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Atheist Q and A

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Yes he did, but thankfully he has recovered now :smile:

. I don't want to say X is completely at fault and point fingers, but he put out a verbal statement on his website (https://richarddawkins.net/2016/02/an-update-on-richards-condition-in-his-own-words/), which was very interesting. He refers to events preceding his stroke which is key.
He put out a very witty video (which he later took down after backlash) on his twitter. The video was basically comparing feminists to Islamists (check it out on Sargon of Akkad's YouTube channel: "Feminists love Islamists" :wink:

. This triggered a lot of offended feminists and "social justice warriors". Dawkins faced a huge backlash, and got dis-invited ("de-platformed" :wink:

from an atheist convention (Ironically a "skeptics" society). The worst thing was he faced a lot of abuse and, shall we say, harassment on Twitter which was the same, if not worse, as the stuff he gets from religious people. He said in that statement that this may have put him under a lot of stress and pressure and was a factor to his stroke. Basically, it was horrible treatment of a renowned atheist figure (not too dis-similar to how Sir Tim Hunt was treated) by other atheists and liberal-minded people.

This whole debacle shows how much of a cancer "atheism +" has become as someone mentioned before.

This was a brief account, I may have missed some details. Sargon of Akkad covers this more if you are interested.

Oh wow. Shall have a read of this.

Thank you very much!

Reply 321

username2385417

Original post by The Epicurean

Not to mention that the number of early Greek New Testament manuscripts we have now is about 5,700, whereas the authors of the King James V bible had merely half a dozen or so. From those half dozen or so, these manuscripts only dated to the earliest of about the 10th century. However, we now have our earliest manuscripts dating to within 30 years of when the original documents were written. So all in all, one should be cautious when using the King James V Bible translation.

Exactly!

I have NO idea how someone can point to the KJV and be like "this is God's WORD"

Honestly.

Reply 322

chazwomaq

Original post by leavingthecity

Tell me more about this....

And my favourite comment below:

Ray Comfort: "Banana's are easy to peel, therefore God."

Atheists: "Coconuts... CHECKMATE!"

Reply 323

chemting

You watch TF and TheAmazingAtheist too?!?!?!?!?!? :biggrin:

Reply 324

TuppenceB

Original post by leavingthecity

Hi,

Thanks, but I'm quite familiar with these kinds of arguments, and contrary to the claims of this book, God's existence cannot be proven in any way. It was nice to read that the author has a motive to make peoples lives better from his experience with drug abusers though.

No problem, thanks for taking the time to look at it :smile:

Reply 325

TheOpinion

Original post by like_marmite

It's the first time I've used it, kid.

Though it's not the first time you have incorrectly accused people of something, so I don't expect this will be the last time. Lke that time when you said "argument" is plural.

The irony in using kid is that I am anything but.

And are you being a complete idiot on purpose? I said ARGUMENTS, the S on then end makes it a plural you complete tool

Reply 326

TheOpinion

Original post by chemting

You watch TF and TheAmazingAtheist too?!?!?!?!?!? :biggrin:

Wait, there are people that don't watch them?!?!

Reply 327

chemting

Original post by TheOpinion

Wait, there are people that don't watch them?!?!

More people than you think... or maybe just people I know that are not on tsr :frown:

Reply 328

Scrappy-coco

Original post by Copperknickers

The visitation of the wise men obviously could not have happened, and is the fulfillment of a couple of Old Testament prophecies. The massacre of the innocents episode is obviously lifted straight out of the story of Moses and the Pharoah's massacre of firstborn children, combined with the prophecies of Jeremiah. There are numerous other examples.

But the contradictions are beyond the differences found in eyewitness accounts. Matthew and Luke disagree on where Jesus lived: the former says he is from Bethlehem, the latter that he is from Nazareth. Those two towns are quite a way from each other. They also disagree on his genealogy.

Too many to count. There was no Roman census which would have required Jesus to travel to Bethlehem, there was no recorded massacre of children by King Herod, there are numerous geographical inaccuracies. There was no eclipse during the period when Jesus is supposed to have been crucified, and 'the sky went dark'. Also, Pontius Pilate is depicted as being a kind and considerate man, when we have reliable records that he once had several hundred people brutally beaten because they complained when he looted the Jewish temple of its treasures.

Paul's epistles don't really provide any new historical information that is not in the gospels, they are just intepretations of what Paul understood as the teachings of Christ. He never actually met Jesus, although he was contemporary with him. He does claim a whole host of supernatural nonsense though.

Contradictions can be perfectly fine in history, and we can still piece together the big picture. Take this example. Source 1 - 'legendary novelist john smith died in the borough of Newham on Wednesday morning'. Source 2 - ' Smith's daughter reported his death on Wednesday morning. She said he died on Tuesday night in London'. Source 3 - 'Smiths agent reported that he died Tuesday night in Newham'.

They contradict each other in reporting the day of the week Smith died. One gives a less specific location for Smith's death. But they all agree on the main point. John smith has recently died. Historians differ between the big picture and the details. All sources confirm the main point, not withstanding the contradiction on the day of death and the different specifics of the location. Neither of these divergences undermine the main point. You'll find historians expecting apparent contradictions and divergences in the details. Such discrepancies do not affect the overall picture unless the contradictions are real (as opposed to apparent) and are so extensive that they undermine all of our sources.

Also, let's not make the common mistake which seems to happen when it makes to the historicity of the bible. A real contradiction is when two claims actually contradict each other - that is one of the claims must be false if the other is true. At least one is mistaken. An apparent contradiction is when it only seems that both claims cannot be true.

There are many sources of apparent contradiction but I'll just name a few. Completeness. Assuming every account of an event includes every significant detail about it. Conflation. Treating two different persons or events as the same. Context. Ignoring facts about the language and culture of the events, or assuming that they are identical to the cultural context we share today.

There are many examples of apparent contradictions in history, fortunately historians don't jump the gun and dismiss them as false. For example, did Greenleaf or Crafts read the Declaration of Independence from the Balcony? (Hint. It was both. Read up on how historians argue for this).

Now to address the examples you give.

The apparent contradiction between Matthew and Luke on the genealogy of Jesus.

Matthew 1:16 - . . . And Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

Luke 3:23 - Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about 30 years of age, being the son of Joseph (as was supposed) , the son of Heli . . .

The assumption here is that both accounts are giving ancestry of Jospeh's family.

Perfect plausible response - the assumption is false and Luke gives a genealogy through the ancestry of Mary. A few clues can be alluded to support this.case. In the Greek, it does not say "son of Heli" but simply "of Heli". The word "son" is not repeated after the first usage. More importantly, the location of the qualifying phrase "as was supposed" and the omission of the possessive definitive article (I can't write it in English on this device) before Joseph's name make it clear that Joseph is not part of the lineal descent being given. There's a parenthesis and there's actually a case where Herodotus gives almost the same Greek phrase in a similar context.

Of course this doesn't exhaust the entire argument that there lies contradictions between the genealogies. Another is that Luke gives many more generations for the part of the genealogies where they run in parallel. Dawkins touches on this in the God delusion.

The response is a rather simple one and is a straight forward case of assuming completeness. Matthew certainly skips generations but it is not required that either genealogy should give each link, always, from father to son. His purpose is to establish Jesus' legal descent, not to give every step in the descent. In fact, notice the first verse of the first chapter in Matthew - 'the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of the David, the son of Abraham'. Are we to argue that Jesus is the child of David? And that Abraham is the father of David, making him the grandfather of Jesus? Of course not! He's establishing ancestry.

Now to the supposed contradiction about where Jesus lived. Was it Bethlehem or Nazareth? I hope you aren't making the argument that Matthew 2:1-12, 22-23, it says Joseph was from Bethlehem whereas Luke 1:26-27, 56, 2:4-5 and 39 says he was originally Nazareth?

Matthew never says Joseph and Mary were living in Bethlehem already. The first time Bethlehem is even mentioned is in 2: 1, as the place where Jesus was born. He then doesn't mention a house where they lived until the wise men come. But he doesn't say this was the house Jesus was born in, simply that was the house Jesus was in at the time. We you add in the age of children Herod asks to be killed you have around a year after Jesus' birth.

What about the historical evidence that supposedly invalidates the gospels?

Let's start with the Roman census. You say that there wouldn't have been a Roman census that would have required registration. I think the objection here is that there was no Roman census that wanted the whole Roman world to be registered, mentioned in Luke 2:1. It's actually quite a common objection. When you look at the Greek translation of the verse, it says that the whole "land" was to be registered. (Don't know how to write the Greek version here). Luke uses this term in Acts 11:28 "there would be a great famine over all the land". But here, it clearly means the land of Judea, not the whole Roman Empire.

The objection is pressed on - but Augustus wouldn't have issued the decree when Herod was a king in good standing, Herod would have done it himself. But was he in good standing? Herod actually fell out of favour with Augustus and Josephus tells us that he sent a sharply worded letter to Herod, saying that though he had been treated as a friend he would from there on be treated as a subject. Essentially, Herod was demoted from Rex socious (an ally) to an Rex amicus (basically a pet dog). This meant he lost the authority to conduct his own taxes, a kind of previous grace by Cesar.

What about the massacre of the children by Herod? First note, this isn't an appeal to historical evidence which invalidates the story, but an appeal to historical silence.

The objection seems to be that we have no other mention of it in other gospels, nor do we see it mentioned by Josephus, who wrote much about King Herod. How strong is the argument from silence?

Most of the literature from Palestine in the first century is lost. If someone else wrote about the event, there is little reason to think we would have it. Also, Bethlehem was a small, obscure village were perhaps a dozen children were killed at most. This was not an event of civic or military importance and no particular reason to think Josephus would mention it if he knew of it.

The argument from silence is one of the weakest historical arguments can be made. Josephus and Philo never mention the expulsion of the Jews from Rome. It's mentioned by Roman historian Seutonius in the second century, but the only mention of it in the first century is a passing comment in Acts. Historians all agree this event happened, even though roman authorities in the first century were silent on it. There's all kinds of reasons why someone doesn't mention something. Perhaps he mentioned it in another work lost. Perhaps it slipped his mind. Perhaps he found the event embarrassing and chose to omit it. Sometimes, like the biography of Constantine, we can reasonably guess why there are omissions ( he commissioned the biography and didn't want the murder of his wife in there). Other times, we simply don't know and have to deal with the evidence we have.

There's just a colossal number of examples where people leave obvious things out. Pliny the younger mentions the eruption of mount Vesuvius, yet never mentions Pompeii. Marco Polo never mentions tea or the Great Wall of China (and we know he traveled through tea districts!) Pliny the elder didn't mention the darkness at the time of the crucifixion. Well Pliny didn't live in Judea, when know that it couldn't have been an eclipse because of the Passover, but most importantly, the entire chapter Pliny devotes to mysterious darkness is 18 words long. Hardly exhaustive.

Always be very very skeptical of arguments from silence.

Regarding geographical mistakes, I hope you don't mean Mark being mistaken about: the geography of the sea of Galilee (5:1-13) the geography of the sea of Palestine (7:31) confusion between Judea and the Jordan river (10:1) the location of bethphage or Bethany (11:1). Or Matthew and the swine with Sea of Galilee (8:28) as none of them are historical mistakes.

Regarding Paul's epistles. He had met Peter and James within around 6 years of the crucifixion, years later meeting with them again but with John as well. (Check Galatians). Many of the creeds within Paul's letters can be traced back to very very early times if the church, commonly within a few years of the crucifixion. A common objection for the gospels is that we can't trust them because they are four or more decades later than the events (depending on how you date them). But teachings in the gospel which are corroborated by Paul and the creeds he mentions bridges the chronological gap.

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Reply 329

TheOpinion

Original post by chemting

More people than you think... or maybe just people I know that are not on tsr :frown:

What a sad state of affairs. Do you watch Sargon of Akkad too?

Reply 330

Sciatic

How do you prove that your mother is actually your mother?

Reply 331

chemting

Original post by TheOpinion

What a sad state of affairs. Do you watch Sargon of Akkad too?

Indeed... and Yup :tongue:

Reply 332

TheOpinion

Original post by Sciatic

How do you prove that your mother is actually your mother?

My mum isn't actually my mum so it's a bit redundant to ask :wink:

In all seriousness I think if I came out of her vagina it's pretty conclusive I am her child.

Reply 333

TheOpinion

Original post by chemting

Indeed... and Yup :tongue:

You've gained my respect, and a follow when I stop using the damn app

Reply 334

Plantagenet Crown

Original post by Sciatic

How do you prove that your mother is actually your mother?

DNA analysis.

Reply 335

Scrappy-coco

Original post by leavingthecity

A cause and effect within our universe is not the same as a cause and effect taking place outside and within our universe respectively.Time does not exist outside of our universe, as explained in my earlier post. It is part of space-time and a property of our universe.See first paragraph as to why you cannot extrapolate cause and effect to outside of our universe in this same way.Cause and effect as you describe exist on the marco level. The universe had it's beginnings as a point of infinite density and space time curvature as says General Relativity, however not only does GR break down in these conditions; under such great gravitational force, but the Newtonian laws that govern your cause and effect cease to exist on this tiny scale, which is Planck's scale, and this is where quantum behaviour dominates. It is therefore impossible to make such extrapolations.In regard to causal principles and taxicab fallacies; I am arguing science here. This is an argument from direct observation and suggestion by mathematical theory. Check your knowledge of General Relativity and don't be a philosopher that looks inside of his own head for the answers.Simultaneous causation exists only in philosophy. Check your Special Relativity this time. For two objects in locations separate in space, there is no simultaneity. In other words, simultaneity does not exist and is only a concept that appears when we apply convention.

Einstein vs Kant on the universe here, I know which side I'd pick.

But the proponent of of simultaneous causation doesn't say that the cause happened outside of the universe or outside of time. You've simply misunderstood. With regards to time, simultaneous equation would happen at the first moment of time.

Now, you then move to appeal to a lack of cause and effect within quantum mechanics (you appeal to the break down of general relativity and how the relevant question of cause and effect, with regards to the origin of the universe, must be framed within the context of quantum mechanics). The problem is that it's far from clear that cause and effect does not apply at the quantum level. There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics, they all give exactly the same answer to every measurement. Now you say 'I am arguing science here. This is an argument from direct observation and suggestion by mathematical theory'. Then by your own parameters all interpretations of quantum mechanics are equally correct. Though, some interpretations are completely deterministic. By your own parameters of observation and mathematics, how do you argue 'cause and effect cease to exist on a tiny scale'?

The notion of causation is studied within metaphysics. Of you want to talk meaningfully of causation, you're going to have to fashion a philosophical hat to use when you need it. Your example of Einstein vs Kant isn't really fitting, it's more like Hume which suits you. An ardent empiricist who cannot take causation to be real in any true sense. Hume argued that it was impossible for human beings to know that the cause and effect relationship is real in any "thick" or interesting sense. He said, first, that our only concept of causality is that of constant conjunction--that B always follows A. There was, according to Hume, no other kind of deep causality to be had, though he found this an unsatisfactory position. He thought he was stuck with it. Worse still, Hume argued that it was impossible to know even that B _would_ always follow A, since that inference was based on induction, and induction could not (Hume thought) be rationally justified. It rested, he thought, on a kind of bare posit of the uniformity of nature.

Even if we focus in on the question of quantum mechanics and causation, it's a fascinating question that we haven't answered yet. The boring answer most give is a kind of middle ground - the belt of causation is loosened at the quantum level, but exists nonetheless. But this is most likely a way to sit on the fence and accept for sides of the argument. What you need to realise, is that any appeal to quantum mechanics to weaken the causal principle has to argue philosophical notions along with the science. If the deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics are true, then causation is not affected. But even if the indeterminant ones are true, the causal principle is only weakened if the indeterminacy has ontological significance. If the indeterminacy only has epistemological significance, it affects the causal principle little. For example, if Heisenberg's indeterminacy is understood not as describing the events themselves but rather our knowledge of the events, the Causal Principle still holds.

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Reply 336

Scrappy-coco

It's not irrelevant with the seemingly popularity of logical positivism over the past decade or so.

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Reply 337

username..1111

do you believe in god?

Reply 338

champ_mc99

Original post by Plantagenet Crown

The fact that they can be made in the lab so easily using plausible conditions that would have existed on the early Earth suggests that the chances of this happening were not negligible.

Sorry I wasn't clear earlier . I meant did YOUR human input in making these make a large difference in probability if they were made like this long ago. I was asking whether the DIFFERENCE in these probabilities were negligible. :smile:

Reply 339

Plantagenet Crown