I am an atheist thread 3

[phooney]

Apologies… I could have sworn I saw the word “apathy” as an example in your response before, but the forum hasn’t noted that you edited, so I guess that’s my mistake, sorry. (It is getting late, lol)

 

[Hastrman]

Despite how much more you might like to argue against those who positively affirm that there are no gods, all atheism implies is a lack of belief in gods, because all theism implies is a belief in at least one god. The “A” prefix in itself has nothing to do with belief.

A few examples of my own, if you please. Apathy (which I think you originally used, but I see have edited, perhaps because you saw this coming) lack of emotions, not the belief that there are no emotions. Asymmetry, a lack of symmetry, not the belief that there is no such thing as symmetry. Bald, a lack of hair, not a hair colour. Not collecting stamps, a lack of a hobby, etc.

As far as I know, I’d say non-theist sounds pretty much synonymous.

Okay. But none of your examples is an ism, is it? See, we have that ism ending for a reason. It means, a system of thought. And yes, I did change it to make them all isms, not “because I saw it coming”–but because I wanted to make my explanation clear.

The way Isms have to be formed is, root-word plus Ism.

The root word of Atheism is Theos: God, not Theism, belief in God. A-theos means no-God. The ism formed off that, is “No-God-ism,” the system based on the statement “there is no God.”

On the other hand, a non-Theist is a person who is, pure and simple, not a Theist, not in the system of God-ism. No ambiguity–no tying yourself up with jerks like Richard Dawkins. Nobody has much dislike for non-Theists, other than a vague dislike that always goes with staying neutral, but what you call “strong” Atheists…almost nobody doesn’t dislike them.

And no, we’ve regressed hugely from Aristotle in terms of metaphysics, albeit not in cosmology if narrowly understood as a field in physics.

 

[_A]

… jerks like Richard Dawkins.

I think Prof. Dawkins isn’t here. Is this how you will talk about me when I am not around?

…what you call “strong” Atheists…almost nobody doesn’t dislike them.

Are you speaking for a specific group called ‘almost nobody’? How do I know you aren’'t just making this up?

 

[Hastrman]

I think Prof. Dawkins isn’t here. Is this how you will talk about me when I am not around?

You hadn’t heard Richard Dawkins is sort of atheism’s equivalent of the Scarboro Baptist Church? They’re ashamed to be associated with him, because he’s, well, a jerk. He says things like, “teaching children a religion ought to be classed as child abuse.”

One of the other major atheism boosters, I forget which, has said that Dawkins gave atheists a bad name when he decided they should call themselves “Brights”–he made them look like egomaniacs. And yet he gets whole swaths of math and physics completely wrong–as for instance, he got cosmic rays and gamma rays confused, and thinks a neutrino passes through a body every second (try millions).

Are you speaking for a specific group called ‘almost nobody’? How do I know you aren’'t just making this up?

If you don’t know many, many people have antipathy toward atheists (“strong” ones, anyway)…you must have been spending quite a lot of time in a shack in Montana. Six or eight hundred years, I’d say.

And I’m not going to strip my posts of all emotional or rhetorical content just so you feel comfortable. If I think Dawkins is a jerk, I’ll say so, at least if it’s necessary to make my point.

You decided to harp like a little girl on my choice of words, instead of answering my actual point. Essentially, a weakling’s version of the ad hominem: you’re mean!

 

[_A]

You hadn’t heard Richard Dawkins is sort of atheism’s equivalent of the Scarboro Baptist Church?

I have enjoyed his writing, and speaking. Lots of people who did not think he was a jerk bought his book.

He says things like, “teaching children a religion ought to be classed as child abuse.”

I think thrusting a religion on a child is abusive. Like deciding that a child will be a little democrat or republican. Much more sensible to allow a child to grow up and choose for him or her self.

If you don’t know many, many people have antipathy toward atheists (“strong” ones, anyway)…you must have been spending quite a lot of time in a shack in Montana. Six or eight hundred years, I’d say.

I am much more remote than that. Why would they ‘have antipathy’(to use your phrasing) to people just for having a different belief anyway?

And I’m not going to strip my posts of all emotional or rhetorical content just so you feel comfortable. If I think Dawkins is a jerk, I’ll say so.

Wouldn’t have it any other way! Use all the abusive language you feel is appropriate.

You decided to harp like a little girl on my choice of words,

I for one don’t think there is anything wrong with little girls.

instead of answering my actual point.

Oops, hey, did I do it again ? I think I did.

Pathetic.

Well said, Hastrman. I have missed your point again, I am quite sure, but I don’t mind rambling a bit.
By the way, to get back to your original point…
I am an atheist.

 

[Hastrman]

I’ve put you on my ignore list, A; the sneers of thin-skinned unphilosophic Lucretian Atomists who don’t know that they exist, in other words atheists properly so-called, do not interest me. You cannot argue but only adopt an attitude of moral superiority (is that, perhaps, your “veritably awe-inspiring manner of showing what a moral fanatic you are?”), despite such a thing being wholly irrational.

I’ll thank you to ignore my posts, too.

Phooney, where were we?

This is why I think you need to call yourself a non-theist: so people won’t lump you in with the wholly unjustified sneering of A and Richard Dawkins, especially since the latter doesn’t seem able to hold his fascistical impulses in check. “Atheist” means “jerk” to most non-atheists, or in other words at least 80% of mankind.

It’s sort of like, HG Wells called himself a fascist before the War–mainly for the economic ideas. Not a whole lot of his fans likely to insist on that now, though.

 

[c659smith]

I don’t know what the credible evidence for the existence of a god is. All of the evidence that I have seen has had its detractors over the centuries. The Biblical evidence is very thin, as the gospels were written in Greek, apparently for Greek readers by Greeks or others who weren’t Jews. The structure of Christianity appears based on Jewish and Greek models of sacrificing something or somebody (else) for one’s own sins, a concept alien to modern thought. The earliest gospels are at least 30 years after Jesus’ death. Arguments for the existence of a god are the first cause type, unmoved mover, etc. have nothing to do with Jesus or Christianity in the usual sense. Many of these arguments are densely philosophical and I can’t follow them. Even if they persuaded me to believe in an unmoved mover, that would have nothing to do with Christianity anyway.

My position is that there is no credible evidence to support belief in a god–for me.
*
I* don’t know.
You don’t know. (You might think you know, but you don’t. You believe).
No one knows.
It is unknowable.

but the queston here is there credible evidence on the existence of Jesus Christ?

Is there credible evidence on the existence of God?

I contend that there is and can show credible evidence as defined in a modern court of law as credible.

As far as the existence of Jesus Christ and his being crucified I do know historical facts based on numerous testimonies by the Roman, Jewish, and Greek not relating to the bibe are there.

 

[c659smith]

659

You asked me what evidence i would accept as proof to your god.
This is the evidence i asked for.

If jesus told the truth about answering prayers this should be no problem.
All it takes is one believer and one prayer.

What is unreasonable about that???

c659

This is the question again.

What is unreasonable about that???

les

You are not asking for evidence-you are asking for an act of God. God can choose to do this act but this is not evidence.

 

[c659smith]

Saying that these apologists are right so your case is airtight is what is called ‘argument from authority’. I could seek out an authority in biology, and get the carefully considered professional opinion that much of the bible is impossible nonsense, especially the returning from the dead story.
Neither is a good argument. Asking why those three apologists have not convinced the wider world is perfectly valid.
There is evidence for much that is not true. If you want to present evidence for resurrection, you will need unusually good evidence, since it is such an unusual claim. Testimony alone would not be enough. A crew of medical professionals running tests to confirm that someone has died, then close observation of the corpse for three days, then another crew confirming the identity of the resurrected man. Make that three crews of each, checking independently. Observed by three other crews.
Would you like to provide evidence that resurrection is possible? Lets get professionals like J. Randi to help us check most carefully.

Again this happened over 2000 years ago so to get such biological evidence today is an impossibility as there is no body.

We have the bodies of the Apostles but no Bodies of Jesus or that of His Mother, Mary.

This in itself from a Roman and Jewish civilzation that knew of Jesus,s claims when he was alive that He will rise from the dead.

So I guess one of the greatest civilizations , the Roman Empire were idiots then for not securing Jesus’s body?

That one of the Largest Religions at the time and the insistence that Christ be crucified on the claims Jesus made that He was the Son of God and would rise from the dead would not secure Jesus’s body?
This act of guarding the Body of Jesus and to disprove of the ressurection and showing the body of Jesus in decay would have proven He was not the son of God. Thus saving their own beliefs for most of their populace. I guess they were idiots also.

Now the argument here is that they were not idiots and did guard the tomb.

That something had occurred and the Jewish and Roman authorites had to supress this quickly for their own mortal survival of control and wealth over the populace.

So why the immediate persecution of such believers. There were many different sects of the Jewish and pagan religions at the time but none persecuted for censorship to the extent or cruelty that was done for the next 300 years as was perpetrated on the Christians.

I ask these questions to open dialogue and as reasonable evidence that this is history and well documented not just in the bible that something occurred.

I am not yet saying what occurred but will later with evidence to build upon these facts.

.

 

[c659smith]

Saying that these apologists are right so your case is airtight is what is called ‘argument from authority’. I could seek out an authority in biology, and get the carefully considered professional opinion that much of the bible is impossible nonsense, especially the returning from the dead story.
Neither is a good argument. Asking why those three apologists have not convinced the wider world is perfectly valid.
There is evidence for much that is not true. If you want to present evidence for resurrection, you will need unusually good evidence, since it is such an unusual claim. Testimony alone would not be enough. A crew of medical professionals running tests to confirm that someone has died, then close observation of the corpse for three days, then another crew confirming the identity of the resurrected man. Make that three crews of each, checking independently. Observed by three other crews.
Would you like to provide evidence that resurrection is possible? Lets get professionals like J. Randi to help us check most carefully.

Again these were not apologist at the time but many atheists. I am pretty sure your not claiming an atheist as an apologist.

These were lawyers and one whom created the rules of evidence and is considered as one of the fathers of the United Startes Judicial system we use today.

 

[c659smith]

I am not sure any of these are true either, I was only commenting on the level of evidence offered.
The theory that I have is like this - if the creator of the universe made a book that all humans were supposed to understand, it would be easily understood by all humans.
There is no such book in existence, as far as I know. There are several books making the claim. The one that makes that claim well will be the one that **is **easily understood by all humans.

As I stated respectively in an earlier post the bible is not an easy read.

That even today theists and atheist are still deciphering the bible.

Just as the first part of Mathew I gave earlier as a teaser I am sure you see the point now Matthew was making but that read by someone not totally educated in all the books of the bible would realize as they would not know who 4 of the 5 women mentioned in the geneology. That even a Theist would have to contemplate as to why Matthew wrote this geneolgy which was missing much of the geneology would do this.( what was Matthew trying to say)

Jesus spoke and taught many in parables and much was never tottally explained to the crowds He taught including the Apostles.

 

[c659smith]

Think again…
(1) It is extremely improbable that a special report found by Tacitus had been sent earlier to Rome and incorporated into the records of the Senate, in regard to the death of a Jewish provincial, Jesus. The execution of a Nazareth carpenter would have been one of the most insignificant events conceivable among the movements of Roman history in those decades; it would have completely disappeared beneath the innumerable executions inflicted by Roman provincial authorities. For it to have been kept in any report would have been a most remarkable instance of chance.
(2) The phrase “multitudo ingens” which means “a great number” is opposed to all that we know of the spread of the new faith in Rome at the time. A vast multitude in 64 A.D.? There were not more than a few thousand Christians 200 years later. The idea of so many just 30 years after his supposed death is just a falsehood.
(3) The use of the Christians as “living torches,” as Tacitus describes, and all the other atrocities that were committed against them, have little title to credence, and suggest an imagination exalted by reading stories of the later Christian martyrs. Death by fire was not a punishment inflicted at Rome in the time of Nero. It is opposed to the moderate principles on which the accused were then dealt with by the State.
(4) The Roman authorities can have had no reason to inflict special punishment on the new faith. How could the non-initiated Romans know what were the concerns of a comparatively small religious sect, which was connected with Judaism and must have seemed to the impartial observer wholly identical with it.
(5) Suetonius says that Nero showed the utmost indifference, even contempt in regard to religious sects. Even afterwards the Christians were not persecuted for their faith, but for political reasons, for their contempt of the Roman state and emperor, and as disturbers of the unity and peace of the empire. What reason can Nero have had to proceed against the Christians, hardly distinguishable from the Jews, as a new and criminal sect?
(6) It is inconceivable that the followers of Jesus formed a community in the city at that time of sufficient importance to attract public attention and the ill-feeling of the people. It isn’t the most popular way to convert and bring people into their religion.
(7) The victims could not have been given to the flames in the gardens of Nero, as Tacitus allegedly said. According to another account by Tacitus these gardens were the refuge of those whose homes had been burned and were full of tents and wooden sheds. Why would he risk burning these by lighting human fires amidst all these shelters?
(8) According to Tacitus, Nero was in Antium, not Rome, when the fire occurred.
(9) The blood-curdling story about the frightful orgies of Nero reads like some Christian romance of the Dark Ages and not like Tacitus. Suetonius, while mercilessly condemning the reign of Nero, says that in his public entertainments Nero took particular care that no lives should be sacrificed, “not even those of condemned criminals.”
(10) It is highly unlikely that he mingled with the crowd and feasted his eyes on the ghastly spectacle. Tacitus tells us in his life of Agricola that Nero had crimes committed, but kept his own eyes off them.
continued

#1 Exactly so why so much of this account by all areas of society at the time–Roman,Greek, Jewish, Etc… if nothing occurred other than an ordinary cricification?
Why would Pilate/Romans who had such distain for the Jews crucify someone he found innocent.
#2
Where do you get your info. that Christianity a small # in 64 AD taught throughout Roman Empire and public executions of Peter and Paul had occurred already in Rome.
#3
Again this occurrence well documented and a result of blaming the Christians for setting the slums of Rome afire (while Nero was out of the city)The actual cause of Rome set ablaze is not documented to any person only to lay blame by Nero.
#4 Why did the Romans do it? Was it because they would not claim emperor as a God/ offered no resistance.Why did they be-head Paul or crucifiy Peter / a religion of little importance?
The Romans as well Jewish authorities knew this sect was growing quickly and refused authority/ their laws in relationship to ceasar being god or jewish Religious laws.
#5 Jews fought physically aganist the Roman Empire for centuries were ok? The Jewish priests were not crucified and thrown into the colluseum. Christians with Rome and the Jews they were afraid of losing power.
#6 You’re reasoning here is rather rediculous there continues to be missionaries killed throughout the world in fact in greater documented #s the past 100 years. It is what Jesus said to do. Blessed are those who are persecuted for my name as theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We spread the Good Word and they the pagans decide to accept or decline. (free will) we do not go to places that are always hospitable.
#7 To show that he (Nero ) was carrying out justice to the alleged suspects (the Christians) whom he claimed caused the burned down these homes to save his own behind from a riot.
#8 I do not agrue that point but he gave the orders and later came back to Rome. I am not saying that he held the tourch that burned down the slums that was a political problem and eye sore challenge to his city.
#9 Again that Human sacrafices were aganist the law at that time I agree. There was no human sacrafices offered to the gods that in compliance with Roman Law.
The Christian were not offered as sacrafices even in their deaths in Rome by the Romans but the Christians offered their pain, sufferings, and death as a sacrafice to Christ which ticked off Nero immensely as well as the Roman Authorities. Peter was crucified, his only request was they crucify him upside down as he do not deserve to die the same way his Lord died.
#10 OK he looked away

 

[_A]

Again this happened over 2000 years ago so to get such biological evidence today is an impossibility as there is no body.

The evidence available is coincidentally the same evidence one would have if the whole thing was fiction.

We have the bodies of the Apostles but no Bodies of Jesus or that of His Mother, Mary.

Aren’t there many people, both fiction and non-fiction who this is true for?

Now the argument here is that they were not idiots and did guard the tomb.

The same evidence would be available if the story were all fiction.

So why the immediate persecution of such believers. There were many different sects of the Jewish and pagan religions at the time but none persecuted for censorship to the extent or cruelty that was done for the next 300 years as was perpetrated on the Christians.

Don’t know. I don’t even know if there was such persecution. Again, this would not (if it were true) indicate anything supernatural (as far as I can tell)

 

[_A]

Again these were not apologist at the time but many atheists. I am pretty sure your not claiming an atheist as an apologist.

These were lawyers and one whom created the rules of evidence and is considered as one of the fathers of the United Startes Judicial system we use today.

Judicial evidence laws are to support or refute regular claims made by people regarding legal matters.

I am sure you will agree that your claims of an all-powerful god are far from regular. You will need much more amazing evidence to support such amazing claims.

 

[_A]

As I stated respectively in an earlier post the bible is not an easy read.

That even today theists and atheist are still deciphering the bible.

Just as the first part of Mathew I gave earlier as a teaser I am sure you see the point now Matthew was making but that read by someone not totally educated in all the books of the bible would realize as they would not know who 4 of the 5 women mentioned in the geneology. That even a Theist would have to contemplate as to why Matthew wrote this geneolgy which was missing much of the geneology would do this.( what was Matthew trying to say)

Jesus spoke and taught many in parables and much was never tottally explained to the crowds He taught including the Apostles.

What about that geneology? Did they really try to explain Jesus’ ancestry? Do you actually believe that he was born of a certain ‘line’ (David, or Abraham?)?

 

[Minnie31]

the sneers of thin-skinned unphilosophic Lucretian Atomists who don’t know that they exist, in other words atheists properly so-called, do not interest me.

So why did you post on this thread if atheists don’t interest you?

 

[_A]

So why did you post on this thread if atheists don’t interest you?

Interesting question, Minnie31. Glad to see you back.

 

[Minnie31]

Interesting question, Minnie31. Glad to see you back.

Thanks! I’ve been occupied with others things lately, but I’ve been lurking.

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

So why did you post on this thread if atheists don’t interest you?

To be precise, he didn’t say that atheists don’t interest him, he said their sneers don’t interest him. He did continue a dialog with phooney. I have to agree that phooney’s posts are less sneerful.

By the way, I assure you that sneerful is a word, as is asneerful.

 

[_A]

To be precise, he didn’t say that atheists don’t interest him, he said their sneers don’t interest him. He did continue a dialog with phooney. I have to agree that phooney’s posts are less sneerful.

By the way, I assure you that sneerful is a word, as is asneerful.

He said…

the sneers of thin-skinned unphilosophic Lucretian Atomists who don’t know that they exist, in other words atheists properly so-called, do not interest me.

It is clear that he was calling atheists 'thin-skinned unphilosophic somethingorother.
He **was **mentioning that the sneers of atheists are disinteresting, but let’s not forget just how insulting his statements are. I feel that the insults needed addressing more than his quibble over what ‘atheist’ meant.