Truth is something unearthed gradually, and we have to be prepared to revise our interpretation of it based on the evidence. Several readers have informed me of recent developments that will require us to radically re-evaluate our perspective on the universe.
- Geocentrism can make a comeback! Since astronomers are arguing about the definition of something as fundamental as a “planet,” that obviously means that all of physics is in disarray, and completely wrong.
- As long as we’re resurrecting old fables, we might as well get them right this time: clearly, God is a giant squid. There’s even physical evidence.
- There’s also a mythological tradition in place! I’ve always wanted a solid gold octopus god headdress. With a hat like that, I could probably persuade lots of people to give me money.
I think that settles it: Peru is the center of the universe around which all things revolve, and the creator of that universe is a cephalopod somewhere offshore.
If my understanding of cosmology is correct, the current theory of the universe states that it has no borders so that any part of the universe can be considered its center. So Peru or the sun is as good a place as any, though most New Yorkers will still hold out for Manhattan.
wow, we were so close to the truth with pastafarianism! I mean, noodly appendage….tentacle….that’s more than a coincidence there.
and is there a rule against cooking your god and eating him? because damn, that deity could make a nice plate of calamari.
Yup, those damned geocentrists have held sway for far too long…
How about the modern myth that all existence, life, mind and reason itself can be explained by mindless causes?
Of course, such has never been demonstrated, we don’t really know what the laws of physics were at the instant of the “big bang”, how life began, how consciousness and intelligence can be explained, or even if our reasoning processess are capable of developing a theory of everything.
But the scientific faith is that “natural” causes will explain it all.
In the meantime you bellyache about “end times” prognosticators, all the while ignoring that atheistic scientists have provided the weapons that make the end times possible.
How about them apples?
Or hey, how about the myth that any old story a preacher reads aloud counts as an explanation, much less a good one?
Or the myth that “naturalistic hypothesis, inquiry and investigation” and “making shit up” are equally valid ways of coming to an explanation.
But the scientific faith is that “natural” causes will explain it all.
What else would science look for other than natural causes? Science is about determining how the universe works, the supernatural isn’t even in that domain as a supernatural even implies a violation of natural laws. There will always be unknowns, but that doesn’t prove the supernatural, it simply is an unknown.
In the meantime you bellyache about “end times” prognosticators, all the while ignoring that atheistic scientists have provided the weapons that make the end times possible.
Technology has brought us good things and bad things. We have nuclear weapons, but we also have cures to devestating diseases, sanitation, electricity, and many other benefits.
Um, if you already had a solid gold head-dress, you wouldn’t really need people to give you more money. As always, it’s a bootstrap problem…..
In the meantime you bellyache about “end times” prognosticators, all the while ignoring that atheistic scientists have provided the weapons that make the end times possible.
Been over that one already on a news server. I would like this and the other clowns that say it to explain how exactly its accurate, given that
a) Most, though a smaller percentage than in the general populous, scientists are **not** atheists
b) The politicians making the decision to use those weapons are **never** atheists (with only two notable exceptions and “not” in the US.
c) And the military they order to use them are recently getting sued over being overtly religious, to the extent of trying to force Christian religion on soldiers in a few cases, while excluding alternatives.
Its the fault of “atheists” that those things exist at all. What is it with believers that they lack the basic morals to apply nuclear technoloy, and others, to peaceful development of beneficial technologies, and in many cases have been known to outright reject the peaceful solutions, in favor of stamping “top secret” on something, then ordering those scientists you have to make it into a bomb or apply it to making better military aircraft, instead of to better cars, commercial planes, trains, buildings, or anything else that might **help** someone, instead of killing them? Just what is it with you people that you don’t find it morally objectionable to order, help build and almost exclusively order the use of WMD, then blame other people for their existence? Do you really think your imaginary God, if he where to exist, would be fooled by you when he asks, “Ok, so why did you order the use of that bomb which killed innocent people?”, and you reply, “What!? Its his fault for building it, honest!”, especially when the guy that built it probably has a fracking cross around his neck too?
What parallel universe do you people live in anyway?
Current understanding is that the Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of “our” universe. And, according to the standard theory, our universe “sprang” into existence as “singularity” around 13.7 billion years ago.
Okay, fine … prior to Big Bang is “singularity” and prior to that is … wait a minute, isn’t “time” tied up with the Big Bang, so “singularity” dwells … well, dwell connotates place … and prior requires time … oh my, we must leave space and time out of our equation, leaving us with a “singularity” that does not dwell or age or … but then again, singularity “moved” from this no place, no time, to expanding and bursting forth … but then again, without time, we are ahead of ourselves, for bursting and expanding would indeed require time … so we must back up a bit to before time and space, before the Big Bang … so now we must figure out what took place between ‘no time’ and ‘time’ … or we could just say “sprang” and end it at that:
“In the beginning ‘no time’ sprang to ‘time’ and there was a great boom! Then evolution started and in time produced us. Then we lived and thought about all this, then we died. Then all was silent and time became no time again.”
Hey gang of thick…
Show me one case where the “supernatural” can explain anything… anything at all.
Or show me evidence of ANYTHING supernatural.
Those apples reek of willful ignorance.
All hail the mighty Octopus!
The beak that bites! The arms which snatch!
Your eyes are ocean-moons which meet
ours, and flee in inky swath.
You have eight arms; we, only two:
yet you fear us as we fear you
(if not more. Thou canst not create
spaces on earth where life abates;
even the seas give their last breath.
Yours is the natural kind of death.)
But the scientific faith is that “natural” causes will explain it all.
Nope. If the Flying Spaghetti Monster manifested in all His/Her noodly glory, reliably and observably, and started creating universes for us to show how it is done, scientists would become pastafarians and study the workings of the noodly one. If the Great Old Ones started destroying the world tomorrow, scientists would be busy studying how they did it and how to stop them, not, as the claim of those who don’t understand science goes, sitting around saying “but that’s not natural, it can’t be happening.”
There is a basic tenet of “faith” in science, but that’s not it. The assumption that one must accept to believe in science is that the world can be observed reliably and that the observations mean something. If we are all really being decieved by a Cartesian evil demon or live in the Matrix, then all the observations and conclusions made about the world are essentially meaningless, except insofar as they tell us about the mind of the deceiver.
Show me one case where the “supernatural” can explain anything… anything at all.
The supernatural can explain anything but provides a mechanism for nothing.
Um, if you already had a solid gold head-dress, you wouldn’t really need people to give you more money
1. If everyone had a solid gold head-dress, solid gold head-dresses wouldn’t be worth much.
2. Religious leaders never believe that the amount of money, prestige, or toys they have is enough.
Only partially correct. Scientists would indeed begin to study these exciting new phenomena — but they would still be natural phenomena.
In science, ‘natural’ is a concept that can and will be redefined when necessary to encompass any new information. The only unnatural things are the ones that cannot exist.
Bro. Bartleby –
Try to not use your own befuddled explanations to describe the origins of our universe. Let someone lucid do it. Yes, quantum physics and the concepts that surround it can be difficult to explain in plain English. I suppose some unfortunates have no hope of comprehending them in any case, or deliberately avoid doing so. I hope for your sake that you’re only attempting to impersonate one of them.
Christensen spewed….
“laws of physics were at the instant of the “big bang””
Not precisely, but we very well may have most of it figured out some day. And how exactly is “it was magic!” a better explanation of the data?
“how life began”
See the answer above. How does “some supernatural force did it!” trump, I don’t know precisely yet but there are some pretty good theories that don’t include a great big magic man. My theory that it was my beloved, invisible, pink unicorn works just as well as your sky daddy. Disprove the existance of my pink unicorn and I’ll believe in your tin horn, tribal god.
“how consciousness and intelligence can be explained”
Evolution my delusional friend. We evolved a brain capable of such. And how precisely does “my sky daddy did it!” better explain the existence of Homo sapien consciousness and intelligence? Or lack there of in the case of creationists.
“But the scientific faith is that “natural” causes will explain it all”
Hey, don’t accuse me of suffering from your own, self imposed disease of the mind. Natural causes are solid, physical evidence. Give me some of the same pointing towards the existence of your particular sky daddy and we’ll talk.
“all the while ignoring that atheistic scientists have provided the weapons that make the end times possible”
What the fark?! Do you know specifically the spiritual persuasion of all the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project? Including my father-in-law? All those who’ve come up with breakthroughs that lead to current military technology? How about the Soviets who worked on their weapons programs? How about the Chinese? Israelis? French? Brits? Indians? Pakistanis? Lets just leave this incredibly ignorant statement with this little gem. Science discovers something useful. It is the religionists and magic thinkers who then want to kill people with said discovery just because the victims believe in a different fairy tale than the killers. And just how many wars have “atheistic scientists” started? An what is the death toll now from the religionists?
I know this is off-topic, but there’s no open thread within range.
Does anyone know anything about this new ruling that the warrantless US phone wiretaps are illegal?
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001364.php
read this Cal.
Here’s the AP report, Caledonian, but you’ve probably already read it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060817/ap_on_go_pr_wh/warrantless_surveillance
If ‘mind’ cannot be explained by mindless causes, then the causes of mind must themselves include mind. If this is so, then we can never find an explanation for mind. Therefore, if we want to try to find an explanation, we are obliged to seek among ‘mindless causes’.
Bro. Bartleby: our current models of physics do a good job describing the history of the universe back to about 13.7 billion years ago. They predict that at that time the universe was extremely hot and dense and that spacetime has been expanding since then, with matter being spread apart and cooling in the process. If you continue to model backwards using our current theories you reach a point (the singularity) where they predict infinite density and break down. Even before reaching that point our theories stop making sense because of the extremely small scales and high energies involved. Therefore no description of the singularity or the fraction of a second between it and the point at which our theories start making sense can be accurate, and it’s no surprise that your caricature sounds absurd. It’s an unknown. That’s all there is to it, for now.
I do believe I was wrong: if ‘old’ is interpreted to refer to things within the last six years, an old myth has indeed been re-examined — and blown away.
***
Congratulations, Morgan, on your consise and pithy reasoning. You are quite correct: attributing the causes of mind to mindlessness is the only way mind can be explained.
Scientists would indeed begin to study these exciting new phenomena — but they would still be natural phenomena.
Once they’ve started acting in the natural world, they become natural phenomena so, yes. I’m not sure if “supernatural” really means anything in the context of something that can be observed. What makes a certain phenomenon supernatural?
The point I was trying to make is that if something apparently supernatural started happening, scientists wouldn’t sit there saying “lalala, this can’t be happening, I don’t see it” just because it was apparently or traditionally considered supernatural. To take it out of the religious realm a bit, suppose someone won the Randi prize–that is, proved that they had a “supernatural” ability. On finding out that the prize had been won*, would the average scientist a)give up science because it was clearly inadequate in the face of this new information or b)race out excitedly to study this new phenomenon which appeared to open the possibility of a new and exciting improvement in our understanding of the universe? I’d expect b for the most part. The true believers seem to expect a.
*And after verifying that it had been won by someone with a truly “supernatural” ability and not simply because James Randi had gone round the bend and become a believer.
(Re: Mind arising from mindlessness)
In addition, if mind can only arise from mind, then there is a causality paradox – how did the first mind arise?
Since on the one hand, there is no evidence that mind requires mind in order to arise, and on the other, there is no evidence that causality can be violated, the most parsimonious explanation is that mind can indeed arise from mindlessness.
Mind caused by mind caused by mind… sounds like turtles all the way down.
Quantum mechanics shows some apparent violations of causality such as radioactive decay and virtual particles. At a macro level however, such as the mind would require, I would say you are completely correct that there is no evidence that causality can be violated. I don’t see a theist trying to use a something from nothing argument though.
You’re an obvious troll, but I thought I’d point out anyway that Sunday Services were held at Los Alamos every week during the development of the atomic bomb. (They used a movie theatre as a chapel.) As another bit of trivia, you might note that the name of the first atomic test was “Trinity,” which Oppenheimer claimed was inspired by the religious poetry of John Donne that he was fond of.
Regarding the supernatural, it’s a term that can only bear scrutiny with imagination. It’s a hoax that a person plays on themselves to explain the unkown, thus providing personal comfort. In real terms, it’s impotent and meaningless.
“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.” [Delos McKown]
Hey Christensen Gang Bang, why not answer Steve_C? Idiots.
I build missles for a living. My project lead got a call from his Pastor during a meeting. I am an atheist, but I am guessing he is not.
Don’t be so quick to dismiss the FSM. Here’s his/her/it’spicture.
Also, weren’t the pre-Incan Peruvians the “Moche”?
What other kinds of causes are there?
None that I can think of.
“Therefore no description of the singularity or the fraction of a second between it and the point at which our theories start making sense can be accurate, and it’s no surprise that your caricature sounds absurd. It’s an unknown. That’s all there is to it, for now.”
Exactly, it’s an unknown. Yet many are confident to exclude an existing timeless intelligence “outside” the universe, “outside” singularity and all that was spawned with the Big Bang. Stephen Hawking is saying that “natural laws” before the Big Bang are necessarily different than the “natural laws” after the Big Bang, those very same natural laws that we find ourselves enmeshed in. So all prior to the Big Bang are unknown, but because we know not even the laws that existed before the Big Bang, we have not even the tools to provide conjecture. Yet out of hand we rule out a timeless intelligence?
and is there a rule against cooking your god and eating him?
Isn’t the eating part sort of a weekly thing in most Christian denominations?
Well, there’s a big but classic straw man.
We aren’t arbitrarily ruling out any sort of super-being: The closest we come to that is pointing out the logical incoherence of such concepts as well as their non-parsimoniousness (is that even a word?), among other reasons. Here are a few that spring to mind:
1) The world certainly doesn’t look like what I would predict an Intelligent Designer would make.
1a) If the IDer isn’t following my tiny human standards, well, how can I tell the difference between an incomprehensible design and no design?
2) The existence of an IDer would require a lot of other explanations. Who designed the obviously complicated designer? Why did he do things this way, instead of some other way?
3) Goddidit is no better than saying “It’s magic!”
4) There’s no way to detect an IDer, thanks to the negative nature of ID. (If you’d like to say otherwise, please do.)
5) ID can be used to explain anything, so it actually explains nothing.
My comment here requires two hats. As a believer, I personally haven’t ruled out that ‘timeless intelligence’ that the good Brother refers to. That fits my believer hat to a ‘T’.
As a scientist, though, I fervently resist the knee-jerk move of many believers to push what is essentially an intuition (hence unreliable) as science. Even though I might share that intuition, I know that it has no standing in science per se and (which is worse) it’s an appeal to ignorance, a ‘science-stopper’. A scientist observes an explanatory gap, but the non-scientist ‘envisions’ and invokes God, a ‘non-explanation.’ That’s a no-go in science.
At any rate, BB’s point really isn’t science. It’s another version of the ontological argument that Kant supposedly demolished.
SH
To digress…
Does the headress depict an octopus god or a spider god?
The Mochica deified both animals due to how their graspy, carnivorous habits meshed well with the Mochica elite’s need to produce a constant stream of human sacrifices to keep the cogs of the Universe and their society running smoothly.
Is no one troubled by this? I, for one, am concerned that somewhere a very large cat is about to eat the mouse in whose head our universe exists.
Kagehi, I am of the opinion that if people need to think that there is an invisible sky person who is always ready to smite them (and that we are turning our back on this so we can’t be trusted) in order for them to do the right thing, they probably do. It’s just projection. I am glad that they have that or just think what the world would be like considering what they do even while being “watched”!
Re “atheistic scientists”.
Many are, some are not.
But if the scientists are all that smart why would they fill the world with wmds?
Why build the dam things at all?
Because lots of scientists are self serving pricks, just like everyone else.
“Science” doesn’t give them any moral superiority.
There could be a way to detect an IDer that we just don’t know yet. There is also no way to “detect” life and there is no good definition for life. That doesn’t mean that life does not exist. In fact I could compare life to an IDer. We know life exists and we kind of have a naive idea of what is alive and what isn’t. Similarly we know there are such things as intelligent designers exist, namely ourselves and we have an idea of what is designed by ourselves (e.g. skycrapers) vs what isn’t (e.g. rocks). This is obvious. The problem of detecting life or detecting an intelligent designer is to somehow come up with a rigorous mathematical criterion to detect life. Just because we don’t have a criterion doesn’t mean life doesn’t exist. Or maybe it really doesn’t exist. A atheist friend of mind considered the study of biology to be the study of completely arbitrary things that we have designated as life. He did not see anything special that distinguises life from non-life. IMO life and intelligent design are coherent concepts and apart from the religious implications I think it would be cool to have some technology that could scan things to determine whether they were living or whether they were most probably designed by a intelligent lifeform. Like something from Star Trek.
The only person I know who has tried to work on a definition for life is Chaitin. He used information theory. BTW I don’t think a valid definition for life is to include its various qualities like reproduction, growth, adaptation etc because these concepts are extremely imprecise.
But if the scientists are all that smart why would they fill the world with wmds?
Why build the dam things at all?
I had no idea that zoologists, ecologists, botanists, biochemists, paleontologists, immunologists, astronomers, geologists, oceanographers, climate scientists, meteorologists, solid-state physicists, etc. etc. were all “filling the world with wmds”. Or even that they had the capacity to do it.
Also, I know that dams cause serious ecological damage, but that they’re now considered “weapons of mass destruction” is news to me.
Greco, that was clever.
JB wrote:
“But if the scientists are all that smart why would they fill the world with wmds?
Why build the dam things at all?”
Because the scientists who build them do so at the behest of the politicians and military leaders who want them.
Like my physics teacher said, “Physicists don’t want to build atomic bombs: politicians want them to.”
“Exactly, it’s an unknown. Yet many are confident to exclude an existing timeless intelligence “outside” the universe, “outside” singularity and all that was spawned with the Big Bang. Stephen Hawking is saying that “natural laws” before the Big Bang are necessarily different than the “natural laws” after the Big Bang, those very same natural laws that we find ourselves enmeshed in. So all prior to the Big Bang are unknown, but because we know not even the laws that existed before the Big Bang, we have not even the tools to provide conjecture. Yet out of hand we rule out a timeless intelligence?”
Yes. If we cannot deduce what happened before the big bang, then it makes no sense to choose any pre-big-bang model over another. If we necessarily cannot detect what happened before the big bang (and we cannot detect anything outside the universe, by definition), then any model for those scenarios is unscientific.
More importantly, anything undetectable cannot have any influence on the universe (otherwise we could detect it), it is highly questionable to make decisions based on undetectable entities.
I think one of the big problems is that we define science as “naturalistic”. “Natural” is a fuzzy word, really. It’s better defined as being based on things which we know to exist. I’m a big fan of the “reality-based community” tag.
“I made one great mistake in my life… when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.”
Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (p752).
So some atheist and thiest scientists developed an atomic bomb so that the Nazis would not have the unequaled ability to wipe North America off the face of the earth. Those selfish pricks!
Even before the concepts of science and gods were created men were bashing each other over the heads with sticks and stones. The problem is not that weapons exist, the problem is that short-sighted irresponsible people get to decide when and why to use them.
Anyone ever answer my fundamental question?
Show me one case where the “supernatural” can explain anything… anything at all.
Or show me evidence of ANYTHING supernatural.
And apparently I need to clarify the “supernatural” question.
“anything” that the natural world can’t explain.
Jesus was crucified, buried in a sealed tomb … 3 days later, the body’s gone. During the next 40 days over 500 people saw him.
Evidence discussed in detail here:
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html
Hmmm. In the middle of the night the body is stolen and buried somewhere else.
Then some people lied.
That was tough.
Rebuttals to my claim can be found at:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/craig.html
That was pretty pathetic. What evidence do you have to support that theory?
http://www.i4m.com/think/bible/historical_jesus.htm
“Jesus was crucified, buried in a sealed tomb” Stop right there. First, you must prove he existed in the first place.
http://www.i4m.com/think/bible/historical_jesus.htm
http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html
http://www.thegodmovie.com/clips.php
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/m_m_mangasarian/truth_about_jesus.html
Ummm. I would call it logic.
Familiar with it?
LOL, you’re funny. No serious historian doubts that Jesus existed.
You would call it logic and that’s rather sad.
Even if he did… doesn’t mean “rose from the dead”.
And I think some serious historians do doubt it.
So M, other than Jeeeesus!
Got any modern “evidence” of the supernatural?
It’s downright cliché to rail against Uncommonly Dense at this point but they’ve resurrected Young Earth Creationism in the form of playing an apparently heavily-edited version of Dawkins’ “Root of All Evil?” in which the scientist challenges Rev. Haggard’s assertion that Dawkins’ grandchildren will laugh at him someday for asserting that the earth is 4.3 billion years old with a “Do you want a bet?” Yes, this proves that Dawkins is a fool! He cannot entertain the idea that he could be wrong! He’s not open-minded! Etc., etc., etc.! And guess who chimes right in with a kazoo blast for the home team in the comments (without pointing out that he’s essentially embracing a Young Earth paradigm)–you got it, none other than William Dembski.
Grrr! Arg! Okay, I’m not Dawkins’ rottweiler, but I’m sick to death of the Richard-baiting! What the sam hill is their problem? I have never seen someone treated with such viciousness since Jerry Falwell condemned Mother Theresa to hell. (No, I’m not defending her, either.)
So, add Young Earth Creationism to the list of new old myths–and add Dembski as its latest cheerleader, despite all of his denials. Does this man give a crap about anything but advancing his nonsensical agenda? All this talk about “purpose,” and his “friends” are the most lost, irrelevant, hollow bunch of buffoons this side of the Moonies.
Historical consensus is that there was a Jesus, what’s doubtful however is that any supposed information we have about him is accurate.
Jesus was crucified, buried in a sealed tomb … 3 days later, the body’s gone. During the next 40 days over 500 people saw him.
And then, everyone who “saw him” forgot all about it.
NO HISTORICAL EVIDENCE FOR JESUS’ RESURRECTION
Except for the claims made by anonymous Gospel writers, no evidence exists that Jesus ever rose from the dead. In fact, Gospel accounts of the alleged resurrection are, from a realistic point of view, completely implausible.
If, as Templeton observes, Jesus’ resurrection was accompanied by a extraordinary earthquake, the wholesale rending of the Temple veil and a large-group resurrection of the dead witnessed by many, why do these phenomenal events merit but a single sentence in Matthew–and virtually no mention in the other Gospels or in contemporary historical accounts?
Writes an understandably skeptical Templeton: “Let the reader imagine the scene: The astonished spectators, the gathering crowd, the family members and friends, weeping and delirious with excitement. Surely someone would have plied them with questions: ‘What happened as you died?’ ‘Did you see God?’ ‘What is Heaven like?’ ‘Were you reunited with our parents and other members of your family?’ Surely the answers to these and other questions like them would have flashed across Palestine within hours and been recorded somewhere. But there is not one word of it in history. The entire resurrection story is not credible.”
Add to this the fact that the four Gospel accounts of the resurrection not only differ from one another on many major points but are irreconcilably at odds with Paul’s account in I Corinthians on who Jesus supposedly appeared to after rising from the dead. (Templeton, pp. 120-122)
Unless you define a “serious historian” as “someone who believes Jesus existed”, I think you’re invoking (for the millionth time) the “no true Scotsman” rule.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandi have a dozen degrees between them on the subject of scriptural analysis, comparative theology and biblical archaeology, which makes them “serious historians” by my definition, and yet they’ve published multiple books detailing excellent evidence as to why Jesus probably didn’t exist.
Earl Doherty has decades of textural analysis and biblical scholarship behind him, and yet he continues to believe that there was no true Jesus.
In the 70’s, a nun (I’ll look up exact details when I get home), left Holy Orders on the grounsd that if early Christians had had to forge a citation in Josephus (the Catholic church has aknowledged for over 200 years that mention of Jesus was added in about 150 – 180AD – does that mean that the Vatican is composed of “not-serious historians?), then there can have been so little genuine evidence that it simply didn’t make sense to believe he existed. As you might imagine, she went to great lengths over the course of two decades (and became quite a renowned expert on 1st century Palestine, as she did so) to be able to continue to believe, but failed miserably. Clearly, though, she wasn’t serious. She just wanted to prove God wrong so that she could go on taking drugs and having gay orgies, right?
So, why are these people not “serious historians”?
Sad is not being able to discern between faith and reality.
Sshhhh! The gay nun orgy thing is supposed to be a secret!
A man goes to see a psychiatrist, who shows him a picture of an inkblot.
“What does this picture remind you of?” the doctor asks.
“A lesbian nun orgy,” the guy replies.
“How about this one?” the shrink asks, holding up another picture.
“A cheerleader orgy,” the guy says.
After three more pictures, the doctor finally puts down the cards. “You are a sick pervert,” he says.
“Me?” the guy says indignantly. “You’re the one who keeps showing me dirty pictures.”
LOL, you guys are too funny. Evidence that something doesn’t exist? I digress.
Freke and Gandy are a joke. http://www.tektonics.org/books/laughjesrvw.html
And so is Doherty.
http://www.tektonics.org/doherty/doherty200.html
You forgot Robert Price.
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/pricer06.html
It’s sad that we keep having to go over the same material, over and over and over… Jesus existed, get over it. Well, oh no, he existed? That means the Bible might be true. Again, it’s even more sad when scientists will attempt to deny well-known, generally accepted facts.
Jesus existed, died, was buried, the tomb was empty, people claimed to see him resurrected, and the Christian faith started.
Yes we know all about the Myth. It’s quite boring.
We know, we know. You’re very faithful. You’re a believer. We get it.
You still have no idea what constitutes evidence. And have yet to show
any evidence of anything supernatural… ever.
Sigh… Steve, Jesus could stand in front of you and smack you in the face and you still would not believe it.
One minute you’re claiming the body was stolen (again, providing no evidence) and the next Jesus never existed.
Is there anything you won’t say or do to deny the truth?
Let’s predict how this will continue, shall we?
I make a claim
You ask for evidence
I provide evidence
You say that’s not evidence
You make a snide remark to deflect
Someone else posts something with actual thought
You make a deriding remark
The End
I will do my best to remember you in my prayers.
M Petersen: If you really want to impress people with what Jesus did, show them what he did as a child.
The bible isn’t evidence. Moving on…
Provide me evidence of something MODERN that’s evidence of the supernatural even existing.
You haven’t provided any THOUGHT only spouting your faith.
Oh, someone called “Punkish” gives Freke and Gandi three thumbs down. Well, that convinces me that their decades of study and research are meaningless.
Clearly, if an apologetics website disagrees with someone’s conclusions, that’s enough to say they’re not “serious historians”.
Yes, it’s very sad.
Maybe Jesus existed. Maybe he didn’t. There are serious historians on both sides of the argument, though as your only source for anything seems to be that one website, I can’t say I’m too surprised that you don’t recognise that. The real point is that there is no evidence outside of the Bible that even ecomes close to saying Jesus existed. Yes, there are a handful of 2nd- and 3rd- century references to the existence Christians, but no-one here is denying the existence of them.
Personally, I don’t believe Jesus existed. I also think I know more about “serious history” than you do. I might be wrong, on either count, but without any evidence to the contrary, it seems like a fair bet.
The gospel of Thomas has been widely discredited.
So has most of the bible.
Moving on…
I’d love to make some witty observations, but my first thought is “Dude, you so need to get a copy of that headdress and wear it while you teach class.”
That was the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, not the Gospel of Thomas. Making that mistake doesn’t speak well to your credibility, not that anything you’ve done so far has.
Jesus existed, died, was buried, the tomb was empty, people claimed to see him resurrected, and the Christian faith started.
And then it died out, and everyone forgot, until Paul, who doesn’t mention Jesus and all these supposed wondrous things that he did, including rising from the dead, re-invents the Christian religion in his writings after falling off his horse.
And then Jesus gets mentioned more and more the farther you get away from the time he supposedly lived–the opposite of what you’d expect. And then the Christian religion really got started. Yah, convincing.
Again, it’s even more sad when scientists will attempt to deny well-known, generally accepted facts.
Yeah, like the flat earth, Zeus, etc. Maybe you missed the fact that almost no evidence exists **outside of Biblical texts** to suggest that he existed, all of it written nearly a half century after the supposed events, and that the few references that imply someone with such a name existed **do not** make a statement about who he was beyond the mention of the name, what he did, or anything else that would address the existence of “the specific” person described in the Biblical texts. Its like claiming that someone named John visited the court house in Lake Havasu, Arizona 10 years ago for a parking ticket, so **obviously** it had to be the same John Smith that was seen in Tampa, Florida 3 hours earlier rescuing a kitten from a tree… The fact that there are probably millions of Freds, just in Arizona, never mind Florida. In the time the Bible talks about, there where hundreds, if not thousands, of people with the same name as Christ supposedly had, which was the local equivalent of calling someone John, Smith, etc. today. All we have for evidence is a name on a page, with a comment about who they went before. And worse, even the Biblical version has “two” of them there the same day, as the same time, only one supposedly the “saviour”. Other evidence of his “existence” is equally iffy, since it is **not** valid to use the Bible to prove itself, and in the end, that is ***all*** you people have.
Just because something is a “generally accepted fact” doesn’t mean its correct. It was also, to go the other direction, a generally accepted fact that Vikings had never made it to the Americas. It was also a “generally accepted fact” that birds where all monogamous, until someone proved that was wrong. And again, how about Zeus? Or better yet, the various gods that where well known, and included one or all of the following – virgin births, resurrections, death by torture, folowed by a resurrection, being the “son” of some other God, etc. I am sure you can find “more” evidence of the same, “our holy writtings prove he existed”, and a far larger number of personal accounts of witnessing those, than you can for Christ.
And even if you proved the existence of the person, you are still left with no evidence, outside the Bible, that anything he did or said in it actually happened, since again, there is no non-Biblical evidence to suggest he was ever at, did or said anything in it.
The problem isn’t that someone might disprove Christ, the problem is, no one has yet given valid proof “of” his existence in the first place, which didn’t rely on the text attempting to prove itself with several sections, only one of which was ever written by someone “claiming” to have actually known the person being written about, and none of it “during” his life time. A modern historian might write a similar work, but **they** would have reference materials, documentation and clear evidence for the events, not, “I talked to some people that claimed this may have happened, so I wrote it all down.”, or worse, the later stuff from Paul, which is basically, “I didn’t even talk to anyone, I just had a headache one day, decided to take a nap, and started halucinating it all.”
It was not forgotten and Paul didn’t re-invent it at all. Paul’s writings are entirely consistent with Jesus’ teachings as written by some of his disciples. It’s all quite convincing yes.
Well then, I’d never heard of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas but thank you for bringing it to my attention.
The proof is all there. If it’s not proof enough for you, that’s your decision. The point is that people don’t believe the evidence as proof because they don’t want to. You think there’s proof of evolution, yet some people choose not to believe — I thought you would understand this concept. It’s a neat way to avoid dealing with Jesus, he didn’t exist. It’s not a new concept either.
All the facts I stated previously stand. If you can’t concede at least those facts, then it just indicates how big your pride is.
Ah, the indefagitable M returns, still lacking any clear understanding of what “proof” means in a discussion of this kind.
The claim is not that we have proof that “Jesus never existed.” The claim is that there is no “proof,” of the kind that modern scientists or historians ordinarily rely upon that “Jesus did exist.”
(One could go on from here: even if there was such a historically-documented personage, that wouldn’t be “proof” that any of the miracles “attributed” to him were supernatural in origin; it wouldn’t be “proof” that any of his contentions about the supernal realm were valid; and it wouldn’t be “proof” that any of his moral precepts should be adopted without further evaluation–though it may be possible to independently derive through observation and experience whether at least some of those moral precepts are appropriate and practicable in society’s present circumstances.)
When you say the word “proof,” M, you simply don’t mean what you should, by now, know–since you have had the concept described to you in detail multiple times in clear and simple language on other threads–what we mean by it.
Thus, you are to this discussion simply a ship passing in the night. You may be quite comfortable on your ship. It may get you where you wish to go in considerable style. Whatever floats your boat, as they say.
But the name of that ship is S.S. Faith, not S.S. Proof, S.S. Evidence, or S.S. Science.
You seem like a nice guy. But if you aren’t willing to do the work of understanding the concepts basic to the discussion here, you’re a mere irrelevancy, however pleasant, polite, and (sigh) persistent…
You guys (gals as the case may be), are on a serious roll today in trying to make me laugh.
Well, your vast depth of historical knowledge it definitely proven now that you’ve said so. And you must be winning this argument because you proclaim to have much more knowledge than I. Of course, that’s obvious because you say so. I’m sure you know everything there is to know about everything.
Your pride is evident and is killing you like a gaping wound to the head.
I will do my best to remember all of you in my prayers.
Even though I’m not feeling exceptionally prideful or victorious today, I still appreciate the good thoughts. They certainly can’t do any harm, so long as they are indeed well meant, noninjurious, and sincere.
Now, please, go away until you are capable of dealing in the kinds of evidence, documentation, and replicable experimentation that are acceptable to the reality-based community.
My good thoughts will accompany you, for whatever that might be worth.
M Petersen:
You always want to get into a debate about the bible, as if it’s fact or a historical document. You can’t use it as evidence or proof of anything.
No one here will accept it as such.
So if you want to take part by all means do. Just try… TRY to quote something other than fellow believers and your book.
Hey, M, I take it all back!
Not only did these real, live workers sight Mother Mary:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14400252/;
but one of those real, live heroic firefighters who lived through the collapse of the Trade Towers saw a vision of Jesus while he was still trapped. Woagh (as the cute little dog used to “say” in the TinTin comics…)!
All right, all you atheists, you wanted “proof,” you wanted “evidence,” you wanted “documentation,” heck, now there’s even a movie! And not a Mel Gibson right-wing religious whacko movie, but a real honest-to-goodness Oliver Stone left-wing whacko movie. There can simply be no more doubt. Reasonable minds cannot disagree!
So, eat your words, ya ebiloosheners! The conversion line starts right around the corner, and M is busy cookin’ up BBQ for the post-conversion hootenanny even as I testify!
Oh my, I leave the classroom for one minute and return and … and this!? Okay, if many of the folks can’t agree to “existing timeless intelligence” at or prior to the Big Bang, then how do you expect these same folks to believe in any religion, let alone Christianity? Solipsism is a comforting place to be, for one can simply shut down whatever that is in the mind that seeks beyond the senses.
And then:
“Yes. If we cannot deduce what happened before the big bang, then it makes no sense to choose any pre-big-bang model over another. If we necessarily cannot detect what happened before the big bang (and we cannot detect anything outside the universe, by definition), then any model for those scenarios is unscientific.”
Oh happy days! The scientific community has handed theologians “all that existed at or prior to the Big Bang” … wonderful, now please email Stephen Hawkin and tell him to hand over all those unscientific scenarios to the monastery, where they belong!
It was not forgotten
Was too.
I think Mother Mary looks more like the Maltese Falcon.
Oh, c’mon, Kristine!
Just because you don’t believe in the Chocolate Virgin Proof, doesn’t mean that it’s not still proof.
You say chocolato, I say vanillo!
Yea, verily!
Stanton: At first glance it looked like a sun to me …
Steve_C: Don’t forget also that Mark (the earliest gospel) originally ended with no post ressurrection seeings by the followers, either.
I do find it interesting that M Petersen hasn’t heard of the infancy gospels. Mind you this is true of many fundies and what not – they have no idea about any serious church history. The bit about the 500 was mentioned to me once by a missionary I ran into at McGill once … amazing how transparent that one is …
How do we know it wasn’t 501 or 491?
It’s funny how the chocolate Mary looks like a renaissance white european version of mary. No one knows what Mary or Jesus looked like even if they existed.
And somebody explain to me what the point would be for these appearances in water stains and potato chips and tree bark?
I play a game with my son… what’s that cloud look like? A bunny rabbit! A frog! A fish!
Thankfully I’ll never hear hm say… Baby Jesus! Virgin Mary!
Steviepinhead, if doctrine prevailed it would be a chocolate Jesus. With a liqueur center. Sorry, but I still say it’s the stuff cremes are made of…
Cremes, hmmm.
OK, I’ll bite: I’m de-menthed…!