If you wanted to convert an atheist who wanted to believe....

angelfalling · 06-04-2009 06:52PM

It is the wilfully ignorant who deny His existence.

lol, funny. Funny thing, isn't it, ignorance.

PDN · 06-04-2009 06:52PM

Biro wrote: »

Gasp! You're right... Because you loosly quoted "some guy" who may have been wrong then we should all assume that the Bible is definately wrong! Brilliant!!
ALL of history is also wrong too by the same reckoning....

You can't argue with that kind of logic and rationality, can you?

Liber8or · 06-04-2009 06:52PM

Biro wrote: »

Gasp! You're right... Because you loosly quoted "some guy" who may have been wrong then we should all assume that the Bible is definately wrong! Brilliant!!
ALL of history is also wrong too by the same reckoning....

Here is an example of exaggeration and hyperbole, refer to "Bible" for further examples.

What I said was; you shouldn't believe everything the Bible has to say because "some" guys wrote it...

Fanny Cradock · 06-04-2009 06:53PM

Liber8or wrote: »

You should apply your own advice to the Bible my friend.

I do try! That's why I'm not picking arbitrary dates out of the sky regarding the NT. Look into matters, recognise your mistake and I'll sleep much better at night.

JimiTime · 06-04-2009 06:56PM

angelfalling wrote: »

I'm constantly amazed at the things people will die for.

And yet, however the cazyness of the causes, you'll find that they die for causes that they believe are true.

angelfalling · 06-04-2009 06:57PM

PDN wrote: »

Would you reject eyewitness testimony of Bloody Sunday, that someone wrote today? Or someone's account of the signing of the Good Friday agreement.

That didn't get across what I was hoping to get across, I'll come back to that in a moment.

I wouldn't reject their testimony but I'd question its accuracy.

How about the contradictions between the gospels (eyewitness accounts of the same events with different recounts)?
For example, John says Jesus carried his own cross whilst Matthew says Simon carried the cross.

And Jimi, I never said these people didn't believe what they wrote was true. It's also amazing what people will believe to be true.

wolfsbane · 06-04-2009 07:00PM

Winters wrote: »

If I gave a child in a classroom a loaded gun and it killed people, would I be to blame? I allowed it to happen, I did not stop it happening but I definitely was not the one that made it happen.

However, I have the reasoning and knowledge to know not to give a child a loaded gun, I can see the consequences. Would this mean that god himself did not have the foresight to see this happen and so is not a supreme being? Or that he is so actually sick and twisted her did it as he knew we would indeed slip up and sin?

These are the problems the OP is going to run into, its near impossible for anyone to show an Atheist that God is a supreme all powerful and all knowing being as he has been made out to be (wrongly?). There are too many acts, even in the bible, that show he is not always compassionate, not always unjust and not always forgiving. He act's in strange ways that defy logic and sense. An Atheist would need to be given reasoning for these acts, to connect the dots if you will, to show that they were actually done with good reasoning, particularly without someone using the worth faith. As you cannot ask people for faith to believe in them without that person already been converted (if they are an Atheist with reason/logic)

The difference is both Satan and Adam/Eve were created as mature moral beings, able to exercise free-will with full capacity.

The sinner, atheist or not, is faced in the Bible with his Creator God. You may squirm anyway you want, but you know you should trust Him even if you can't understand all that He does, for He is the creator of all and must know best.

You choose to go your own way, not because you lack knowledge about some things, but because you don't like God or His laws.

Hear what the apostle said to the Areopagus:
Acts 17:24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

Fanny Cradock · 06-04-2009 07:04PM

What's wrong with the differences in the accounts? I would be more concerned if each account was exactly the same. If 4 witnesses give the exactly same account of an event you would then begin to suspect collusion - a divine version of the Manchurian Candidate. Minor differences aside, the central story remains the same across all 4 Gospels.

wolfsbane · 06-04-2009 07:05PM

angelfalling wrote: »

So, sin exists without god, then, is that so? This does NOT make sense no matter how many times you repeat it. Why would God bother to create sin (this isn't about allowing or not allowing someone to sin, but allow the nature of sin itself to exist within the beings he created). If its SO bad, why create it?

It's like saying I'm the creator of a world of my own and for funsies I'm going to drop a few rapists into the mix when I don't have to. He didn't have to create sin.

Look, let me step back a second. You are trying to make the point that you are not about to second guess why God created (not just allowed) something like sin. Our point is in the end, this is someone's desperate attempt to rationalize the existence of things they feel are bad in the world via the creation of their religion.

Creating beings with free-will allowed the possibility of sin. So you blame God for free-will if you blame Him for sin.

Consider the possibility that free-will might be a righteous/good thing, even if it permitted the possibility of sin.

Morbert · 06-04-2009 07:06PM

Jakkass wrote: »

I actually agree with PDN, I've found the reasons people have given for Christianity to be far more reasonable than anything I've heard from an atheist. Infact most atheists are reluctant to give reasons why they don't believe in a God for some reason.

I see this claim made often, but it is rarely expanded upon.

What is unreasonable about atheism?

angelfalling · 06-04-2009 07:08PM

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

What's wrong with the differences in the accounts? I would be more concerned if each account was exactly the same. If 4 witnesses give the exactly same account of an event you would then begin to suspect collusion - a divine version of the Manchurian Candidate. Minor differences aside, the central story remains the same across all 4 Gospels.

Er, if they all witnessed the same thing first hand, I'd expect them to be the same. If they are not all the same, I can't expect any of them to be be necessarily true. There are numerous others. Sounds to me like a couple of guys writing down the gospels as they have heard them via oral tradition and remember details wrong like a game of telephone.

JimiTime · 06-04-2009 07:28PM

angelfalling wrote: »

I've known plenty of people who very strongly believed that something that wasn't true or didn't have WAS true and DID happen. I don't think they necessarily KNEW they were lying-- just like I don't think that people who have faith in other religions THINK they are lying when they recount miracles in their own religion. But, if only one religion is true, someone is lying about something (knowingly or not )

You are missing the point here. The apostles weren't believing what someone else told them or they believed some study etc etc. They were 'eyewitnesses'. They were the root. So they 'knew' what they saw or didn't see. So they either truly saw what they said they saw, or they 'knew' with 'certainty' that what they were spouting was lies. So if they were lying, they went to their 'torturous' deaths 'knowing' it was for a lie.

06-04-2009 07:30PM

JimiTime wrote: »

You are missing the point here. The apostles weren't believing what someone else told them or they believed some study etc etc. They were 'eyewitnesses'. They were the root. So they 'knew' what they saw or didn't see. So they either truly saw what they said they saw, or they 'knew' with 'certainty' that what they were spouting was lies. So if they were lying, they went to their 'torturous' deaths 'knowing' it was for a lie.

Wicknight mentioned claims of miracles that many people make and you've suddenly gone off onto this tangent about them lying deliberately. I didn't say they lied (and neither did he), I said them dying for a cause doesn't make it true. Maybe they believed it was, but dying for it is not evidence.

angelfalling · 06-04-2009 07:44PM

JimiTime wrote: »

You are missing the point here. The apostles weren't believing what someone else told them or they believed some study etc etc. They were 'eyewitnesses'. They were the root. So they 'knew' what they saw or didn't see. So they either truly saw what they said they saw, or they 'knew' with 'certainty' that what they were spouting was lies. So if they were lying, they went to their 'torturous' deaths 'knowing' it was for a lie.

What proof is there that the apostles truly wrote the gospels? I doubt the abilities of these men to write such texts, not to mention in Greek.

Creating beings with free-will allowed the possibility of sin. So you blame God for free-will if you blame Him for sin.

So he still had to create humans with sin. You don't get it. If sin is possible to commit, exists in the world, can be chosen, God was the one who put it in our world, in our heads, to choose if we wanted to choose it. He created it. The concept of sin, "evil" what have you was created and defined by god, and he gave humans the ability to commit it.

JimiTime · 06-04-2009 08:13PM

bluewolf wrote: »

Wicknight mentioned claims of miracles that many people make and you've suddenly gone off onto this tangent about them lying deliberately.

This whole thread is tangents. Also, I have not gone on a tangent. My point is wholly relevant. The apostles lives are not merely people claiming they seen a man risen from the dead and many signs. Its people testifying all the way to a torturous death as to what they seen. Thats a huge difference to someone just saying, 'yeah I seen this guy heal another guy'.

I didn't say they lied (and neither did he), I said them dying for a cause doesn't make it true. Maybe they believed it was, but dying for it is not evidence.

It certainly doesn't make it true, but its certainly evidence that the apostles really believed that they 'witnessed' the things they said they witnessed. Take that in, not that they believed based on faith, but on being 'eyewitnesses' to resurrection, blind men seeing and lame men walking.

Rev Hellfire · 06-04-2009 08:17PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Because, you needed help to work, rest and play?

I'd eat a case load of them if I thought it would guarantee me some time for the sleep and play bit.

PDN · 06-04-2009 08:17PM

bluewolf wrote: »

Wicknight mentioned claims of miracles that many people make and you've suddenly gone off onto this tangent about them lying deliberately. I didn't say they lied (and neither did he), I said them dying for a cause doesn't make it true. Maybe they believed it was, but dying for it is not evidence.

But the point is that there is a world of difference in dying for something you have been raised to believe to be true, and dying for something that you believe to be true because you saw it with your own eyes.

The 9/11 bombers died for something because, by religious instruction and cultural conditioning, they believed sopmething to be true. The apostles were prepared to die for something they claimed to have seen. That does not prove it to be true - but the only other explanations would appear to be insanity or deception (either perpetrated by the apostles or perpetrated against them by a fraudulent Jesus).

angelfalling wrote:

What proof is there that the apostles truly wrote the gospels? I doubt the abilities of these men to write such texts, not to mention in Greek.

There's no proof, but there is evidence. The testimony of their close associates, also the fact that the gospels were circulating during their lifetimes among the people who knew them well (the early church). If they didn't write them then that would probably require a huge conspiracy with lots of people being in on the trick - and many of them prepared to die for the sake of a piece of fiction.

Matthew was a tax collector, which would presume a fair bit of literacy. Luke was a medical doctor who lived in the Greek speaking diaspora. Mark & John were Palestinians, but that should be no obstacle. Just look at our own nation's history and you will see many young men from humble rural backgrounds who entered the priesthood, became fluent in Latin, and were able to write discourses that were educated and theologically complex.

The Gospel, then as now, liberates us from our the stifling constraints of our educational backgrounds and social strata. I left school at 15 and used to live in a hostel for the homeless, yet I was able to educate myself, write dissertations that were accepted as sufficient for awarding postgraduate degrees and have had books and articles published. I have no doubt God could do the same with Mark and John.

Morbert · 06-04-2009 08:22PM

PDN wrote: »

Rationally and logically it makes perfect sense for them to be written then (ie 15 to 40 years after the death of Christ). The eye-witnesses were starting to get on in years and wanted to commit their testimony to paper while they were still alive.

Would you reject eyewitness testimony of Bloody Sunday, that someone wrote today? Or someone's account of the signing of the Good Friday agreement.

The phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" might be a platitude at this stage, but I still stand by it. I would be very skeptical of any eyewitness testimony that described Bloody Sunday, or the Good Friday Agreement, as a supernatural event.

angelfalling · 06-04-2009 08:36PM

Morbert wrote: »

The phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" might be a platitude at this stage, but I still stand by it. I would be very skeptical of any eyewitness testimony that described Bloody Sunday, or the Good Friday Agreement, as a supernatural event.

Very well put.

JimiTime · 06-04-2009 08:36PM

angelfalling wrote: »

What proof is there that the apostles truly wrote the gospels? I doubt the abilities of these men to write such texts, not to mention in Greek.

Ok, thats me out of this before the goalposts are oved out of the stadium.

Winters · 06-04-2009 09:05PM

I'm only back online so sorry if im going back to old stuff.

PDN wrote: »

Ho ho! Logic and rationality didn't last very long, did it? I love the way those who claim to be skeptical are ready to be so unskeptical when it comes to baseless claims of this kind of stuff. How about you give us a reliable source that can demonstrate where the story of Jesus was told thousands of years earlier?

Two examples:

Mithra, born over 600.BC on December 25th was called "the lamb, the way, the truth, the light, the messiah”. Performed baptism to remove sins of his followers and performed miracles. He was buried in a tomb and rose again after three days.

Krishna from India, born over 1000.BC to a virgin. He Was baptised in a river and was a carpenter.

These two people have as much evidance behind them as Jesus does. Both seem to have a shocking amount of smilarities with the story of Jesus Christ. Infact the story of a 'Virgin birth' goes back even further then both of these. These stories were passed on and would have been known in the region during the time. The story of Jesus mirrors that of Mithra and Krishna in ways and others, why does the story of Jesus take precidence over these two stories that existed well before he?

The bible was a collection of books. Who decided upon which books made it into this collection and which books were rejected? It cannot be used as a factual historical document. Its writings were created years after the death of Jesus and transcribed through several languages before we get to the version that people read in Ireland here today. How accurate were those translations during those times?

[Anyway, time to catch up on the rest of this thread]

Also, I'd like to point out that eyewitness testimony can vary wildly and is not always very accurate and 50 years afterwards can be very susceptible to change and exaggeration. Even a day after an incident eyewitness testimony can recall incidents etc. that are totally different to how it actually happened.

wolfsbane · 06-04-2009 09:08PM

Winters said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
No. God created all things good. Man sinned and lost his good nature.
But then who created all things bad? If God did not create all things bad, but there is bad things out there then he is not as powerful or as omnipresent as he is believed to be, so maybe he is not actually worth praising? Maybe the other guy is better? Who came first, the good or the evil?

Evil came as a non-necessary consequence of free-will. God could have decided not to create beings with free-will. He chose otherwise.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Again, No. Sin resulted from man's actions, not God's. The most that can be said is that God permitted it to happen.
Why would God, if he is indeed as all powering, let it happen? Was it for our own free will?

No, it was for Adam's free-will. We do not have the same sort of free-will.

If it was for our own free will then why does he guide us in other stage of live and decide when we are all to die? Does he pick and choose when we get free will?

God picks and chooses according to His perfect nature. He chose to have free-will in the angelic host and Adam & Eve; He chose also to end that. No more will there be a chance of rebellion amongst the angels; and those who inherit eternal life will not be able to sin.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Depends what you mean. Is He happy to let us go on being wicked and when we die bring us to heaven to continue our wickedness? No.
Then he should use his powers to change us.

He does this for His elect.

None of us today wish to be born with inherited sin, so why not remove this and let us all be good Christians from the start?

We are all sinnners and responsible for our sins. It is of God's mercy that He saves anyone. It is not our right.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Has He set His love upon a number of us and chosen us for salvation? Yes. Why not forgive us all, if he is indeed so forgiving?

He is free to love and save whom He will. The idea that He must love and save all is not what the Bible tells us about God's sovereign holiness.

These also begs the questions, did we exist somewhere before we were born? Or is birth, to this planet, mark the beginning of an everlasting life? Or is there a possibility that we lived with god BEFORE we came to this earth? If the latter then how do we know we have not already repented our sins?

We began in the womb. God does not explain how our spirit/soul comes into being, only that it does.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
These comments of mine are what the Bible declares, and have been used by God to convert all who ever were converted. I know they sound foolish to the unconverted, but that too is a mark of the gospel truth. It only serves to demonstrate it is God at work when men are converted, not human reasoning As I said before, comments like this, if said by the OP to their friend would do more harm then good. It gives the impression of a deluded person reading from age old books that they memorised to repeat on demand. It would definitely not win over many possible sceptics.

That is your opinion, but history shows us you are mistaken. Or rather, you make too much of it. Many sceptics are indeed the sort who are proud in their wisdom and of the elite of society. God saves some of them - but He has decided to let most of them perish in their pride. Most of the saved are from those society classifies as the foolish, weak, unimportant masses.

PDN · 06-04-2009 09:30PM

Morbert wrote: »

The phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" might be a platitude at this stage, but I still stand by it. I would be very skeptical of any eyewitness testimony that described Bloody Sunday, or the Good Friday Agreement, as a supernatural event.

That's rather missing the point.

I did not refer to Bloody Sunday or the Good Friday Agreement with any respect to their being supernatural or not, but rather with respect to the time that has elapsed from those events until today. We have no difficulty in accepting that people can write accurate records of things that happened years ago.

angelfalling · 06-04-2009 09:37PM

PDN wrote: »

That's rather missing the point.

I did not refer to Bloody Sunday or the Good Friday Agreement with any respect to their being supernatural or not, but rather with respect to the time that has elapsed from those events until today. We have no difficulty in accepting that people can write accurate records of things that happened years ago.

And you've also missed the point. Morbert is saying that its all fine and dandy to take someone's word on something easily explained and understood. But if someone is telling me they saw some pigs flying through the sky yesterday, I'm probably going to need to see more proof-- if they told me they saw it 50 year ago, I'm DEFINITELY going to want more proof.

And as I've said several times, historians don't take all written word at face value. You have to examine written texts within the bias they are written (based on the knowledge of the people at the time, whether a man or woman is writing it in a patriarchal society, whether this person is literate because of higher class, etc etc etc). It's not so simple as "well they wrote it so it must be true" It's rarely that simple. Haven't you heard the saying "the victors write history"? Same idea, bias.

Zombrex · 06-04-2009 10:02PM

JimiTime wrote: »

Lets not forget, that those who started the 'lies', were willing to die, and did die for the lie too.

There are a few problems with this line of thinking

Firstly it assumes that someone wouldn't actually die for a lie and uses this as a basis for determining the validity of these claims. Which is a reasonable assumption on the surface but look at what you are trying to validate. Someone being prepared to die for a lie is hardly less plausible than a man coming back from the dead, is it? I'm pretty sure over the course of human history more people have been prepared to die for a lie (for what ever reason) than have come back to life.

Secondly it works under the assumption that the stories of how these men died is true. Perhaps they never got the option to recant their faith. Perhaps they were just killed out right while begging that it was all made up. A Christian writer is hardly going to be jumping to right that down is he? Since we have little independent verification for these stories we have little hard evidence they actually happened like that.

Implausible you say! Well again contrast that implausibility with what you are claiming these stories demonstrate, that a man rose from the dead, and get back to me about plausibility.

And lastly it is entirely possibly that these men did believe every bit of their faith and went to their deaths happy in this faith and it is still all wrong. History is full of genuine believers. I have little doubt that Tom Cruise genuinely believes all the Scientology nonsense. I have little doubt that a suicide bomber genuinely believes the militant Islamic nonsense. The fact that religious people believe something to the extreme of being prepared to die or kill for that beliefs is hardly new.

JimiTime wrote: »

Not a case of the guys at the top taking advantage of the gullible, as in suicide bombers etc. This was the guys at the top.

You think the guys on top don't genuinely believe in their cause?

JimiTime wrote: »

Strange behaviour to let oneself be tortured and killed to perpetuate a lie that you know is a lie.

Stranger than a man coming back from the dead...?

PDN · 06-04-2009 10:07PM

Winters wrote: »

I'm only back online so sorry if im going back to old stuff.

Oh, but I'm soooo glad you did.

Mithra, born over 600.BC on December 25th was called "the lamb, the way, the truth, the light, the messiah”. Performed baptism to remove sins of his followers and performed miracles. He was buried in a tomb and rose again after three days.

Ok, here's your problem. There is no pre-Christian evidence at all to suggest that any of those things were taught in Mithraism prior to the advent of Christianity. Not an inscription on a temple, not a manuscript, not a piece of graffiti on an ancient Persian wall. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

The only references to Mithraism teaching such things comes from writers who lived after Christianity had already become popular in Rome, and even then we have no original manuscipts - but rather copies from centuries later.

So, you are prepared to attack Christians as irrational and illogical for believing stuff that purportedly happened 2000 years ago. Yet, in order to further that attack, you (claiming to be a rational and logical person) claim as FACT something that happened over 2600 years ago!

You are prepared to attack Christians as irrational and illogical on the grounds that the New Testament was published hundreds of years after the events (totally untrue, of course, since all of the the NT books were written and circulating less than 100 years after the events. But you (claiming to be a rational and logical person) further that attack by claiming something as a FACT on the basis that someone wrote about it over 500 years later!

Can you see the enormity of the hypocrisy in your position?

Krishna from India, born over 1000.BC to a virgin.

Really? Well in that case I doff my hat to the Hindus for having better miracles than us Christians. You were aware that Krishna, according to Hindu teaching, was the eighth son of Vasudeva and Devaki - weren't you? :pac:

He (Krishna) was baptised in a river and was a carpenter.

Here's a little tip for you. Rational and logical people don't take everything Bill Maher says as Gospel truth.

Krishna was not baptised in a river, but he was carried over a river by his dad.

He was a prince and a statesman, not a carpenter.

The bible was a collection of books. Who decided upon which books made it into this collection and which books were rejected? It cannot be used as a factual historical document.

So, your argument is that a collection of books cannot be used as factual historical documents because someone compiled the collection? Man, this rationality and logic lark just gets better and better, doesn't it?

Its writings were created years after the death of Jesus and transcribed through several languages before we get to the version that people read in Ireland here today.

Another untruth.

The versions people read in Ireland today were translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek. They were not transcribed through several languages.

How accurate were those translations during those times?

Very accurate. Hebrew and Greek scholars agree that the versions of the bible we have in Ireland are accurate translations of the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. But then again, being someone who reaches his beliefs in a logical and rational manner, you should be aware of that fact already.

Also, I'd like to point out that eyewitness testimony can vary wildly and is not always very accurate and 50 years afterwards can be very susceptible to change and exaggeration. Even a day after an incident eyewitness testimony can recall incidents etc. that are totally different to how it actually happened.

An argument that might carry some weight if you hadn't already torpedoed it by swallowing reports about Mithraism 900 years afterwards, and by happily believing Bill Maher's bunkum about Krishna.

Fanny Cradock · 06-04-2009 10:08PM

Winters wrote: »

I'm only back online so sorry if im going back to old stuff.
Mithra, born over 600.BC on December 25th was called "the lamb, the way, the truth, the light, the messiah”. Performed baptism to remove sins of his followers and performed miracles. He was buried in a tomb and rose again after three days.

OK, if you can point out anywhere in the Bible where the birth date of Jesus is mentioned then please enlighten us all. Maybe Christians throughout the ages have had that page stuck together by a coffee stain.

It's generally accepted that sometime in the 4th Century Emperor Constantine decided that Jesus' birth should be celebrated on the 25th of December. The reason for this is obvious - he had converted to Christianity and desired to supplant the existing pagan holidays and promote his religion. This isn't exactly startling.

As for Mithra being referred to as the "the lamb, the way, the truth, the light, the messiah”, I've never heard anything like that. Can you provide some sources? Of course, it should be noted that the image of a lamb to the slaughter was quite fundamental to the OT, which certainly pre-dates your 600 BC.

Winters wrote: »

Krishna from India, born over 1000.BC to a virgin. He Was baptised in a river and was a carpenter.

Given that Krishna was actually the 8th son born to Devaki, it doesn't seem particularly virgin-like to me. Also, Krishna was born into royalty, so I'm not sure where the carpenter bit come into it. Never heard about him being baptised. Any sources?

Do you want to take this to a separate thread or drop it?

Zombrex · 06-04-2009 10:08PM

angelfalling wrote: »

And you've also missed the point. Morbert is saying that its all fine and dandy to take someone's word on something easily explained and understood. But if someone is telling me they saw some pigs flying through the sky yesterday, I'm probably going to need to see more proof-- if they told me they saw it 50 year ago, I'm DEFINITELY going to want more proof.

And as I've said several times, historians don't take all written word at face value. You have to examine written texts within the bias they are written (based on the knowledge of the people at the time, whether a man or woman is writing it in a patriarchal society, whether this person is literate because of higher class, etc etc etc). It's not so simple as "well they wrote it so it must be true" It's rarely that simple. Haven't you heard the saying "the victors write history"? Same idea, bias.

A good example of this is the Jewish Holocaust.

Historians have always had a difficult time determining fact from fiction from the accounts of Jews in the concentration camps (much to the delight of holocaust deniers unfortunately). It is not uncommon for accounts to detail famous figures such as Hitler being present at the camps for long periods of time even though that wasn't the case at all. The people who recount these stories are not lying (as the deniers claim) they seem to genuinely believe these events happened and they witnessed them, but at the same time we know from other historical records that the events they are describing didn't happen.

It shows the fallacy of the assumption that someone is either lying or what they told you is accurate. Holocaust deniers will say straight out that these Jews are lying because the stories they recount could not have happened. Perhaps the deniers genuinely believe that because they, like some here, only see two options a) it happened as told or b) it is a lie. But there is little reason to suspect that these Jews are purposefully lying. What they are telling you isn't true, but they believe every word of it.

The mind is a very curious thing and not always that trust worthy particularly under certain conditions.

Morbert · 06-04-2009 10:09PM

PDN wrote: »

That's rather missing the point.

I did not refer to Bloody Sunday or the Good Friday Agreement with any respect to their being supernatural or not, but rather with respect to the time that has elapsed from those events until today. We have no difficulty in accepting that people can write accurate records of things that happened years ago.

Few would argue that people can't write accurate records of things that happened years ago. But skepticism over accounts of Christ's death and resurrection are not simply due to the time between the events and the testimonies. So if your question about Bloody Sunday was posted purely to demonstrate that eye-witness accounts of old events are not, by default, untrustworthy, then fine. But if you asked the question to draw a comparison between accounts of Christ's death, and accounts of other, less extraordinary, historical claims, then I have to say that I don't think such comparisons are useful.

Winters · 06-04-2009 10:47PM

PDN wrote: »

So, you are prepared to attack Christians as irrational and illogical for believing stuff that purportedly happened 2000 years ago. Yet, in order to further that attack, you (claiming to be a rational and logical person) claim as FACT something that happened over 2600 years ago!

Actually, what I was not trying to claim was that any of the above stories to be absolute fact (I reject both as pure puppycock) and mearly provided two examples of stories which contain elements which are similar to that of Jesus. What I said (maybe not said but implied?) was the fact that the elements of the story of Jesus have been used in stories that existed before Jesus. The idea and concept of a 'Virgin birth' existed before Jesus. The idea of a missiah rising from the dead had been used before.

The idea was to provide examples of other stories from around the time to show that the idea of a messiah was not unique and that various people during the time did claim to be them for whatever reason (Insanity?, Monetary?). This was to just further the example I Was tryin gto convey of why was Jesus the ONE true Messiah and not any of the others and as to what made him unique over others when many of them all preached similar ideas.

PDN wrote: »

Can you see the enormity of the hypocrisy in your position?

I dont believe in any story of a supreme being, so I dont know why you would assume I would believe in the idea of some 2600 year old god. However maybe I mislead on my last post I write quickly before leaving work? The idea that I as an Athiest would disreguard the story of Jesus, but believe in other as-silly stoires about gods/supreme beings that existed at the time is laughable, they are all equally as insane to me

PDN wrote: »

You are prepared to attack Christians as irrational and illogical

I'm prepared to enter into a debate, as I've stated my reasoning for posting was to provide examples to the OP as to the questions that their 'hypothetical' Atheist friend may put forward when provided with information that other posters are putting forward. I've tried to show that the method of quoting bible verses etc. would not be a correct approach to any attempts to win over the OP's friend and it is just not going to work.

I have long left the need to really argue with Christians over their beliefs. It would be like trying to tell someone a blue wall is red. In my own personal opinion this thread is a bit of fun to offer questions and examples that would be greated by people who try and convert someone who' would have a [lack of?

] beliefs like myself.

PDN wrote: »

So, your argument is that a collection of books cannot be used as factual historical documents because someone compiled the collection? Man, this rationality and logic lark just gets better and better, doesn't it?

No, the bible is a selective collection of books. History has always been written by the victors. What books were rejected? What books were edited along the years to suit the church at the time etc.? Nobody can say the bible is absolute 100% truth, 100% accurate to the word without one shadow of a doubt without being absolutly ignorant.

I do reject the idea of a god, of some sort of higher power removing my free will and guiding me. But i cannot say with 100% certinty that there is no god at all, that would be ignorant of me (I will say there is none as it saves me having to type out a long winded sentance all the time).

Also believing what Bill Maher says as truth would be like getting upset at BrassEye. Its entertaining and raises some questions but on a whole is there for comic relief

If you wanted to convert an atheist who wanted to believe....

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