I am an atheist thread 2

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phooney said:
… “Question: Do you think this would be strong or weak evidence that this book of the Bible was copied carefully and accurately over that 1,000-year period?”

No offence man, but this really just sounds like you’re trying to get me to say “Yes, that would be strong evidence that that book of the bible was copied carefully and accurately over that 1000 year period” and then you’ll use that agreement to imply that the whole thing is accurate across the entire range of its existence. If you want to bring out an example (perhaps a scroll of isiah?) then please go ahead. …
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Are there any wrong questions, Phooney? Unlike A, you have shown me the respect of making an attempt to answer all of my questions, and i have done the same for you.

Why avoid answering this particular question? Is it rude or somehow morally wrong of me to ask?

🤷
 
@Socrates4Jesus

“Why avoid answering this particular question? Is it rude or somehow morally wrong of me to ask?”

Not at all, I am far from offended 🙂

I just don’t see the relevance of this question.

If it will help you move on, I will give you the expected response, and I will now say that would be strong evidence that that book was copied accurately during that 1000 years.
 
phooney said:
@Socrates4Jesus

“Why avoid answering this particular question? Is it rude or somehow morally wrong of me to ask?”

Not at all, I am far from offended 🙂

I just don’t see the relevance of this question.

If it will help you move on, I will give you the expected response, and I will now say that would be strong evidence that that book was copied accurately during that 1000 years.
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No one could fairly accuse you of hypocrisy, Phooney! If you are not Christian, i wonder where you get your moral compass? (Please don’t answer that one, for it would be rude to ask! I’m just trying to give you a well-deserved complement. Some here could learn much from you.)

I’d very much like to continue our conversation, but i’ve got other obligations. I’ll post a reply later. Hope you have a great day in New Z. Talk with you later.

🙂
 
@S4J

You have asked me what evidence I have that your god doesn’t exist. I just need you to describe your god so that I can do it right.

I have just caught up with this thread after my vacation, and would also like to mention that I have no god, and I am not comparable to Stalin, or the pope (and thousands of devout catholics) who advocated torture for women suspected of imaginary crimes (witchcraft).
 
Socrates4Jesus said:
My question to you is this:

If you could consider the binary computer language behind all programming code that is behind all the Graphic User Interface you take for granted every day, these series of ones and zeros are no accident. Would you agree?
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The ones and zeros are no accident because someone created them. But that doesn’t prove that God is the creator of life on earth. The first of these can easily be proven. The 2nd can never be.
 
Socrates4Jesus said:
Yes, Pork! Why would God (if he, she or it exists) choose a group of smelly, ignorant, nomadic sheep herders to develop the most sophisticated form of monotheism in the ancient world?

For that matter, how possibly could a group of smelly, ignorant, nomadic sheep herders develop the most sophisticated form of monotheism in the ancient world?

Hmmmm

😛
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By stealing the idea from the Egyptians, one of the most sophisticated civilisations on earth. Atenaten and the monotheistic religion of the Aten.
Socrates4Jesus said:
Regarding the second part of objection (2) i would think that before you or i accept some written work of being divine, rather than human, in origin, we should first be given some proof. Don’t you agree?
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Oh I can’t disagree with that - have u got any?
 
Socrates4Jesus said:
Agreed! Nostradamus could not even get the name Hitler right! He came up with the name Hissler. Moreover, many of his so-called predictions were either too vague, or written in such a way that they could not be confirmed as true or false.

For a prophecy to be considered good evidence that it is more than a good guess, it would have to be specific and verifiable. I think we are on the same page, here. What do you think?

👍
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I agree. Specific and verifiable by people others than followers or admirers of the religion providing the prophecy.

And u can’t have a prophecy that can be ‘fixed’ by folks later down the line. It’s no good having a prophecy that a man will appear and call himself Jesus. Someone reading the text several hundred yrs down the line could name his son Jesus - and we have prophecy fulfilled!
 
_A said:
I noticed that, even though there were over 1000 replies to my previous thread ‘I am an atheist’, there were still some unanswered questions.
I hope everyone will find this thread and continue where we left off.

To get us started, I had been asking a question…
What measures have you, the faithful, taken to make sure that you are not hallucinating those ‘personal experiences of Yahweh’?

I think this is a very important question since we all hallucinate, and there is often a strong desire to have a ‘Yahweh experience’.
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Hi - I don’t know about hallucinating, but my experience is real. For more than 50 yrs I have lived a life away from God. Although a cradle Catholic, I never cared much about the Church’s teachings. I would go to mass on Sundays and if I missed some Sundays, it did not bother me. I never went to confession for more than 30 years. I cheated on my wife, and continued to live in a fast lane. When an older brother died of lung cancer, I said to myself, good men die young, so I continued my sinful life. A couple of years later, a younger bro died of heart attack, sort of validating what I thought, for these two brothers were saints compared to me. As long as I didn’t bother God, I’d be okay so I thought. But one Christmas (that was six years ago) I saw a small book resting on our center table. I thought it belonged to my daughter so I did not bother picking it up. But 2 weeks had passed and I noticed it was still there, so I picked it up only to see it was a New Testament book. I asked everybody in the house if the book belong to them, but they said no. I took it casually to the office and started reading it during my one hour lunch break. That was it. As soon as I opened and read it, I could no longer stop. The book literally got hold of me, heart, mind and soul. I found Jesus in the book and began to understand the meaning of his death on the cross, how much he loves me and how alive he is today. I hunger for his words, I started watching TBN and EWTN. I bought tapes, books, CDs, anything that I thought would nourish my faith. The most important thing was my wife noticed the big change in me. She began to see my transformation and because of it, she forgave me for cheating on her. Six years have passed and I’m still hungry for Jesus. The prophet Isaiah said; “The people who walked in darkness had seen a great light. They that dwell in the shadow of death, upon them that great light had shined.” (Is 9:1). Thank God for letting me see the great light for I was walking in the shadow of darkness for so long.
Happy New Year.
emarc
 
justinthemartyr said:
A

Not being a religious person, or adhering to any beliefs whatever, should be posting in the philosophy section of the website.

Can this entire thread pleas be moved to the philosophy area since this entire thread is about no religion, no belief, and a person who adheres to nothing pertaining to a non catholic religion. This section is for non catholic religions, not atheists who are not adherents to any beliefs.

Am I incorrect?
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Justin:

Philosophy is an art and a science that has several disciplines, some of which are ethics, logic and theology. One might accurately say that all theology is philosophy but not all philosophy is theology. A’s question is regarding this discipline of theology, as he is asking the question whether God or gods exist.

So, yes, i agree that A’s discussion thread would be at home in the Philosophy forum, as would just about every other discussion thread! Since his topic is about theology, i don’t see a problem with keeping it here. Now, if he had started a discussion about logical fallacies or about a specific philosopher, the Philosophy forum might be the best place for such a conversation. However, his question is addressed to all who believe in a God or gods, which includes others besides Catholics, so this is, in my opinion, the best place to post it.
 
mgrfin said:
… As for those atheists out there who are trying to prove that God does not exist, maybe you can show me one negative that is provable, or ever has been proven?

You can’t prove a negative. I don’t know why you guys are wasting our time?

peace
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Fin:

Can you prove that you are not dead? If so, are you not proving a negative?

🤷
 
phooney said:
…At a most basic level, I would just say that a biblical prophecy is anything that is in the bible that makes a statement about the future or about facts they couldn’t possibly know about otherwise. However, there must be conditions imposed for me to consider it a ‘valid’ prophecy.
  1. The prophecy must be made BEFORE the events it prophecises! For prophecies about a previous event or fact, the propheciser must not be able to possibly know about the event or fact they are prophecising about. The reasons for this should be self-evident.
  2. It must have a date or time limit attached to it. For a mere human making a prophecy I would probably be a bit more lenient on the accuracy level of the dating, but for a human channelling an omnipotent, omniscient propheciser, I think it is reasonable to expect a higher level of accuracy. The reason for requiring a date is twofold. It saves time in debating “Is this event what he meant? Is that event what he meant?”. More importantly, it provides a key component of falsifiability. Prophecies with dates that have come and gone can be obviously written off as false. Prophecies with no date have too easy a “get out of jail free” card, and this makes them pretty weak in my opinion. Prophecies with future dates at least give us something to look forward to, though I suppose that if the prophet wants his distant-future prophecy to be remembered, he had better make some good predictions during his lifetime!
  3. It must not be fulfilled by people who could have heard of the prophecy. It would be preferrable if people, who naturally have an interest in the prophecies, had nothing to do with it. An example would be “On the 3rd of June 2008 a pig will fly, under its own power, around the world visiting every major house of parliament and will be seen by millions.”
  4. Ambiguity, vagueness, repetition, theatrics and poetry demonstrate a different purpose for a “prophecy”, such as a Nostradamus style all-purpose prophecy, or intimidation purposes, or allegory.
  5. It must be correct!
I’m really sleepy at the moment, so I might have other reasons for dismissing a prophecy, but they don’t immediately spring to mind.
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In response, i’d say:

1a) Prophecy is making a prediction about the outcome of events. These might be events that are taking place at the time the prophecy is made or events that have yet to take place, or both. Most biblical prophecies are both.

2a) Your requirement for a date sounds reasonable, but actually is not. The reason for this is that the calendar used by the ancient Jewish people is no longer in existence. How would we know that the date is correct if the calendar does not exist? The calendar we use today was invented in the Middle Ages, many hundreds of years after the ink on Ezekiel’s scrolls became dry. What prophets in the Old Testament do is use years relative to events. For example, there is a prophecy of the exact number of years the Jewish people would be in exile before the Persian king Cyrus gives the decree to set them free. This aside, there are many facts about a prediction besides the exact date when events will take place that a skeptic might attempt to demonstrate as false. Regarding Ezekiel’s prediction of Tyre, you might try to show that archaeologists have found ruins of the coastal city to demonstrate that all of it was not dumped into the Mediterranean Sea, as the prophet predicted.

3a) Must is a strong word. I do not believe this is a requirement; although it would be certainly show those who hear the prophet with their own ears that he in fact is a prophet. As i mentioned in (1a) this is indeed often the case with biblical prophecies. Ezekiel’s prophecy, for example, has the short-term fulfillment of King Nebuchadnezzar marching into the city of Tyre with his army. This actually happened after a 13 year siege when he sacked the coastal city and the inhabitants fled by boat to the island city. Ezekiel’s prophecy also has a long-term prediction, as we have discussed at length, for Alexander the Great dumped the debris of the sacked coastal city into the sea to build his causeway to the island city by which he conquered it.

4a) Yes, i agree that literary techniques have a different purpose, but not necessarily a contradictory one. Ezekiel chapter 27, for example, describes the city of Tyre as a sinking ship. It’s an applicable, and outright beautiful metaphor, for the downfall of the ancient civilization that ruled the Mediterranean with the most powerful navy of its time. Rather than detract from the prophecy, it makes it more interesting. It shows the author of the prophecy to have a great love for the beauty of poetry. I’d expect nothing less from God if he, she or it existed, wouldn’t you?

5a) Yes, this is a requirement. If it does not accurately reflect history, it might be a prophecy, but only a false one!

👍
 
Phooney:

I think you have done an excellent job of attempting to define the word prophecy. My definition of the word is not as far from yours as i thought.

👍
 
phooney said:
continued @Socrates4Jesus

How does the Tyre prophecy fare? Not too well I’m afraid.
  1. As far as I can gather with a brief search, the oldest copy of Ezekiel is on some papyrus called P967 and is dated at early in the third century. This is WELL after Alexander the Great. I, of course, concede that there is nothing to say that P967 is the original document, and I would actually be surprised if it was. However, that being the case, who knows what the original wording was? And who had control of the texts? I don’t think that those in control were unbiased!
  2. No date attached. We can try to use the text itself to see what date was intended, and the most glaringly obvious is the name Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, which at least gives us a date range to work with. The prophecy did not come to pass within this particular date range. It is clear from Ezekiel 20:7-12 that it was supposed to be Nebuchadnezzar doing the fulfilling. The obvious defence is that Ezekiel also says “many nations” and though it is more parsimonious to suppose that this refers to the ‘many nations’ under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar, like the many nations under the rule of Queen Elizabeth today, it also potentially opens the prophetic window to “from now until the end of time” which is just ridiculous.
  3. Fulfilled by people or a person. Note that I don’t believe that Alexander had heard of the prophecy beforehand. That said, the evidence that you have pointed to for God having spoken to Ezekiel is that the prophecy “came true” but if that is the only evidence that is required, it equally well supports the speculation that Alexander heard the prophecy from some unknown source. We know people spoke. We know people spoke about prophecies. We know Alexander spoke to people. We know he lived and invaded in and around the areas relevant to these prophecies. I want to repeat that I do not have evidence for Alexander hearing about the prophecy beforehand, and consequently do not believe that was the case, it is just a simpler explanation that matches with the “fulfillment” equally well.
    …
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I really do appreciate the time you have devoted and enjoy the conversation! My responses to your points:

1b) What i think you are saying, here, is that you no longer believe Alexander the Great read Ezekiel before going to war against the Tyrians. You now seem to be saying that the bit about the Tyrian’s city being shoveled into the sea was added after Alexander the Great did this. It’s unclear whether you are claiming that Ezekiel was not the author or whether the Jewish scribes intentionally added the prediction about the Greek general’s military strategy to intentionally deceive. Please let me know what your line of argument is so that i might correctly respond.

2b) Ezekiel gives us the relative time when he wrote the book that bears his name in the first chapter:

1 In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month on the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. 2 On the fifth of the month—it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin- 3 the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the LORD was upon him. He wrote the 26th chapter six years later:

In the eleventh year, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: …*(Ezekiel 26:1)*That is, he wrote the book beginning when he was 30 years old and five years after King Jehoichin went into exile in Babylon. Historians use this to give the date of the writing of circa 590-560 B.C. Giving information whereby we may derive the date of the original autographs is typical of Old Testament prophets.

3b) Yes, we both agree there is no evidence that Alexander the Great read Ezekiel before he conquered Tyre. We should, like good C.S.I.s, base our conclusions only on the evidence at hand. To do otherwise is merely speculation on your part and mine.
 
phooney said:
… 4) Ambiguity, vagueness: “found” ??? Going by your defence of this, God could have been saying “The square will never be a circle” because it could not be found purely by definition of what it was.
Is the water going over the city, or is the city going under the water? Yes I do think this is an important difference.
“throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea.”
“when I bring the ocean depths over you and its vast waters cover you”
Repetition: “like the sea casting up its waves” “Out in the sea” “throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea” “bring the ocean depths over you and its vast waters cover you”
“make her a bare rock. 5 Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets” “make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets”
“pull down her towers” “demolish your towers” etc
Theatrics and poetry: Pretty much the entire passage you directed me to. biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=33&chapter=26&version=31
  1. “You will never be rebuilt, for I the LORD have spoken, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
    ““The location of the city of Tyre is not in doubt, for it exists to this day on the same spot and is known as Sur.” (Katzenstein, H.J., The History of Tyre, 1973, p9)”
    maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=3…&t=h&z=16&om=1
“Excavations have uncovered remains of the Greco-Roman, Crusader, Arab, and Byzantine civilizations, but most of the remains of the Phoenician period lie BENEATH THE PRESENT TOWN.” britannica.com/eb/article-9074016/Tyre
(emphasis is mine)

So basically, this prophecy is a failiure as far as I am concerned. Sure, if you presuppose a God, and intentionally take the most favourable interpretations, you might be able to make this work on the level of a demonstration of internal consistency. Sort of the verbal equivalent of squinting your eyes just right and tilting your head to the left to try to make a magic-eye picture work.

Are my conditions for prophecy “fair” and my applications reasonable?
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4b) Your point seems to be that the passage might be interpreted to say a tsunami, rather than several armies, will bring down the walls of the coastal city of Tyre. Lets see what Ezekiel says:

… this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, O Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves.

(Ezekiel 26:3)
Notice that Ezekiel does not quote God as saying he would bring “the sea casting up its waves,” rather, he quotes God as saying, “I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves.” You may have missed the word *like? *It shows that the waves is a simile for the invading armies and should not be taken literally as the cause of Tyre’s destruction.

The text should not be taken in a wooden, literal sense. If you were to tell me the sun will rise at 7:00 AM, i could say you are wrong because the sun does not rise, nor does it set. Your use of a common metaphor, however, would not invalidate your claim.

5b) I have to admit that this is a perfectly good objection for which i do not yet have a response. Please give me some time to think and pray about it and i’ll let you know what think after i do.
 
phooney said:
yet more continuation @Socrates4Jesus

“(1) How can a question be wrong? I can see how an answer can be wrong, but not how a question can, unless, of course, you are saying my questions are morally wrong. In that case, i’d be interested in knowing what sin i have committed so that i might learn from my mistake and repent of it.”

Maybe he is suggesting that you should do your questioning with a stone liberally applied to the skulls of non-believers, I’m not sure, he hasn’t really said anything coherent in this thread yet.
…
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LOL!

😃
 
phooney said:
@Socrates4Jesus

“Why avoid answering this particular question? Is it rude or somehow morally wrong of me to ask?”

Not at all, I am far from offended 🙂

I just don’t see the relevance of this question.

If it will help you move on, I will give you the expected response, and I will now say that would be strong evidence that that book was copied accurately during that 1000 years.
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Yes, Phooney, and i also would see it as strong evidence!

👍

It would be strong evidence that:

  1. *]great care was taken to copy the text accurately and
    *]no attempt to deliberately alter the text was made and
    *]baring any evidence to the contrary, the same care can reasonably be assumed to have be for the time prior to this 1,000 year period.
    Let me know if you agree and i’ll explain the relevance.
 
_A said:
@S4J

You have asked me what evidence I have that your god doesn’t exist. I just need you to describe your god so that I can do it right. …
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@A:

God = an omniscient being
 
Socrates4Jesus said:
Justin:

Philosophy is an art and a science that has several disciplines, some of which are ethics, logic and theology. One might accurately say that all theology is philosophy but not all philosophy is theology. A’s question is regarding this discipline of theology, as he is asking the question whether God or gods exist.

So, yes, i agree that A’s discussion thread would be at home in the Philosophy forum, as would just about every other discussion thread! Since his topic is about theology, i don’t see a problem with keeping it here. Now, if he had started a discussion about logical fallacies or about a specific philosopher, the Philosophy forum might be the best place for such a conversation. However, his question is addressed to all who believe in a God or gods, which includes others besides Catholics, so this is, in my opinion, the best place to post it.
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Thanks, S4J, but I don’t mind if this thread is moved. It is not my business to order the threads here, and I would not like to interfere with those whose job it is. What the moderators decide will be what has my support here. I hope that Justin feels the same way. Anything else makes the moderating job that much harder.
 
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