bettering society. They must die. In horrible, horrible ways. Because that's how he improves his relationship with privileged people in the developed world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Summary</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This isn't a rebuttal. It's a confession that you're comfortable with appalling evil. </span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-49298840668689424672017-03-30T21:35:00.005-07:002017-03-31T16:26:56.209-07:00Whip it good, SJT takes on slavery <div class="tr_bq">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On to objection number 5. By now I'm expecting to see a lot of text avoiding my points, plus a healthy dose of bible verses...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Objection Number 5 is the peculiar tolerance of slavery in the Christian world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Objection</span> </span></h4>
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My original: Right, Christianity has always been against slavery. Even in the first 1800 years when it wasn’t. And as the American Civil War showed, for many, not until the Federal Army reached Richmond. The problem is that Jesus never said to abolish slavery. Neither did anyone else in the bible. Indeed, Exodus 21:20-21 said it was permissible to beat a slave so badly that they would die 2-3 days later. The slave-owner wasn’t punished in this case as the slave was his property. A chattel. Not a human being, but property.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is a very simple test. Moral beings don’t sanction this horrific behaviour. Christianity perpetuated slavery. It’s failed to reach a credible standard of morality that would corroborate a loving, moral supreme deity.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But We're Good Now!</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">S.J. Thomason responds:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: The first point to address the issue of slavery is to note that no true Christians of sound mind today are endorsing the type of slavery that was present in the United States in its early history. Slavery is something of the past in developed countries and involuntary servitude is not something any Christian of sound mind cares to resurrect.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The problem isn't today. The problem is for about 90% of your religion's history, slavery was completely cool. If you can coexist with slavery for roughly 1800 years, then Christianity was never against slavery. It was for it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: The next point is that the type of slavery reported in Biblical times was often voluntary with civil owner slave relationships. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rubbish, slavery is a coercive arrangement that takes advantage of a person's desperate desire to survive. In the classical slaves were heavily sourced from wars, and slavery was as pervasive in Jewish society as it was in Graeco-Roman (see Hezser, 2006, Jewish Slavery in Antiquity, OUP). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The myth that ancient Judaea practiced a kinder, gentler form of slavery is an agenda-driven form of apologetics. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Nevermind the Un<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">flo<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ata<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">b</span></span>le</span> Boat- <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">W</span>e Need <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">W</span>hips!</span> </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Exceptions exist, which Kaimatai notes, and it is fortunate we are given such glimpses into the lives of people who lived during Biblical times so we can better understand the context of the Bible. Had reports of slavery been excluded from the Bible, one would question its historical authenticity.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Oh garbage. If they alone had stood out and said slavery was wrong, that would be at least some evidence they had a sense of morality. And as for historical authenticity! The bible has impossible floods, talking animals and mass migrations of people that never happened. It is so parochial it manages to show no interest in the campaigns of the ancient Hellenes and Romans. How hard is it to not notice the conquest of the </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="st">Achaemenid Empire</span> by Alexander the Great! But you think it needs to promote slavery to be perce<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ived as authentic! </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Owning People as <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Property Is Moral<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> If It Serves the Greater Good</span></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Noting that Jesus did not instruct followers to abolish slavery ignores the fact that slavery was often voluntary and civil and a component of societal functioning in Biblical times. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Oh wow, so some people had to become property for the good of society! Slavery may be an evil crime against humanity, but hey, you can live with it (roll eyes).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Have Dou<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">bts- Try the<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Kool-Aid instead</span></span></span> </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJT: Instead of identifying areas in which Jesus did not instruct, we should consider His instructions to love our neighbors as ourselves, alongside the Beatitudes from Matthew 5:3-12:</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I refuse to ignore history because it conflicts with your fictions. Millions of Africans were enslaved. One-to-two million died horribly in the Middle Passage. Mostly because Christians of the time though Jesus was ok with slavery. W<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">as it really<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> impossible for him to say that slavery should be abolished<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">? </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And as predicted, the bible verses... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">S<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">JT<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">: </span></span>Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You know the bit in bible class where they tell you to quote the bible because the "Word of God" has power? They lied. It's usually platitudinous rubbish that sound asinine to non-believers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Summary</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So we agree that slavery was a thing for most of Christianity's history. And an invitation to drink a lot of Kool-Aid so I can forget about the problem. We may have a new low for rebuttals.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-6348753883009970902017-03-30T00:37:00.000-07:002017-03-30T00:37:42.609-07:00Not feeling the power: SJ takes on prayer<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Objection number 4 is that prayer doesn’t work. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>My original: Enough children have died in faith-healing cases to show that prayer only succeeds in mundane cases with a high likelihood of occurring anyway. There is no evidence at the ‘population-level that Christians are healthier, live longer or recover from cancer more frequently.</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is specific to the Christian god because this deity is supposed to be<b> intercessory</b>. It supposed to intervene when its fan club needs help. So even accepting that this deity may have good reasons to let someone die from disease, we would still be expect intercessions to be <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">frequ<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ent</span></span> enough to be detectable at some statistical level<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> (and peculiar to Christ<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ians)<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></span></span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">If you like, this is a variation of the 'why doesn't god cure amputees' objection. Except it involves children. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Where's the counter<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">-</span>evidence?</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">S.J. Thomason responds:<br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The reason there may be little or no evidence at the population-level that Christians are healthier, live longer, or recover from cancer more frequently is not because God does not answer prayers. In contrast, God always answers prayers, but the answers may not be to improve health or prolong life. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm sorry, <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">but this is bullshit. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The claim of Chr<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">istianity </span></span></span>is that prayer obt<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ains <b>what the petitioner asks</b> for, especially in the area of health. See the sample of bible quotes below. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's no<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">t the caveat pres<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ent </span>that SJ has conjured. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. John 14:13-14.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive. -Matthew 21:22</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. John 16:24</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well. Mark 16:18</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lord my god, I called to you for help, and you healed me. Psalm 30:2</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment. Mark 8:13</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” Mark 5:34</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In Acts 3 episodes of faith healed are alleged to have occurred (4:22, 5:12-16; and 20:7-12).</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There's a reason why faith healing is practiced in some Christian sects! </span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The answers always correspond to developing a relationship with us and advancing the fulfillment of our spiritual purposes or the spiritual purposes of our loved ones. If our spiritual purposes have been fulfilled, then our time on this planet is over and God calls us into heaven. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> This is an example of the <b>ad hoc rescue fallacy</b>- or the Making Stuff Up fallacy. God answers prayers. This should produce shifts in life expectancy or mortality from diseases like cancer among Christians. SJ has employed an ad hoc trick to rescue the original claim. It's not a good ad hoc device as it demands that I accept there is now a spiritual dimension <b>and</b> afterlife, <b>in addition</b> to there being a god. This isn't resolving the problem, it's multiplying the challenges.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Changing the subject </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sometimes He calls the very best among us into heaven, which is always painful for those left behind, </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">God answers prayers in a capricious, unpredictable and hurtful way. That's how we know he loves us and answers our prayers (rolls eyes). This isn't a rebuttal. This is conceding my objection is correct. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">yet His purpose is to grow His relationship with those left behind and He places us in a variety of challenging circumstances to do just that.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is obscene.Your god is purposely killing people to <b>make</b> the survivors love him. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">As George MacDonald said and I’ll paraphrase: Imagine yourself as a house. God helps you to fix its drains, repair its cracks, and refurbish its appliances. You needed this help, so you’re not surprised. But imagine your surprise when God starts knocking down walls, putting in new kitchens and baths, and adding bedrooms and room additions. It hurts abominably and you wonder what on earth he’s up to. You thought you were going to be a decent little cottage. But he had plans for a palace, one in which He plans to live himself. You see, he wants you to be perfect, just as he is perfect, and humble and kind, just as he is humble and kind.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Platitudinous non<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">sense and a <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">false analogy fallacy. Lets consider reality. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 329.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Dr Asser found
that between 1975 and 1995, 172 children died following faith healing in USA (<i>Pediatrics</i> 1998: 10<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">). </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">In one case, a
2-year-old girl choked to death on a banana- over an hour- while her parents
and other adults present simply praye<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">d. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 329.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 329.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2-year old didn't grow up to be a "palace" or humble and k<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ind</span>. She didn't enjo<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y development<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, including spiri<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">tual<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- </span>because s<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">he<b> died</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span></span></span>She <b>died</b> because her parents believed that there was a god, and it d<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">id answer prayer. She <b>died</b> bec<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ause there are still adults <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">today who t<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hink a bunch of anc<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ient slave-owners had a direct line <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">of communication to <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the alleged creator of the universe. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> And if your god e<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">xist<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s, it was both <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">present</span> at that crisis and cu<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">lpab<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">le in that death. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">She <b>di</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>ed</b> because of a fucking banana<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">!</span> Because her<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> parents <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">tho<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ught b<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">egging their god for help would <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">be more effective than <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">dislodging a p<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ie</span>ce of fruit. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Because for 2000 years Chr<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">istia<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ns have promot<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ed the lie that there is a god and it does answer prayers. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A</span>nd if you want to try the 'she's in heaven now' line, you'd better have a signed, witnessed <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">affidavit from her attesting to the truth of that claim. </span><br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Over the past five years, I have lost two good friends to cancer: one never smoked cigarettes, yet one day discovered she had stage four single cell lung cancer; a second discovered one day she had stage four brain cancer stemming from the melanoma she battled over a decade earlier. Both left behind a husband and an adopted child. In the first case, the husband passed a few months later, likely of a broken heart.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Not e<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">xactly good evidence that god answers prayer really, is it?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These two young mothers were extraordinarily kind and by anyone’s standards would be considered rather perfect people. No explanation of their deaths can offer their loved ones comfort, save for the explanation that they completed their lives’ missions and are now with God in heaven.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Th<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">at hardly makes it true. </span></span><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Look at my bright, shiny red herring!</span> </span></span></h3>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Before atheists jump to their feet here with accusations of the argument from ignorance fallacy, let us consider our purpose in life. Why are we here? What purpose do we serve? What does God want us to do?</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is getting a long way off topic. And <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">it's a set of loaded questions.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to Rick Warren in his book The Purpose-Driven Life, “God has a purpose behind every problem. He uses circumstances to develop our character. In fact, He depends more on circumstances to make us like Jesus than He depends on our reading the Bible…Jesus warned us that we would have problems in this world. No one is immune to pain or insulated from suffering, and no one gets to skate through life problem-free. Life is a series of problems…God uses problems to draw you closer to Himself (p. 193-194).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Platitud<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">inous rubbish. Asinine and vacuous <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rhetoric</span>.The children who die in faith healing cases aren't having their characte<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">r develop. The<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> only way they're bec<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">oming like Jesus is by being dead. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Summary</span></span></span></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Apparent<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">l<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y </span></span></span>God always answers prayers but not in a way we can predict, measure or makes<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> sense to us. As a rebuttal goes<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">it's another complete fail. A god that can watch a 2 year old g<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">irl choke to death <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">on a banana and ignore the pleas<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> of her parents to help, either doesn't exist or i<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">s<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">n't a loving, interce<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ssor<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">y moral entity<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span> </span></span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-16882559992209131382017-03-29T13:06:00.004-07:002017-03-29T13:06:53.467-07:00Will the real JC stand up? SJ takes on the gospels<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The Third Objection</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My third objection was basically the poor evidence for the gospel Jesus. Given what it is possible to preserve or record for historical figures, what we have for the gospel Jesus is actually quite lacking. I've used Julius Caesar as my benchmark, as despite being a minor historical character by Christian standards, we seem to have some quite good records.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To stop things getting too tedious, I've summarised the responses from Stephanie here:</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Tally Sheet</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Objection</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">SJ Rebuttal</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Analysis</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">...the gospels written well after the alleged events</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Though
scholars disagree on the precise dates in which the gospels were written due
to their presuppositions, we have good evidence to suggest that the vast
majority of the New Testament was written prior to the destruction of
Jerusalem in 70 A.D…</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">That we
have difficulty identifying even when the gospels are written is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prima facie</i> evidence they’re problematic!
Mark is typically dated at 65-70 CE, Luke and Matthew 80-85 CE and John
90-100 CE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">However
you want to look at it, the gospels are composed 1-3 generations later than
the alleged life of Jesus. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">…they
contradict each other in key details. The nativity of Luke and <s>Mark</s>
Matthew describe entirely different events.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Oops, why did I write Mark?) </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Next, I
will turn to Kaimatai’s assertion that the gospels contradict one another.
The gospels do not contradict one another on the most important points
related to Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion, death, and resurrection. …</span></span></div>
<ol start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">J. Warner Wallace examined
the gospel accounts forensically, applying his years of work as a police
detective to good use.* He states, “The accounts puzzled together just
the way one would expect from independent eyewitnesses. When one gospel
eyewitness described an event and left out a detail that raised a
question, this question was unintentionally answered by another gospel writer
(who, by the way, often left out a detail that was provided by the first
gospel writer).”</span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Some of
the many examples Wallace provides are as follows:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(deleted
as not germane)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Red
Herring Fallacy</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The
nativity contradiction is not addressed. This is a key detail. The virgin
birth and alleged divine origin of Jesus is important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The nativity stories have Jesus born once,
on two occasions, years apart!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">False
Authority Fallacy Alert!</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Wallace
is not an historian. To pretend the gospel accounts are from independent
eyewitnesses is every colour of stupid. They are <b>hearsay</b> accounts. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">They’re
not independent either. The synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) all share the
same source material! </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Oh, and the resurrection stories have major problems)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Unlike
Julius Caesar there are no writings of Jesus (Even Julius Caesar left stuff
he wrote)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ignored</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Not
only did Caesar write the Gallic Wars, his authorship is confirmed in the contemporaneous
letters of Cicero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The battlefield of
Alesia has been excavated and conforms to his account.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">No
contemporaneous historian, of which there were several in this era, noticed
any of the fantastic things described in the gospels</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ignored</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Even
later historians (Tacitus etc) who wrote much later, cannot corroborate the extraordinary
stories of the gospels.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">One
feels an omniscient (all-knowing) deity would know this would reduce the
confidence non-believers would have in the Jesus-mission</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ignored</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">* Parenthetically, forensic techniques are employed when an event is know to have occurred. Like a murder. The life of the <i>gospel</i> Jesus (and I carefully say this to separate it from a possible <i>historical</i> Jesus) is a disputed event. It's not a known event. There's no point synthesising say, the different accounts of the resurrection, if the resurrection never happened.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Summary</span></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There's not any way you can say my objections have been satisfied. This thing of just avoiding what I write and throw a lot of bible-talk at me, isn't how rebuttals work. It's just fail from start to finish.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Julius Caesar provides us with a good benchmark of what is possible. For an individual who is supposed to be more important than Caesar (at least according to Christianity), it's reasonable to expect something as good. Julius Caesar gives us his own writing, confirmation from contemporaneous sources (like Cicero) and backings from archaeology (Alesia). This just does not happen for the gospel Jesus.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Caesar also was recognised as a god in the Roman pantheon. This tells us that in ancient times, people had a low bar for what could be a deity. That the claim to divinity was common. </span></span><br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-23743385781591758902017-03-28T12:52:00.001-07:002017-03-29T12:58:36.630-07:00Soapy Red Herrings: SJ takes on soap<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">By now I was starting to suspect that S.J. Thomason would keep dodging my points <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">mask my object<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ions in a morass of unrelated talking points</span></span></span>. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">L</span>et's see how she handled my se<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">c<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">o<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">nd objection.</span></span></span> This was the absence of instructions on soap. The keyword here was <b>instructions</b><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> as knowledge of s<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">oap <b>was present</b> in the anc<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ient world. </span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Soap Test</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span></h3>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>My original</i>- There are no instructions on using soap. ... With no technological barrier to
making soap, there is no valid reason to withhold instructions on its
use. Given the vast number of people whose lives would have been
improved by providing instructions, it’s not a trivial issue.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When we used to visit (my very departed) grandparents, they always insisted we wash our hands with soap before every meal. For people who grew up without antibiotics, they had no illusions about disease spread. Similarly, my work-organisation has a lot of people working together. There are posters in every bathroom, explaining how to wash your hands properly with soap, how long to wash for, and why. Even in modern s<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">oc<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ieties we invest time and resources into providing instructions on using soap.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fo<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">r a pre-Industrial society, there is not mu<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ch else you could do to imp<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">rove welfare than insist on the use o<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f s<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">oap. It's a <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">known product, it's easy to manufacture, and it greatly limits the <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">infection and the spre<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ad of disease. And the<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> OT reveals that the<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ir ancient deity was concerned <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">preventing the spread of diseases. <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">H</span>eck, even the <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">instructions on treating <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">mildew</span> go on and on. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Fish<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">ing for Red Herrings</span></span></h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>S.J. Thomason responds:</b></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">While I agree that soap is important, I offer what organizations producing soap suggest is its history. According to the <i>Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Company</i>,
“Although no one really knows when soap was discovered, there are
various legends surrounding its beginning. According to Roman legend,
soap was named after Mount Sapo, an ancient site of animal sacrifices.
After an animal sacrifice, rain would wash animal fat and ash that
collected under the ceremonial altars, down to the banks of the Tiber
River. Women washing clothes in the river noticed that if they washed
their clothes in certain parts of the river after a heavy rain their
clothes were much cleaner. Thus the emergence of the first soap – or at
least the first use of soap. A soap-like material found in clay
cylinders during the excavation of ancient Babylon is evidence that
soap-making was known as early as 2800 B.C. Inscriptions on the
cylinders say that fats were boiled with ashes, a soap-making method.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">According to <i>Soap History</i>, “An excavation of ancient Babylon
revealed evidence that Babylonians were making soap around 2800 B.C.
Babylonians were the first one to master the art of soap making. They
made soap from fats boiled with ashes. Soap was used in cleaning wool
and cotton used in textile manufacture and was used medicinally for at
least 5000 years. The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 B.C.) reveals that the
ancient Egyptians mixed animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to
produce a soap-like substance. According the Pliny the Elder, the
Phoenicians used goat’s tallow and wood ashes to create soap in 600 B.C.
Early Romans made soaps in the first century A.D. from urine and soap
was widely known in the Roman Empire.”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I like that the description above excludes the <b>one ancient culture</b> we're discussing. That is, Ancient Israel. Nor is it relevant to finding either instructions on its use, or rationalising why those instruction are absent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Biblical scholars have further referred to several passages to
suggest that soap is indeed present in the Bible in the recognized form
of its day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Malachi 3:2: “But who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand
when He appears? For He will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s
soap.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jeremiah 2:22: “Although you wash yourself with soap and use an abundance of cleansing powder…”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Except these aren't instructions on its use. Jeremiah is actually disparaging! </span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In summary, the people in Biblical times were using soap, though the
soap varied in content from what we use today, just as medicines and
vaccines available today were not available in Biblical times. Today’s
soaps have come about just as God intended them to come about; no sooner
and no later.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Yes, we know they <b>knew</b> about soap. Other cultures invented it! It's easy to make. There's a reason I've highlighted soap and not say, penicillin or insulin. It was a product that actually existed in that era! </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are no instructions on using it to hinder the spread of disease or prevent infection. That was my objection.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Summary</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Me: there are no instructions on using soap for health reasons</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">SJ: But a ha... they knew soap existed! I have defeated your objection by ignoring it completely!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Me: Do you know how rebuttals actually work?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-275898821161919292017-03-26T20:33:00.000-07:002017-03-29T13:09:09.903-07:00They call him Mr Fantastic: SJ builds a strawman<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The <a href="https://sjthomason.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/a-christian-rebuttal-to-kaimatai-an-atheist/">SJ Thomason response </a>continues.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
And What A Strawman She Made!</span></h3>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kaimatai’s next arguments suggest that the world is lacking evidence
of Jesus. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Actually my objection was "<i>Other civilizations should have noticed the extraordinary events described in the bible. That evidence is just not present</i>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's consider what that might be- the Sun standing still, global floods, an entire nation's first-born being killed in one night, ancient Judaean carpenters coming back to life, the dead rising and visiting Jerusalem etc. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A conspicuous feature of this objection was no mention of Jesus by the way. This doesn't augur well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such an assertion could not be further from the truth.
Christianity, which 2.2 billion people currently practice globally,
began with the humble work of the son of a carpenter, several fishermen,
a tent maker, a tax collector, and others of little means. The very
fact that such a group was able to convince millions to embrace
Christianity and worship illegally and without any power or riches from
33 A.D. to 312 A.D. suggests something extraordinary is working behind
the scenes.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Right... because all the other major religions began when thousands and thousands of people just happened to start worshipping their god at the same time. Isn't 'small beginnings' the usual way for religions to start? Also I'm unpersuaded that Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire for most of its history.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Onward- do we have any evidence other civilisations around Ancient Judaea and Israel noticed anything extraordinary?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh boy...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’ve paraphrased a story about Jesus by James Allan Francis (Turek,
2014) to demonstrate just how extraordinary the transformation of
Christianity is.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He grew up in a village, the child of a peasant, and worked as a
carpenter. He never had a family, owned a home, or went to college. He
was only 33 when the tide of public opinion rode against Him. His
friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His
enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross
between two thieves.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central
figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all
the enemies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the
parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned – put
together – have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as
that one, solitary life.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I anticipate atheists will say at this point that I’ve violated the <i>ad populum fallacy, </i>which
is the appeal to the popularity of a claim as a reason for accepting
it. I therefore return to the initial reasons behind the growth of
Christianity to refute this argument. The first martyr, St. Stephen,
heads up this discussion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still
uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the
Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute?
They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One.
And now you have betrayed and murdered Him – you who have received the
law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it” (Acts 7:
51-53).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and
gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked
up to heaven and saw the glory and God and Jesus standing at the right
hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man
standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:54-56).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“At this, they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their
voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to
stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a
young man named Saul (Acts 7:57-58).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While on the road to Damascus breathing murderous threats towards
Christians, Saul encountered Jesus. “Suddenly a light from heaven
flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him,
‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ Saul asked.
‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’” (Acts 9: 3-6).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Saul became Paul, who wrote at least six books of the New Testament
and endured much persecution before being beheaded under the leadership
of the Roman Emperor Nero. The book of Acts and 1 Timothy 4:6-8 suggests
Paul knew that his death was imminent, though his death was not
reported in the Bible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Extrabiblically, in 1 Clement 5: 5-7 (c. A.D. 95-96), the writer
notes that Paul suffered tremendously before being “set free from this
world and transported up to a holy place, having become the greatest
example of endurance” (McDowell, 2015). “Other early evidences for the
martyrdom of Paul can be found in Ignatius (<i>Letter to the Ephesians</i> 12:2), Polycarp (<i>Letter to the Philippians</i> 9:1-2), Dionysius of Corinth (Eusebius, <i>Ecclesiastical History </i>2.25.4), Irenaeus (<i>Against Heresies</i> 3.1.1), <i>The Acts of Paul</i>, and Tertullian” (<i>Scorpiace</i> 15:5-6) (McDowell, 2015).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11:25-26: “Three times I was beaten with
rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I
spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the
move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in
danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the
city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from
false believers.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some atheists claim Paul never saw Jesus, yet he makes it quite clear
that he did. “For what I received I passed on to you as of first
importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the
scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.
After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and
sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some
have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
and last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born” (1
Corinthians15: 1-8).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third example is Jesus’ brother James. While James didn’t provide
us with evidence of his belief in Jesus’ divinity during Jesus’
ministry (Mark 3:20; John 7:5), he saw the risen Jesus (1 Corinthians
15:7) and accordingly, became a believer and key leader in the early
church (Galatians 2:9; Acts 21:17-26).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In <i>Antiquities of the Jews, </i>Josephus states that James was
stoned. “Two other Christian accounts also confirm the martyrdom of
James, even if they differ over the details. Hegesippus provides a
detailed account in Book 5 of his <i>Memoirs </i>(<i>Hypomnemata</i>),
which have been preserved in Eusebius. And Clement of Alexandria (c. AD
150-215) also provides an account of the fate of James in the seventh
book of his <i>Hypotyposes</i>, as recorded by Eusebius” (<i>Ecclesiastical History </i>2.1.4b-5) (McDowell, 2015).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on these accounts, we know that among many Christian disciples
(1) Stephen, Paul, and James sincerely believed in Jesus’ divinity; (2)
they knowingly risked their lives to preach His Good Word; and (3) they
died gory deaths due to their beliefs and practices. <i><br /></i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Insert snoring sounds... wait, we're done...phew!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
SummaryThey call him Mr fantastic</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> What a waste of time. Another complete fail. A fantastic strawman fallacy is constructed and not once, is my objection addressed. </span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-69078036640113956172017-03-26T19:52:00.003-07:002017-04-03T14:32:24.521-07:00Never mind the Punc Eq, where's Adam and Eve?: SJ takes on genetics <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>I've had a lengthy response to my <a href="https://sjthomason.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/a-christian-rebuttal-to-kaimatai-an-atheist/">objections to Christianity</a> from SJ Thomason. Rather than analysing it in one go, I'm going to break this down into smaller (and hopefully more readable formats).</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>The Red Herring </b></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>S.J. Thomason responds:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let me begin by noting his reference to the flavor of Christianity. I
draw attention to this statement because atheists often ask Christians
to identify the “correct” Christian sect. I am of the opinion that so
long as the Christian sect draws its knowledge from the Bible, embraces
Jesus Christ’s divinity, and encourages people to live by the example of
Jesus Christ, then the sect is correct.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This is a red herring. It would be relevant to state whether the belief in Adam and Eve in the sect the reader belongs to, are supposed to literally exist, or exist as allegories instead.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">People have varying needs in the ways they grow closer to God. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The rest of this paragraph has nothing to do with the genetics problem. It's a description of SJ Thomason's beliefs. This suffers the defects of being irrelevant to my objection, and is boring. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Some
prefer liturgical, ritualistic churches in which the congregation sings
hymns and develops an appreciation of sacraments and traditions, such as
the Lutheran and Catholic churches. Others might prefer contemporary
sorts of churches in which the congregation sings contemporary Christian
songs and listens to informative sermons on the Bible, such as the
Baptist church. Other churches blend these options and offer various
interpretations of the Bible based on variations of adherence to literal
interpretations of the Bible. No matter the door, all ultimately lead
to Jesus. “The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will be
open at last” (Lewis, 1949).</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><i></i></span></blockquote>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Strawman Fallacy </span></h3>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To answer Kaimatai’s next issue, which speaks to the origins of the
universe, earth, and life on earth, I draw from Hugh Ross and his book <i>Improbable Planet.</i></span> </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And straight to the strawman<i> </i>fallacy. I gave as a specific example that genetics refuted that a literal Adam and Eve existed. These are examples of an absence of evidence where there should be evidence. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“The Milky Way Galaxy, the Sun, the Moon, and the configuration of
the solar system’s planets and asteroid belts reveal how Earth obtained
its unique stockpile of elements and minerals that enable Earth today to
sustain such an enormous biomass and biodiversity. The fossil record,
isotope records, geological layers, sediment cores, ice cores, and
biodeposit (biological decay products embedded in Earth’s crust)
inventories provide biologists and ecologists with a chronicle of
Earth’s life. Earth’s preserved record of past physical and biological
events reveals an unanticipated synergy (p. 16-17).”</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The conspicuous feature of the paragraph is the absence of any mention of genetics. It's irrelevant. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Charles Darwin presumed that the development and transformation of
life throughout Earth’s history was gradual, smooth, and continuous. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> That was in 1859. And it was a hypothesis, that even some of his supporters (like Huxley) remained unconvinced by. By the early 1950s, the development of population biology and speciation modes like allopatric speciation, had undermined this gradualistic view. It persisted longer in paleontology however. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Appeal to (False) Authority</span></h3>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">However, in landmark articles published in 1972 and 1977,
paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould pointed out that
the fossil record is typified by species remaining in extended stasis
(little or no net evolutionary change) interrupted by quantum jumps
where species suddenly disappear and then are followed quickly by sudden
appearances of very different species</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Correct, as a necessary consequence of speciation beginning from small populations, where the odds of leaving fossils behind are very unlikely because the populations are too small! Not because evolution works by jumps. And we have plenty of good examples of gradual change occurring in the fossil record.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">This argument is completely fallacious. Ross isn't an evolutionary biologist, or geneticist, or paleontologist. He's a physicist. He doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">…It is not only at the species
level where quantum jumps are observed but also at the level of
families, orders, and classes of organisms (p. 19).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I'm sorry, but what did I just read!? Pretty much all terrestrial animals are just one thing. A segmented worm-like creature with optional appendages. We're bilateral triploblasts. There aren't "quantum leaps". Just some tinkering with an animal with a feeding tube that runs down the centre.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Primitive life, that is unicellular bacterial life, is but the
simplest form of life on Earth. There are three other general divisions
of purely physical life: (1) differentiated multicellular organisms (for
example, fungi); (2) plants; and (3) animals. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Oh the stupid just burns now. There are three domains of life. The three divisions mentioned here make up just one of them. I know Ross is old, but it looks like he learned his biology from Darwin himself. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In addition to purely
physical life, Earth today contains two kinds of life that possess
distinctly nonphysical attributes. One of these kinds is a group of
animals that possess a mind…that is capable of experiencing and
expressing emotions, exercising intellectual analysis, and making
decisions in response to that analysis and the animal’s emotional state.
All mind-possessing animals share in common the attribute of parents
providing sacrificial care for their offspring. Animals in this category
include all mammals and birds and a few of the more advanced reptilian
species such as the crocodile and the alligator” (p. 21).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Sigh, "advanced" is not a thing in biology. </span><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Putting the Cart before the Horse </span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Another kind of life-form possessing nonphysical attributes is the
species Homo sapiens sapiens. Human beings not only possess a mind, but
they are also endowed with a spirit…(which) enables humans to engage in
philosophy and theology and to address questions of ultimate meaning and
purpose” (p. 21).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The claim we have a spirit is a religious one. As it is embedded in the god-belief, which is disputed, the argument is a fallacious 'affirming the consequent'. Ross is putting the cart-before-the-horse. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Again, this is irrelevant to my objection, and is resorting to an appeal to (false) authority. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Argument by Assertion Fallacy</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In other words, the earth today contains diverse and abundant species
in multiple levels of advanced life, many of which appeared suddenly
via quantum jumps. Such an explanation helps to explain the way the most
advanced life forms possess consciousness (i.e., awareness) and
spirituality, while less advanced life forms do not. Such an explanation
further suggests that the first humans appeared suddenly.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">1. There's no such thing as more or less advanced in biology. Organisms can have basal or derived characters. The idea of 'advancement' is a religious relic based on the Scalae Naturae. It does not exist. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">2. Molecular evidence shows that species don't appear in sudden leaps. Fossils are a function of population abundance. Species that originate with low populations leave few or no fossils. Molecular evidence shows that we don't see leaps. </span></li>
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The decoding of the mouse genome showed that over 99% of the coding genes in a mouse and a human were the same. A 1% change <strike>of</strike> over 65-75my isn't a jump.</span></li>
</ol>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Humans didn't appear suddenly. That's what the genetic evidence tells us. </span></li>
</ol>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Final Score </span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So as far as a rebuttal goes, it's a complete fail. </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> The genetic evidence against a recent human origin from two individuals was not addressed. No evidence from the field of genetics was even produced!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A strawman argument was conjured in its place</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An appeal to authority was attempted, but the authority was ignorant of the topic at hand!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Assertions were frequently just wrong. </span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-19326281362614549942017-03-25T15:07:00.001-07:002017-03-25T15:07:07.554-07:00That Kalam argumentSooner or later as an atheist on the web, you're going to run into the Cosmological Argument. This often comes in the form of the "Kalam argument" or its modern form promoted by William Craig.<br />
<br />
It's typically presented as a syllogism. This a logical argument that used two related premises to reach a conclusion.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>P1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause;</li>
<li>P2: The universe began to exist;</li>
<li>C: The universe has a cause</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U8cVZKHX5Ks/WNbnk-2YRBI/AAAAAAAABTc/8Th0Qv64gAEgHQViKoRVmM7wB6OB8y6zQCLcB/s1600/shutterstock_489781135.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U8cVZKHX5Ks/WNbnk-2YRBI/AAAAAAAABTc/8Th0Qv64gAEgHQViKoRVmM7wB6OB8y6zQCLcB/s400/shutterstock_489781135.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Rapidly Inflating Singularity Explains Many of the Attributes of this Universe</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
(Figure via Shutterstock as Stock illustration ID: 489781135)<br />
<span class="small"></span><br />
<br />
As the argument does not include any deities, it is imputed that this cause, must itself be uncaused. Conveniently theists knew what this cause was all along. This is their favourite deity, which by fiat is eternal, existing outside time and space and, uncaused.<br />
<br />
The popularity of the syllogism doesn't disguise its flaws. It is these flaws that have prevented a stampede of atheists toward Christianity. Let me elaborate.<br />
<br />
A syllogism depends on the its premises being correct. It is not good enough for them to be possibly correct. And there are reasons to suspect the premises are not.<br />
<br />
Let's look at the first.<br />
<br />
<h3>
How do we know that everything that <i>begins</i> to exist has a <i>cause</i>?</h3>
<ul>
<li>The reason we have the qualification "begins to exist" is to exclude deities with eternal properties. If it was just 'exists' then the syllogism would net in gods too. In short, it is a <b>special pleading fallacy</b> introduced right at the start. How do we know deities are able to exist without a beginning? We don't. No evidence is attached to prove this. It's just one more thing we have to believe about gods on faith alone.</li>
<li>It's an <b>uncertain</b> premise. From what we understand about quantum mechanics, the quantum world behaves stochastically. It's a random world at that level. Negative and positive sub-atomic particles wink in and out of existence. </li>
<ul>
<li>The above means that P1 is not self-evident</li>
<li>Induction is not strong enough to prove that P1 is correct. We've sampled a tiny fraction of the universe and our observed sample size of universes is still stuck at 1. </li>
</ul>
<li>It makes the term 'cause' do a lot of work. Here the syllogism tries to conflate causality (in the sense of purposely caused by an agent) with other causality in other contexts (e.g. occurs naturally without intercession because of environment and natural laws). As a term, causes are not really part of the conceptual toolbox of Fundamental Physics. I'm not convinced at this level, cause is an appropriate term.</li>
<li>It is also a <b>category fallacy</b>. Universes don't fall into the same category as phenomenon <b>within</b> the universe. </li>
<li>Similarly, it's not clear what we mean by 'begins to exist'. If time is an emergent property of the universe, then it becomes difficult to talk about a point where the universe 'begins to exist' (see the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary condition). </li>
</ul>
In short, P1 is a barely coherent and fallacious premise that has significant scientific objections to overcome.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
How do we know the universe began to exist?</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We don't. The standard model of the universe converges to a singularity, where the regular laws of physics as we understand them don't apply. This could be a genuine beginning, or it could be just the observable part of other ways the universe evolved. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Alternatives include a bouncing universe (our universe originated on another one that collapsed, before bouncing back from a singularity), cyclical (the various ekpyrotic models), reproducing from others etc. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
P2 has yet to be proven to be true.</div>
<div>
<br />
<br /></div>
<h3>
Does the Universe Have Cause? </h3>
<h3>
</h3>
<div>
In the sense that some event occurred that initiated an inflationary period for the universe? That seems plausible. For instance, some quantum event is potentially able to cause this. Does that mean we know that this is how it happened? No. But there are natural explanations. We don't have to invoke gods, and I'm not sure why we would. What falsifiable hypotheses could we test? What predictions does this make? The scientific model predicts a flat, homogeneous universe with Cosmic Background Microwave radiation. The divine model predicts a bloodgod who is outwitted by a talking snake, so that he has to mate with a virgin to kill his own offspring because two people ate some fruit. It's not a good way to build credence.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Gods have a problem as they're not mentioned in the syllogism, and as the syllogism is attempting to prove gods exist, it's not an independent proof of said gods. We do know say, that quantum perturbations do happen. The syllogism for gods starts becoming a little circular at this point.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This lack of evidence for gods makes the whole syllogism unconvincing. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<h3>
Summary: Syllogisms aren't Evidence</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Syllogisms are interesting logical arguments. We can say if the premises are true or not, and we can say whether the conclusion follows from these premises. But they're not evidence, they're either logically true or false. In this case, the Kalam or first cause argument suffers a plethora of philosophical and scientific flaws. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Let me conclude with my own syllogism to illustrate this point:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
P1: Everything that exists has a natural cause (by induction)*</div>
<div>
P2: Gods are supernatural </div>
<div>
C: Gods cannot exist or cause anything that does exist.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
* E.g. We've replaced many supernatural explanations with natural, and never a natural explanation with a supernatural.<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-85439784197038962852016-12-05T16:23:00.002-08:002017-03-28T16:41:19.776-07:0010 Reasons why I'm not a ChristianInternet Christians seem fond of the "list approach" to proselytizing. This comes in various forms. Like "10 reasons Christianity is true" or "10 questions atheists can't answer". So with that inspiration, here are 10 objections I have to the existence of the Bronze-age Deity Yaweh and his magic carpenter son.<br />
<br />
<b>1. The absence of evidence where there should be evidence</b><br />
<br />
Depending on your flavour of Christianity, this particular deity is supposed to have created the Universe, formed the earth, begun life, created humanity from just two individuals, intervened frequently in the affairs of a Near Eastern Tribe, and made a personal appearance for approximately 33 years. Many of these events should leave compelling evidence. Genetics should confirm we descended from just two individuals. Other civilizations should have noticed the extraordinary events described in the bible. That evidence is just not present.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Cranach_Adam_and_Eve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Cranach_Adam_and_Eve.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Genetics confirms that modern human species never originated from just 2 individuals</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<b>2. The Soap Test</b><br />
<br />
There are no instructions on using soap. Soap is a product that is easy to make. It also has benefits for hygiene as well as reducing infections and limiting the spread of disease. These effects on disease were not realised until the germ theory of disease was established.<br />
<br />
Any deity that is supposed to be benevolent, all-knowing, and interceding to benefit a chosen tribe or people, would give instructions on its use. Instructions on its use however are weirdly absent. This neglect would have increased needless suffering (through illness and disease) as well as premature deaths. With no technological barrier to making soap, there is no valid reason to withhold instructions on its use. Given the vast number of people whose lives would have been improved by providing instructions, it's not a trivial issue.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>3. The gospels are problematic</b><br />
<br />
Not only are the gospels written well after the alleged events, they contradict each other in key details. The nativity of Luke and <strike>Mark</strike> Matthew describe entirely different events. Unlike Julius Caesar there are no writings of Jesus. No contemporaneous historian, of which there were several in this era, noticed any of the fantastic things described in the gospels.<br />
<br />
One feels an omniscient (all-knowing) deity would know this would reduce the confidence non-believers would have in the Jesus-mission. Even Julius Caesar left stuff he wrote. And an all-powerful deity might have ensured the records of the Jesus-mission weren't so dependent on the contradictory, hearsay accounts we have.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mCDxMUC-8tE/WEYEyWJVPYI/AAAAAAAABE0/I3jmwFvnRWUz7tZrRvI-6YxQiXFEcSseACLcB/s1600/schweitzer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mCDxMUC-8tE/WEYEyWJVPYI/AAAAAAAABE0/I3jmwFvnRWUz7tZrRvI-6YxQiXFEcSseACLcB/s400/schweitzer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>4. Prayer doesn't work</b><br />
<br />
Enough children have died in faith-healing cases to show that prayer only succeeds in mundane cases with a high likelihood of occurring anyway. There is no evidence at the population-level that Christians are healthier, live longer or recover from cancer more frequently.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>5. How about those slaves then?</b><br />
<br />
Right, Christianity has always been against slavery. Even in the first 1800 years when it wasn't. And as the American Civil War showed, for many, not until the Federal Army reached Richmond. The problem is that Jesus never said to abolish slavery. Neither did anyone else in the bible. Indeed, Exodus 21:20-21 said it was permissible to beat a slave so badly that they would die 2-3 days later. The slave-owner wasn't punished in this case as the slave was his property. A chattel. Not a human being, but property.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Henry_P._Moore_(American_-_Slaves_of_General_Thomas_F._Drayton_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Henry_P._Moore_(American_-_Slaves_of_General_Thomas_F._Drayton_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Black Slaves (Wikipedia Commons)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
This is a very simple test. Moral beings don't sanction this horrific behaviour. Christianity perpetuated slavery. It's failed to reach a credible standard of morality that would corroborate a loving, moral supreme deity.<br />
<br />
<b>6. A peculiar dislike of poor black people</b><br />
<br />
One appreciates that life on this planet is a little chaotic. That means natural disasters happen. I'm not quite sure how a loving deity allows people to die in natural disasters, as the freewill argument seems moot in these cases. The deaths and suffering are not caused by human agency.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Tent_city_in_Port-au-Prince_2010-01-21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Tent_city_in_Port-au-Prince_2010-01-21.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tent City- Port au Prince (Wikipedia commons)</td></tr>
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<br />
Nonetheless, the real point is how unjust these disasters are. They impact the poorest and most vulnerable communities the most. In 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti. The death toll was somewhere between 100,000-300,000 people. The same year a 7.1 earthquake hit Christchurch in NZ. One person died of a heart-attack, that might have been caused by it. The effects are not equal.<br />
<br />
If we're going to propose any kind of argument that humans have to put up with natural disasters, at the very least, these should not be so manifestly unjust. Having a system that harms those communities least able to cope contradicts the alleged characters of the Christian deity.<br />
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<b>7. Baby I call Hell</b><br />
<br />
Like everything to do with the afterlife, Hell is difficult to pin down. Is it a place of heinous torture as described by Dante and other evangelical pastors? Or is is an eternal separation from this deity? Given the wide-spread dogmatic belief that it is torture (and I've been threatened often enough with it), then it's irreconcilable with a just and loving deity.<br />
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The infraction against this god is transitory in nature. All I have done is not believe it existed. That merits an infinite punishment- one that is unusually cruel, barbaric and inhumane.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/The_hell_mosaic_coppo_di_marcovaldo_baptisterium_florence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/The_hell_mosaic_coppo_di_marcovaldo_baptisterium_florence.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hell- Wikipedia Commons</td></tr>
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Hell and a loving, just deity cannot both exist.<br />
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<b>8. She blinded me with science</b><br />
<br />
I appreciate that ancient people could not have had with their knowledge, the language of concepts to describe the world in scientific terms. Nonetheless, it seems odd that many ideas about the world are simply and blatantly wrong. The microscopic world, the scale of the universe, that earth is not its centre, that life originated billions of years ago and then evolved are in conflict with many religious dogmas. It's not a good advertisement for these beliefs to be true.<br />
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<b>9. It's a small world</b><br />
<br />
It is inescapable that the events of the bible are restricted to a tiny part of the world. Most of Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania are excluded. For a universal deity, this is suspiciously parochial. It is according to the Abrahamic religion capable of communicating in all kinds of ways. There are burning bushes, talking donkeys, angels etc. But only a small tribe of pastoralists are selected for this direct communication. In particular, a tribe that whose accomplishments were so minor, they had little ability to communicate their god to others. While civilisations around them developed maths, astronomy, engineering, democracy and philosophy, ancient Judea developed, well, penis modification.<br />
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Even within that context, only a small part of the population is considered worthy of this message. This part being men, of course. For a universal deity that considered all to be equal, this incredible favoritism does not make any sense. <br />
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<b>10. Free Fallin'</b><br />
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The problem with an all-knowing (omniscient) god is well known. It makes free-will a fantasy. If a deity knows everything I'm going to do and say over my life-time, there's nothing I can do to change that. If Abe's god knows I'm going to have sushi for lunch, then I cannot choose anything else. That extrapolates to every other action I take, to very word I utter. I <b>cannot </b>choose anything, choice is an always following a single course of action. I can only say the lines I was given. I can only play the role I was destined to play. <br />
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Life in this case, is meaningless. If I am going to hell, then, nothing I do over my life will change that. I can only undertake the actions this deity <b>already</b> knows I'll take. All life is, is a brief moment where I can change nothing, followed by an eternity of hell. There's no point to this life at all. This god may as well put those destined to hell, straight there. Because nothing will change that destiny.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-39920113889949202292016-06-06T21:18:00.000-07:002017-07-26T19:07:46.783-07:00How improbable is it that proteins can form by "chance"?A common trait of scientists who work on the origins of life, is <b>not</b> to attempt to estimate the probability macromolecules (like peptide chains) will form. A common trait of creationists who <b>don't</b>, is estimating such probabilities. This typically produces astronomical odds against such macromolecules forming.<br />
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For instance, suppose we are told there is a 50:50 chance that two amino acids will bond. A peptide-chain (protein) 150 amino-acids long, will thus have the probability of (0.5)*(0.5)^2*(0.5^3)*...(0.5)^150. This gives a cumulative probability of<span class="st"> well, a really really big number against (</span><span class="st"><span class="st">1 in 10<sup>45</sup></span> IIRC). Thus the number of trials needed to make this peptide seem up there in many billions of trillions.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">The problem above is simple. It ignores the fact that macro-molecules form in a modular fashion. (There's also some assumptions about the chemistry also, but we'll put those aside). Macromolecules don't form one molecule at a time, in one go. If we just add one correction to the calculation above- that the peptide chains form in a modular way, it takes just 5 trials to make a chain 150 amino-acids long. That's right. Just 5. The Creationist result above are entirely produced by unrealistic assumptions.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">Let me demonstrate. We start with a large pool of amino-acids. There's a 50:50 chance in the first round, they bond to another amino acids (using SIPF chemistry, dipeptides are found within a week). This is merely the assumption from the creationist maths above.</span><br />
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<span class="st">So after trial 1:<br />Half the amino-acids have formed dipeptides (a chain of 2 amino acids)</span><br />
<span class="st">Half the amino acids are still unpaired to anything.</span><br />
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<span class="st">We then carry these into trial 2:</span><br />
<span class="st">Some of the amino acids will still not have bonded. Some will form dipeptides.</span><br />
<span class="st">Some of the dipeptides will bond to one other single amino acids (making a tripeptide)</span><br />
<span class="st">Some of them will bond to another bipeptide, or to two single amino acids. (Bonding can occur at either end of the chain, it doesn't have to be at just one end). That's an oligopeptide 4 amino-acids long.</span><br />
<span class="st">Importantly, some of the dipeptides will bond to two other dipeptides. After two trials, we will find peptide chains 6 amino-acids long.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="st">On to trial 3:</span><br />
<span class="st">Some of the peptide chains 6 amino-acids long, will bond to two other 6 amino-acid peptides. Some of the peptide chains are now 18 amino-acids long. The distribution of peptide chains in the pool will range from 1 to 18 amino-acids long.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">On to trial 4:<br />Some of the 18 amino-acid chains will bond to two other 18 amino acids. We will find in the sample, anything between 1 amino acid to chains 54 amino-acids long. </span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">On to trail 5:</span><br />
<span class="st">If 3 peptide chains that are 50-54 amino-acids long bond, then we've got our 150 amino-acid peptide chain. We didn't need trillions of trials. It's that simple.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">Ok. This is a gross simplification. The chemistry of peptide formation is a lot more complex than just two molecules randomly bonding. That's why people who actually work in this topic, don't try to calculate probabilities. There are too many variables and too many permutations to make any estimate meaningful. The point is to show how utterly devious and dishonest it is, to drop the modular assumption of macro-molecule formation. And why you actually need to use a Markov probability function, not an IID. What happens in each trial is not independent of previous trials. The reason creationists use an IID is because it's the one function everyone knows, and it wildly inflates the improbability of anything happening.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1591986847602925234.post-18334230394941403192015-10-07T16:05:00.001-07:002016-01-24T17:33:08.966-08:00The Dilemma with "Kinds"<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>@Atheistic_1 Sep 27 (Twitter)</i></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Kent Hovind breaks down "<strong>kinds</strong>":
"Everyone knows birds are different than fish." </i></blockquote>
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Anyone familiar with creationists know that they generally eschew scientific classification of organisms. Rather, they try to reclassify life into what is they term <b>kinds</b>. It doesn't take long to work out they can't actually define kinds. They'll throw out what they think are examples of kinds, but they cannot specify the criteria to separate kinds.<br />
<br />
So why not simply treat kinds as a synonym for species? The answer is the Ark. The idea that all of this planet's terrestrial animal species could fit on the Ark (and let's face it, this is supposed to include extinct taxa like dinosaurs also), is impossible. So by using larger groups, the cramming task is made less difficult. Perhaps there is only one cat-kind. Thus all Noah needed was this single pair, rather than representatives of all extant Felidae.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jsWQbeJlU6c/VhWk51uQU2I/AAAAAAAAAck/CzIu8uF2lY4/s1600/old-tiger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jsWQbeJlU6c/VhWk51uQU2I/AAAAAAAAAck/CzIu8uF2lY4/s320/old-tiger.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kinds need a broad definition to fit everything into the Ark</td></tr>
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<br />
So kinds have to be defined in a <b>broad way</b>, to cluster lots of species together. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KyAt4uN1t5I/VhWkPXdr39I/AAAAAAAAAcc/YKH5-wEanjc/s1600/gibbon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KyAt4uN1t5I/VhWkPXdr39I/AAAAAAAAAcc/YKH5-wEanjc/s320/gibbon.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">But kinds have to be narrowly defined to separate us from apes</td></tr>
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This creates the dilemma. The dilemma is us- humans. Genetically we are more closely related to chimpanzees, than chimpanzees are to gorillas (and other great apes). So if the point of using kinds is to 'cluster' animal species into groups, we'd be a kind of chimpanzee (or even an ape). This conflicts with a special creation of humans out of dirt. We are according to creationists, distinct from all the other animals. This means kinds has to be now revised to mean something <b>incredibly narrow</b>. It has to be so narrow it can separate us from <b>all</b> other ape species. <br />
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The requirement for kinds to be both a way of broadly defining life, and at the same time, even narrower than scientific classification systems, is impossible to pull off. And for that reason, kinds cannot ever be supplied with an actual definition. They can only flounder in their futile attempt to meet their two goals.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2