Atheism-o-Phobia

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
61

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Oh thanks, I guess I’ll disregard the 1500-1700 years of record keeping and historians, along with the philosophers, theologians, priests, laity, and I’ll just believe your belief that you probably picked up in some atheist “historian” book on the Bible that it was written in fragments, sometimes hundreds of years apart, based on hearsay of illiterate people. Yeah I’m sure Jesus would say the words fucked up too. What crassness. Maybe you should actually pick up a history book, instead of reading fiction on shit that you don’t know about.
[/quote]

From what I understand, most educated theologians agree with the idea that most parts of the Bible, especially the stories of Jesus, were based on hearsay evidence and written at least 40 years after the fact. Most importantly, it’s no secret that the Gospels are inconsistent. And in the case of the Gospel of Matthew, the identity of the true author is not known.

For critical thinkers, this is a very big deal. We’re talking about the biography of the central figure in Christianity. You would think that every effort would have been made to get the story of his life as accurate as possible even in an age of illiteracy. But that’s not the case.

62

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Oh thanks, I guess I’ll disregard the 1500-1700 years of record keeping and historians, along with the philosophers, theologians, priests, laity, and I’ll just believe your belief that you probably picked up in some atheist “historian” book on the Bible that it was written in fragments, sometimes hundreds of years apart, based on hearsay of illiterate people. Yeah I’m sure Jesus would say the words fucked up too. What crassness. Maybe you should actually pick up a history book, instead of reading fiction on shit that you don’t know about.
[/quote]

From what I understand, most educated theologians agree with the idea that most parts of the Bible, especially the stories of Jesus, were based on hearsay evidence and written at least 40 years after the fact. Most importantly, it’s no secret that the Gospels are inconsistent. And in the case of the Gospel of Matthew, the identity of the true author is not known.

For critical thinkers, this is a very big deal. We’re talking about the biography of the central figure in Christianity. You would think that every effort would have been made to get the story of his life as accurate as possible even in an age of illiteracy. But that’s not the case.[/quote]

You site the standard atheist talking points but to date there has been no credible evidence that refutes anything written in the Christian Bible.

Mike there is a great deal of information which point to the validity of the holy scriptures. To begin with please read this thread.

Also, if you’d like to PM me I would gladly speak to you.

Thanks, have a good one,

Zeb

63

Everyone is an atheist

64

[quote]ZEB wrote:

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Oh thanks, I guess I’ll disregard the 1500-1700 years of record keeping and historians, along with the philosophers, theologians, priests, laity, and I’ll just believe your belief that you probably picked up in some atheist “historian” book on the Bible that it was written in fragments, sometimes hundreds of years apart, based on hearsay of illiterate people. Yeah I’m sure Jesus would say the words fucked up too. What crassness. Maybe you should actually pick up a history book, instead of reading fiction on shit that you don’t know about.
[/quote]

From what I understand, most educated theologians agree with the idea that most parts of the Bible, especially the stories of Jesus, were based on hearsay evidence and written at least 40 years after the fact. Most importantly, it’s no secret that the Gospels are inconsistent. And in the case of the Gospel of Matthew, the identity of the true author is not known.

For critical thinkers, this is a very big deal. We’re talking about the biography of the central figure in Christianity. You would think that every effort would have been made to get the story of his life as accurate as possible even in an age of illiteracy. But that’s not the case.[/quote]

You site the standard atheist talking points but to date there has been no credible evidence that refutes anything written in the Christian Bible.

[/quote]

A bat is not a bird.

There, a historic first.

65

[quote]AlisaV wrote:

But here’s the thing. The way you’re setting up the issue shows that you’re not really interested in truth vs. falsehood. You’re talking about whether atheists are bad people – not whether they’re correct.[/quote]

Incorrect - to be clear, I am actually interested in both.

Respectfully, you are a bit confused - I have every interest in learning about the Truth. My point was that atheists’ don’t have a credible, durable ethical framework - they only have suggestions as to how we should behave, and one suggestion definitionally cannot be better than another, morally speaking, without appropriate ethical hierarchy - and, as such, the Truth of the atheists’ philosophy leads to very, very bad places.

It is precisely the Truth I am after - and it is because of this Truth that I have formed my conclusions regarding why I think atheist “values” don’t make for good politics.

I’d submit that there is no greater “falsehood” than the idea that some common ethical framework, some “moral code” exists among humans in the absence of some transcendent ethical code outside of our biology and society. It doesn’t reasonably make sense, particularly in light of Man’s frequent departures from this apparently ubiqitous code that pervades humanity.

I don’t hate atheists or even avoid them - in fact, I know some and they don’t really bother me one way or the other.

The question was why non-atheists weren’t especially fond of atheists being involved in politics or public leadership - and my answer was that I don’t trust their representations about “moral codes” and I don’t trust their most basic framework of ethics on the basis that I reject moral relativism.

67

[quote]ZEB wrote:

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Oh thanks, I guess I’ll disregard the 1500-1700 years of record keeping and historians, along with the philosophers, theologians, priests, laity, and I’ll just believe your belief that you probably picked up in some atheist “historian” book on the Bible that it was written in fragments, sometimes hundreds of years apart, based on hearsay of illiterate people. Yeah I’m sure Jesus would say the words fucked up too. What crassness. Maybe you should actually pick up a history book, instead of reading fiction on shit that you don’t know about.
[/quote]

From what I understand, most educated theologians agree with the idea that most parts of the Bible, especially the stories of Jesus, were based on hearsay evidence and written at least 40 years after the fact. Most importantly, it’s no secret that the Gospels are inconsistent. And in the case of the Gospel of Matthew, the identity of the true author is not known.

For critical thinkers, this is a very big deal. We’re talking about the biography of the central figure in Christianity. You would think that every effort would have been made to get the story of his life as accurate as possible even in an age of illiteracy. But that’s not the case.[/quote]

You site the standard atheist talking points but to date there has been no credible evidence that refutes anything written in the Christian Bible.

Mike there is a great deal of information which point to the validity of the holy scriptures. To begin with please read this thread.

Also, if you’d like to PM me I would gladly speak to you.

Thanks, have a good one,

Zeb
[/quote]

Fair enough - I don’t like talking points either. The whole “atheism resulted in Hitler and Stalin” is nothing but a talking point that I and many others have tried to refute. So I will gladly learn about the history and archeology surrounding the Bible. I actually find it rather interesting.

Having said that, the author of the article you cited makes some rather curious claims.

Many of the writers of the New Testament were eyewitnesses of Jesus. They saw him, knew all about him, and in some cases, were his followers. And they said as much:

I’ve bolded “And they said as much” because this is problematic. We are to take the writers at their word that they were eyewitnesses to Jesus. Perhaps they were, but given the extraordinary claims made in the stories of Jesus, I’d like some corroboration for the assertion that they they were eyewitnesses to Jesus.

Even if it is true that the writers of the Gospels were eyewitnesses to Jesus, there is the problem of objectivity. Let’s take a modern example: Scientology. Most people would agree that Scientology is a crock, and L. Ron Hubbard was a charlatan who couldn’t make it as a sci-fi writer, so he created this religion and made millions. However, would a devoted follower of Scientology share this view? No. A devoted follower would probably consider Hubbard to have been some kind of prophet. My question, then, is were these eyewitnesses to Jesus objective journalists who were simply reporting events or were they devoted followers?

And since the New Testament was written between AD 47 and AD 95, there was just not enough time for myths and falsehoods about Jesus to grow. There were enough eyewitnesses of Jesus to challenge any historical errors, or blatant lies. Yet no-one did. The Bible passes the internal test.

I would say that this is more than adequate time for myths and falsehoods to grow. Ever been in a class were a teacher did the “hearsay experiment?” This is a little experiment where at the beginning of class the teacher tells the first student in the first row a fact. The student must then whisper the fact (so as not to reveal the fact to others) to the student beside him or her. This gets repeated until the last student in the last row hears the fact from his or her neighbor.

When you compare the information that the first student knows with what the last student knows, there is always a difference, usually a substantial one. And all this happens in about an hour, or however long the class is. And the thing is, the differences arise not from the fact that students willfully lie or distort the truth, although some might. Rather, the information changes based a person’s perceptions and biases. This is why hearsay is considered unreliable evidence.

68

I found this interesting. Some of you might too…

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=schick_17_3

69

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
One thing I like about the video , is that Altruism is a good thing .

What do you call some one that believes in God but not in Religion ?[/quote]

Traditionally, a follower of Noahadism

Here:

http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/noahide.html

70

The song’s been stuck in my head since making this thread. What am I trying to say or add… nothing really. Lets just call it an intermission.

71

…if a christian that kills an abortion doctor isn’t a real christian. If a muslim suicide bomber isn’t a real muslim; if anyone that follows a religion but acts contrary to its tenets can’t be called a true follower of that religion, then why would you lump any atheist in the same category when someone who’s an atheist commits an atrocity?

72

[quote]ZEB wrote:
Mike there is a great deal of information which point to the validity of the holy scriptures. To begin with please read this thread.

Zeb
[/quote]

this is a highly misleading link - which is btw standard procedure with the monotheists.

Primo:
the Bibliographic Test only says we have lots of documents with which we can assume the bible isn’t fake in a HISTORICAL way. But nobody disputes that.
That doesn’t mean it’s not FACTUALLY wrong or the contens aren’t propaganda or even lies. It also doesn’t mean that the final text selection (eg bible) was not a very, let’s say dynamic process (eg, the dead sea scrolls have other gospels who downright refute what’s written afterwards).

Secundo:
so the text claims the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. Why do they disagree so much, to the point where even the “official” (yes, there are unofficial versions, that alone is telling) completely disagree with each other?

[quote]
And since the New Testament was written between AD 47 and AD 95, there was just not enough time for myths and falsehoods about Jesus to grow[quote]
Now it’s getting ridiculous:
Today, even with science and mass media, we’ve got all sorts of conspiricies and modern myths all around us. Obama is a muslim. Reptile societies rule from the inner earth. etc etc.
In ancient times, man was much more inclined to believe every kind of nonsense, his world filled with demons and angels.
Also, the Jesus myth predates AD 0 by quite some time. This is a good example how people argue for the bible with the help of the bible without realizing it.

Tercio:
If anything, modern archeology refutes the bulk of the bible’s most important claims. The exodus, Noah’s ark, King David or Solomon as rulers of a hegemony, all this is downright laughable.

73

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
… I think a more accurate way to say it is that he believed in perverted version of Christianity that was in part influenced by the occult, but mostly by his racist and overall prejudiced views. Although, some the leaders he put in charge were definitely occultists.[/quote]

Yes. You are what you practice not what you say.

If ol’ Fletch said he was a baseball player but when I showed up at the ballpark one day and found out that instead of pitching, hitting, and catching a small, stitched leather sphere ol’ Fletch was using a 16 lbs. bowling ball and setting up 10 pins on each base and rolling the ball at them…I would have to enlighten him that he was not quite playing baseball and therefore he would need to rectify his practice of calling himself a baseball player.[/quote]

And do you know that your god doesn’t approve your adulterous “pitching”?

you shall not commit adultery AND not covet your neighborâ??s wife.

Mentioned TWICE in the ten commandments.

75

[quote]ephrem wrote:
…if a christian that kills an abortion doctor isn’t a real christian. If a muslim suicide bomber isn’t a real muslim; if anyone that follows a religion but acts contrary to its tenets can’t be called a true follower of that religion, then why would you lump any atheist in the same category when someone who’s an atheist commits an atrocity?[/quote]

Excellent point, ephrem.

76

Back to the original posters reason for the thread:

I think the reason why there is Atheism-o-Phobia is that people take criticism of their religion as personal attacks. You will find people debating an issue, but are still friends and realize they are debating the idea, not the value of their friend.

From my own experiences, I’ve found people who are religious to become highly offended when I try to refute some of their beliefs (only during mutual debates though on this issue). They simply cannot separate their religion from themselves. This makes it difficult to discuss this with a person as everything you say can be interpreted as an attack against themselves (rather than an attack on the idea they believe in).

This has ultimately led to religious people being disdainful of atheists. But in reality, they should welcome the discussion.

77

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

My point is this: spare me the nonsense of atheists have no morals. Experience and history make it clear that belief in a God in no way guarantees moral actions. Not even close.[/quote]

You don’t have a point, because no one - certainly not me - is claiming this ridiculous position.

This is a straw man. Don’t waste my time.

78

Schwarzfahrer

Why would Christian haters of the time waste any ink on speaking about Christs death if it didn’t happen? I give them credit, while not agreeing with Christianity at least they acknowledged that Christ lived and was proclaimed by “The Way” (that is what early Christians called their movement) as being the son of God in the flesh.

80

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:

My point is this: spare me the nonsense of atheists have no morals. Experience and history make it clear that belief in a God in no way guarantees moral actions. Not even close.[/quote]

You don’t have a point, because no one - certainly not me - is claiming this ridiculous position.

This is a straw man. Don’t waste my time.
[/quote]

Yes, but you keep saying that Hitler and Stalin were atheists, and look at the atrocities they committed. Hitler and Stalin no more represent atheism (assuming they were atheists) than the guy who shot the abortion doctor represents Christianity. More importantly, and as has been argued here, Hitler and Stalin created their own little cults with themselves as gods. Most atheists have had it with organized religion which is one, but certainly not the only, reason they became atheists.