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Further to the above defense of Josephus the Gospel accounts are all separate eye witness accounts written from many different points of view and they show amazing agreement with nuanced data that would be impossible to fabricate as if by conspiracy. In fact a conspiracy or manufactured myth would not have gone so far as to create ‘fake’ problems internal to the new religion. But the NT airs all manner of conflicts and disagreements among the apostles and false teachers, and heretics and chastisements from Jesus etc. It’s just not plausible to imagine that the writers would have fabricated less than a perfect account of what the “official party line” was if it was contrived. In any case collaborators would not have relied on oral traditions for so many years before they set about writing things down since it opened the door for others to hijack the religion (like Marcion attempted in fact by developing his own cannon without the OT references). In fact the presence of so many early heretics and the early church’s struggle to put down false teachings obliterates any fantasy that anything was contrived. A contrived story line would have idealized the teachings and show no internal struggles or problems.

The other clincher is that Daniels prophecies in the 600 BC time frame dovetail perfectly with Christ’s NT testimony about the temple destruction in 70 AD. Skeptics can claim that the Christians post edited the NT accounts to correspond with that but they can not claim that the OT was edited and revised to reflect actual dates. As well the NT writers clearly did not know all the details about why Jesus used certain parables and just presented them textually - in some cases without any editorial comment (ref. the cursed fig tree). The reason is they were not Jewish Rabbis and did not know the oral traditions and some of the more esoteric aspects of the Jewish prophecies from OT times. It turns out the cursed fig tree was such a sign from the OT Jews that would be one of the signals of the Messiah. But not a word is said about this by the NT writers who just record a straightforward read that tells us Peter exclaimed “the fig tree is withered” after the temple incident with the money changers the day after. A fabricated story line would have editorialized this prophecy and commented on it being a sign of the Messiah but it did not since the NT authors didn’t know this oral tradition.

James
 
aileron said:
I see your point, but it’s an invalid analogy. We have good reason to accept the induction that all people have two parents. This means that as long as there have been humans, we can trace our lineage back to branching (and eventually forking) sets of ancestors. Most people have no idea who even one of their ancestors that distant is, let alone all of them. So in the first part of your analogy, you’re claiming that obviously there’s *some *lineage.

Later in the second part of your analogy, you’re claiming that that a *specific *person in the line must be correct, Jesus of Nazareth. The two parts of the analogy are materially different and so the analogy invalid.

Still, I see where you are going. Obviously, somebody must have gotten the religion going, and what more obvious candidate than the one man everyone was writing about? That’s why I think it’s inconclusive. Faith or dogma may settle the matter once and for all, but lacking these, I really can’t be sure either way on the historicity question.

Hmmm… Should I let the Protestants reading this attack this one? Suffice it to say that this is an even more tenuous claim than the historicity of Jesus, and one that very few Protestants accept. It’s not so much the timing here as it is the line of succession. Although Christians were probably around in the 1st century, there are good reasons to doubt that there has been a continuous line of Bishops of Rome since the 1st century. That in and of itself in a Catholic v Protestant issue nearly as old as the Reformation Schism, and I’ll leave it at that.

I don’t think anyone reasonably doubts that the church had been established by the time of Constantine. We’re still about three centuries removed from the NT accounts.
Actually, the Church has a lineage of popes that goes back to Peter and this information was provided by St. Iraneaus in the 2nd century.
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jam070406 said:
Do you love your parents? Does the emotion of love switch off when you get angry at your parents over something, and you no longer love them? So if at that time that you were angry and they got hurt, like in a car accident, you wouldn’t care because you weren’t feeling that emotion of love for them during the time it happened, because you were still experiencing the emotion of anger or hate?
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You can feel a mixture of emotions.
 
Annabea said:
Very well. I am an atheist because I do not believe in a higher being. I do not know how the earth got here, and frankly, I don’t think we are ever going to know for sure. Some very convincing theorys out there though. I do not believe in the christian god because I find it rather disturbing. The bible, I mean. The Church has done many bad things over the years. I am an atheist because I am agnostic. There is no proof to back up any god out there. I do not think that atheism is bad to the world in any way.
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The idea of having to say or defend or explain that one person is atheist, non-theist, or agnostic is something that begs for the answer.

Science ASSUMES that everything has a sense of order. Science attempts to reconstruct those that can be observed by finding the order. Science and hence all of mankind’s effort will be put to an uncertain position without asserting that assumption.

Do you believe in all that Science claims because of what you have read (therefore of what other people said and believed), or what you have DIRECTLY experienced? The same is true with Christians believing in their God – this is revealed to certain people and have passed this knowledge on to the next, each generation clarifying and developing that knowledge to be able to live fully and optimize happiness as humans and eventually meet his true End – God.
 
geekborj said:
The idea of having to say or defend or explain that one person is atheist, non-theist, or agnostic is something that begs for the answer.

Science ASSUMES that everything has a sense of order. Science attempts to reconstruct those that can be observed by finding the order. Science and hence all of mankind’s effort will be put to an uncertain position without asserting that assumption.

Do you believe in all that Science claims because of what you have read (therefore of what other people said and believed), or what you have DIRECTLY experienced? The same is true with Christians believing in their God – this is revealed to certain people and have passed this knowledge on to the next, each generation clarifying and developing that knowledge to be able to live fully and optimize happiness as humans and eventually meet his true End – God.
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I do not believe all of what science says. Science is proven wrong again and again, but the thing about science is that it changes, when something is proved wrong, its gain, something is not it. The process of elimination. Yet, everything scientists come out with have proof behind it. I have said before, there is a difference between a theory and a scientific theory. If you should ask, I will ask you to look back through the posts.
 
mauricio0 said:
Actually colors do not exist. They are imaginary. White is the combination of all visible wavelengths of light. (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.) This colors are made by our minds they just labes for different wavelengths) When light waves are observed by some objects you see them as black. So black is the absence of light. White is the combination of all colors (light wavelengths: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.)
Light is the absence of color and black the combination of all of them, this are just painting concepts. I’m telling you this because I found light to be a fascinating thing.
BTW you should see this video. Dawkins walking about how these labels came to be, because of evolution in our environment:
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6308228560462155344
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That is true, I wasn’t thinking about that. But, as you said, color is what we call the multiple different light wavelengths in general so…lets stick to the basics?
 
Annabea said:
That is true, I wasn’t thinking about that. But, as you said, color is what we call the multiple different light wavelengths in general so…lets stick to the basics?
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I was not trying to correct you,just providing some interesting data 😃
 
Annabea said:
I do not believe all of what science says. Science is proven wrong again and again, but the thing about science is that it changes, when something is proved wrong, its gain, something is not it. The process of elimination. Yet, everything scientists come out with have proof behind it. I have said before, there is a difference between a theory and a scientific theory. If you should ask, I will ask you to look back through the posts.
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So the heuristic process of trial and error appeals to you? This suggests that you accept that humans and scientific application are not perfect and are fallable because humans are fallable wouldn’t you agree?

Do you imagine that you are also heuristic in nature and learn through trial and error and that you are also not infallable?

Can you ever hope to know for certain that God does not exist through a trial and error process or its opposite?

Are you sure?

Are you infallable?

Are you sure?
😉

James
 
CentralFLJames said:
So the heuristic process of trial and error appeals to you? This suggests that you accept that humans and scientific application are not perfect and are fallable because humans are fallable wouldn’t you agree?

Do you imagine that you are also heuristic in nature and learn through trial and error and that you are also not infallable?

Can you ever hope to know for certain that God does not exist through a trial and error process or its opposite?

Are you sure?

Are you infallable?

Are you sure?
😉

James
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We all learn through trial and error. When you are a kid and touch the candle and it burns you, you know not to touch it again. Or, more appropriate, when you are taking a test and you are stuck on a question. You rule out everything that isn’t it until you find the answer. No one (and nothing) is infallible.If we prove god does not exist, you won’t accept it. How do you know your “god” is infallible?
 
Annabea said:
Hello. I am an atheist. Now before you start spitting on my shoes I would like to know a little about what you believe? Belief usually varies from person to person that is why I did not post this in the admin/mod answer question thingy. I would like to know what you think about religion, how you think it is effecting the world, and why you believe what you do.
Thanks!
~Annabea

edit: sorry a little grammar check
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Annabea, I promise not to spit on your shoes. There are many types of people that don’t believe in God. But I’ll just focus on two categories of people. One is, the people that have had such an easy life of health and wealth that they have never had a single moment of dispair that they’re just too busy enjoying life to even think that a God could exist. The other group is at the opposite end of the spectrum. People that have had nothing but poverty, agony, loneliness, unanswered prayers, and sometimes tragedy that they feel either God doesn’t exist or he simply just does not love them. Now what I just did was unfairly lump people because of their financial position or lack there of into two biased categories. I know of many wealthy people that believe in God and attend Mass and other religious services. And many of the poorest of the poor in this world have an unshakable faith in God. To believe in God does not come from what someone types on this site or anywhere else, or what you see on tv. Believing in God starts small within you and grows over time till it fills every fiber of your being. Not from bunch of outside sources. Many people like to look up to the sky and yell “If there’s a God, give me a sign!” and expect a loud rumble of thunder and a crack of lightning on a sunny day. But your sign just might be seeing a beautiful newborn baby that completely melts you. Then you start to think to yourself, I know the biological reason for this baby’s existence, but how did people come into existence in the first place. The Atheist school of thought is, something was created out of nothing by no one. The God believing school of thought is something was created out of nothing by someone. Which one makes more sense to you? I hope your question was more of a “I don’t know God but would like learn about him” as opposed to “there ain’t no god and you can’t prove it”. If God could be proven by conventional means where would the joy of faith be? I lost my son due to a tragedy. Secular therapy did nothing to take away my agony. Attending Mass weekly and my reaffirmed belief in Christ Jesus greatly eased my pain. GOD IS REAL. Therapists are not. Just remember if you separate the “the” from the rest of the word therapists, that’s exactly what you get. Emotionally and financially.
 
Supercatholic said:
Annabea, I promise not to spit on your shoes. There are many types of people that don’t believe in God. But I’ll just focus on two categories of people. One is, the people that have had such an easy life of health and wealth that they have never had a single moment of dispair that they’re just too busy enjoying life to even think that a God could exist. The other group is at the opposite end of the spectrum. People that have had nothing but poverty, agony, loneliness, unanswered prayers, and sometimes tragedy that they feel either God doesn’t exist or he simply just does not love them.
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No, and I do not recommend you saying that stuff( when talking to atheists) because it is offensive and annoying to people; that have struggled researching for truth and have came to the conclusion that there is no valid reason to believe in god, and that the theistic world view is very unlikely. Also it is an ad hominem.
 
Annabea said:
Obviously, not all animals love each other, just as we all do not love one another.
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No, annabea, that’s not the question I asked. Do humans (as part of our nature) committ such vicious acts as we witness in the animal kingdom? And do animals love in the same capacity as humans? Yes or No.
 
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