You know what really annoys me about creationists? The unwarranted confidence in their beliefs; the smug and almost always incorrect dismissal of the evidence; and the ridiculous repetition. There isn’t an original thought in their heads, so every discussion turns into yet another refutation of the same stupid talking points we dealt with last week, last year, last decade. Here’s an example, a letter the the editor of the Argus Leader by Jeff Hambek. He’s complaining about a previous letter from a <gasp> atheist.
He stated that he does not believe in an afterlife. Since that cannot be scientifically proven, this is an element of faith. Is there a way to establish the truth regarding afterlife? For the free thinker, the well-documented life, death and resurrection of Jesus present plenty of evidence that there is a soul or being that remains after death of the body.
Hang on there, Mr Double Standard. You dismiss the idea that there is no afterlife, because it “cannot be scientifically proven”, yet you immediately turn around and claim that the Jesus myth is evidence of an afterlife. This is a lie. There is no scientific proof, to turn your claim against you, of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There isn’t even any contemporary evidence. It’s a religious fable packed with miracles and magic written decades after the claimed events.
On the other hand, we do have good scientific evidence that the mind is a product of activity in the brain. Damage to the brain causes, for instance, personality changes. We don’t have any evidence of human minds functioning without a brain. It’s reasonable to infer that the self does not survive brain death, and that there is no mental activity when the brain rots down into a putrescent puddle.
Mr Hambek is just getting started, though, and launches into a criticism of the science of the origins of life, and quickly demonstrates that he has no idea what he’s talking about.
The atheist must also believe that life in the universe began as a happy accident. Science cannot prove this either.
Chance and necessity, guy. Early chemistry was a stochastic process that depended on random events that produced a predictable outcome. Chemistry is not a series of “happy accidents”.
Consider that the chemistry of the early earth was not favorable to formation of amino acids (per NASA).
Huh. That’s weird. We find amino acids in meteorites, for instance. The early Earth was not favorable for formation of stable compounds when it was molten, but once it cooled enough for water to condense, amino acids would have formed. That part isn’t hard.
Even if there were amino acids,
There were amino acids, no “if” about it.
it is against the statistical odds that these would spontaneously form life-sustaining proteins, since only some amino acids will work and other chemicals combine more readily with amino acids than other amino acids.
Isn’t organic chemistry fun?
This odds-based argument is bunk, though. It’s not about chance at all. It’s about likely chemical pathways that would have been present in the pre-biotic earth.
Even if there were the right proteins, they would have to combine with other chemicals in just the right way to form a cell wall. The cell wall would have to be in the right place at the right time and enclose itself around the instruction manual (DNA) and power plant (mitochondria) necessary for the cell to live.
Early cells would not have had DNA or mitochondria. Mitochondria evolved a bit over 2 billion years ago, about 2 billion years after life arose. It’s also unlikely that the first cells would have had a cell wall — a cell membrane would have been assembled some time after the first autocatalytic processes evolved, but even that wouldn’t have come first.
I’m going to guess that Mr Hambek hasn’t read one book or paper about origin of life models.
No one has a reasonable explanation of how those things came into being by themselves.
Incorrect. See below.
Even if that very first cell were formed, it is an incredible leap from there to a multi-celled organism, which requires finely-tuned and interlocking systems to intake and distribute sustenance and dispose of waste.
Multicellular organisms aren’t as big a leap as Mr Hambek thinks. We all still use the same metabolic and replicative processes that evolved in prokaryotes, and even the cell signaling mechanisms that we’ve elaborated upon to produce greater complexity are present in single-celled organisms.
Atheistic religion was easier back in Darwin’s day. With what we now know about the chemistry and machinery inside a cell, I cannot muster the level of faith required for this religion.
Oh god, here we go again — a religious believer using a claim that atheism is a religion as a pejorative, and using the same old slogans I’ve heard for forty years. Please learn a new routine.
I’m going to have to recommend some remedial reading for Mr Hambek. Here’s a paper on Early bioenergetic evolution by, among many others, Martin and Lane. It kinda contradicts a lot of his half-assed claims about the science.
Life is the harnessing of chemical energy in such a way that the energy-harnessing device makes a copy of itself. This paper outlines an energetically feasible path from a particular inorganic setting for the origin of life to the first free-living cells. The sources of energy available to early organic synthesis, early evolving systems and early cells stand in the foreground, as do the possible mechanisms of their conversion into harnessable chemical energy for synthetic reactions. With regard to the possible temporal sequence of events, we focus on: (i) alkaline hydrothermal vents as the far-from-equilibrium setting, (ii) the Wood–Ljungdahl (acetyl-CoA) pathway as the route that could have underpinned carbon assimilation for these processes, (iii) biochemical divergence, within the naturally formed inorganic compartments at a hydrothermal mound, of geochemically confined replicating entities with a complexity below that of free-living prokaryotes, and (iv) acetogenesis and methanogenesis as the ancestral forms of carbon and energy metabolism in the first free-living ancestors of the eubacteria and archaebacteria, respectively. In terms of the main evolutionary transitions in early bioenergetic evolution, we focus on: (i) thioester-dependent substrate-level phosphorylations, (ii) harnessing of naturally existing proton gradients at the vent–ocean interface via the ATP synthase, (iii) harnessing of Na+ gradients generated by H+/Na+ antiporters, (iv) flavin-based bifurcation-dependent gradient generation, and finally (v) quinone-based (and Q-cycle-dependent) proton gradient generation. Of those five transitions, the first four are posited to have taken place at the vent. Ultimately, all of these bioenergetic processes depend, even today, upon CO2 reduction with low-potential ferredoxin (Fd), generated either chemosynthetically or photosynthetically, suggesting a reaction of the type ‘reduced iron → reduced carbon’ at the beginning of bioenergetic evolution.
Chemistry ain’t a religion, OK?
That paper might be too technical for someone who gets his ‘facts’ out of a Bible, so here’s a less complicated discussion of some possible 4 billion year old fossils.
Discovered in slices of rock recovered from northern Quebec, the microscopic metallic detritus—plus chemical signatures associated with ancient metabolisms—could push back the date at which life arose on Earth. If verified, these fossils would surpass 3.7-billion-year-old microbial mats found in Greenland as the oldest known traces of life.
The microfossils also lend support to the idea that the warm, watery, mineral-rich neighborhoods around submerged vents are prime places for life to emerge, whether on this planet, on the seafloors of icy moons, or elsewhere in the universe.
Scientists seem to think the emergence of life is probable, not just a “happy accident”. But who are you going to believe, a bunch of people who’ve studied chemistry and biology for years, or some random Christian doofus from South Dakota who doesn’t even realize that not all cells have mitochondria?
I just finished reading some of Augustine’s letters on the soul, ghosties, visions, and all that. He had an unusual stance, went against the church on that one. Then Pope Gregory came along and confirmed that ghosties are real.
Big numbers escape him. Low probability events given many attempts are quite likely to occur. And when the occurrence increases the odds of repetition, guess what becomes more likely.
Chance of being dealt a Flush is low and after 1000 deals it is quite low NOT to have gotten a Flush.
Deal with it Ham’ster
(Odd that his name also starts with Ham, coincidence?)
If the science that explains the universe, life, and us is unfathomable, how do they explain god? There was never a time god wasn’t around? He arose spontaneously? Or did god evolve from some putrescent puddle left over from the previous god? Must have been some big puddle to have thought of everything.
Oh yes, the old “you need evidence or faith to not believe something” routine. Just think of how much knowledge rocks must have to justify their complete lack of belief in anything. Either that or they’re the ultimate pinnacle of faith.
Actually, religious people looking up at the mentality of rocks would explain a lot.
But he doesn’t offer science as evidence, instead he offers…
I’m sure we all recognize that “well-documented” is as equally absurd as pointing at the sky and saying, “There’s god”. As one writer put it, if there was a historical Jesus, you won’t find him in the gospels.
Like “birthday riddle”
Simplistic calculation of two sharing common birthday produces misleading number.
Proper approach is to ask the opposite question: “how many people does it take for it to be UN-likely that no one shares a birthday?” ( NB the double negative)
•A:: 30 (where “unlikely” means <50%)
Applying that to chemistry makes “no life” very unlikely, given our primordial conditions.
Re @5
“Well documented” is a wiggle phrase.
“Documented” as a common usage verb means “written in a book” while “technical” usage means written in many separate documents by separate authors. No documentation of Jesus other than that single book. Could say Bilbo was also a well documented person. Two books chronicle his adventures.
He isn’t talking to people who read this blog. He is essentially appealing to he flock and the ignorant. He uses a lot of scientific words and long sentences and they all thing “Hey, this guy really knows what he’s talking about.” so they feel justified in buying what he is selling.
People with a technical or science background see through this sort of thing in a heartbeat. It is similar to the old retro-encabulator video. A person with an engineering or science degree will find the video somewhere between hilarious and ridiculous. But, show it to someone with little technical background and it just sounds like any other technical presentation. No more, no less.
So the real issue isn’t creationists. It’s scientific illiteracy.
Yeah! Tell it, brother scientist! (It’s so nice living in my little Berkeley bubble where I don’t have to run into creationists all the time. Of course, here there’s California vibes and woo. Six of one, half a dozen of another, I guess.)
slithey trove @2:
“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort
I can’t find it now (I think I used it as a bookmark somewhere), but I recall a letter to the editor I clipped long ago from back when physical newspapers were popular, that pretty neatly summed up the case in favor of belief, and against science. In reference to a story about new (at the time) discoveries in cosmology, a gentleman noted that if scientists would simply accept the Christian truth that everything that exists is the way it is because it is exactly the way that God has intended, then it would be unnecessary for them to bother coming up with such weird notions as “dark matter” and “dark energy.”
I had to admit that he did have a point; and thinking about it over the years has made me wonder how radical a loss of brain function I would have to have before I could accept that as a desirable state of mind.
Rejecting Holy Zeus is also an act of faith! And there is a *lot* more documentary evidence for Him than for that Johnny come lately Jesus…
slithey – The adjective he used is “well-documented.” Per Merriam-Webster, well-documented is “used to describe something that is known about or known to be true because there are many documents that describe it, prove it.” The Holocaust is well-documented. Jesus is not. Only a few documents describe Jesus. The provenience of the four main narratives is questionable. They are at best only “near” contemporary to the setting of the story. They are clearly assemblages of disparate writings. They don’t even agree with one another, and they show a remarkable lack of knowledge of the setting of the story. The purposes of the myriad writers is unknown to us. What we know about “Jesus” is only that it is one of a few surviving relics of an age replete with messianic myths, often constructed for specific political purposes.
Well, there’s a fun experiment you can try at home.
Step 1: Purchase several bottles of your favorite adult beverage
Step 2: Consume a healty dose of said berverage
Step 3: After each portion, try and remember how much you care about dark matter and/or energy and write it down.
Step 4: Repeat steps 2 and 3 until either your out of beverages or you’ve totally forgetten what the hell you’re doing.
The answer to the initial question is then proportional to the amount of beverage consumed multiplied by the beverage’s alcohol percentage and divided by the tester’s weight. Your state at the end of the experiment is equivalent to the usual mind state of your typical creationist.
It is funny that in a post describing overused inanities that PZ would present the Jesus myth. It creates a nice ironic juxtaposition. You are guilty of doing the same thing that perturbs you about creationists. For someone who talks about other’s lack of knowledge and willful ignorance of topics they are not experts in, you really hit the nail on the head with the Jesus myth topic.
I would say, for your universities sake, that you know more biology than theology. You should leave the latter to the professionals in that field. One of the main reasons for the controversy in biology is the changing narrative with every study or new discovery. Chemisty/Physics/Math really doesn’t have that problem. Force of gravity is always 9.8 m/s/s and nucelophiles attack electrophiles but with biology people are bombarded with constantly changing narratives and it is not their fault that they won’t stake what they believe to be their soul on those stories and that they hear just enough of it for none of it to make any sense to them. It is apparent that PZ’s sentiment towards religion is similar.
“…the well-documented life, death and resurrection of Jesus present plenty of evidence…”
I cannot count the number of times a devout Christian family member or friend has used this argument to establish the absolute proof of the existence of God and Jesus. “God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is true because God wrote it.” I have long despaired over the inability or unwillingness of otherwise rational human beings to cling to this kind of circular illogic. Religious insanity has now merged with conservative politics in this nation, with disastrous consequences that are being felt everywhere, particularly the environmental field. I see nothing but ruin ahead for this country, and my only hope is that it doesn’t destroy the entire planet.
Hmmm, leave theology to the professionals says ctech, hmmmm. Where do I find one? Supposedly, no one knows the mind of god; which is true cause there ain’t one. Lot’s of pretenders and self proclaimed profits, sorry prophets, who preach the truth in all of its various forms, but professionals? I suppose the answer is well documented.
Are there professionals who can tell us about the history of religion? Yep. So what? To explain religion and how a human mind accepts it? And? It’s a dead end; really.
ctech: I specifically wrote:
What part of that do you disagree with?
LOL, this is funny.
Theology is easy. Just about anyone can do it.
The central claim of theology hasn’t been established. That is, that the gods exist.
So theology is simply Making Stuff Up.
One god, a billion gods, Pagan gods, Greek gods, etc.. are all equally valid and worthy of creating stories about.
PS That the gods don’t exist is not falsifiable. But we can say that the available evidence is overwhelming that they don’t actually exist.
As Dennet says, all falsifiable claims of the theists have been falsified!!!
Well…he kind of sounds as though he knows what he’s talking about. But I suspect he’s just regurgitating apologetics darn near straight out of a book because, as PZ noted, they’re “the same stupid talking points we dealt with last week, last year, last decade.” However, and sadly, other doofuses from South Dakota won’t necessarily be familiar with these talking points and may mistake what he says for original thought. :(
Let me guess — he thinks it is “well-documented” because a lot of people believe this all happened and wrote about their beliefs as if it were fact. Consequently, there are many documents written about Jesus. Yeah…that’s not what “well-documented” typically means. It typically refers to quality of documentation, not quantity, but I’m cheering to the pep squad. (Oh, who am I kidding? He probably thinks the gospels are quality documentation, too.)
ctech @15:
Yeah…usually by creationists or new articles that have sensational headlines. Well, at least that’s been my experience. I don’t think people who pay attention to detail would agree. I doubt PZ would agree. What, exactly, are these changing narratives? Is it stuff like the dates and locations of the earliest known humans changing? Or similar “narratives”? If that’s the case, I think a lot of knowledgeable people know that there are degrees of uncertainty around these so-called “narratives” and are not shocked when they shift around a bit.
But what about the changing narratives of religion??? I mean, are you forking kidding?!? You think people are justified in not accepting biology due to supposedly changing narratives, but are simultaneously justified in believing in religious claims, despite all the different religious claims and changing religious claims??? OK, you just fried my brain with that blatant contradiction…and I haven’t even started on how “none of it to make any sense” in regards to those religious claims!
ctech:
FFS, it’s hardly rocket surgery. If you thought you had some sort of point in that mess, may I suggest you actually make it?
Ben Carson ?(for a very loose definition of functioning )
“I’m going to guess that Mr Hambek hasn’t read one book or paper about origin of life models.”
That’s a justifiable guess. One may guess as well that even if he had read any books or papers on origin of life models, he did not want to agree with any of it, regardless of whether he understood any part of it.
@15 ctech:
If the “controversy” in biology is that we keep learning new things, then other sciences like physics do indeed have that problem, and in fact have been working very hard to have it.
We aren’t sure how life originated, or quite the whole story of how it developed into what we see today. Where people like Hambeck miss out is that this doesn’t mean we can’t figure out how to explain it, it means we aren’t certain which of our explanations is the most accurate. Sometimes new discoveries mean what we thought was a less likely explanation is actually the more evidenced one; if you think that in any way makes the whole field less trustworthy, you are making the same mistake.
I like to think that, even giving them the low probability of billions to one, the fact that there are trillions of experiments and encounters going on simultaneously every second on trillions of planets in the universe, the odds don’t look that long. Especially given the fact that chemistry isn’t really random.
@PZ:
I understand that you are describing Hambek’s double standard of using evidence but you relate it to a Jesus myth of life, death, and resurrection. I can understand you not believing that someone was resurrected which is the basis of Christian faith. However, you imply that it is ALL a fable which indicates that you would actually drink the kool-aid of the Jesus myth believers. That to me is surprising as it is characteristic to what perturbs you about religious ideas. Yes, it is a stretch to say simply Jesus’ existence is proof of an afterlife but that is what the preponderance of evidence for him tells him. It is no different than looking at the fossil record or archaeology or any number of things. If we feel “a lot” of the evidence points to something then we will logically follow.
I read you because I don’t really credit you with the tactic of cherry picking only agreeing narratives, even if they are lame-brained, if they move your agenda forward. Obviously, people that deny Jesus even existed are likely viewed the same way you view people that don’t believe in common descent. Surely, your “club” should have a better password than “Jesus is not real”. Overall, I think that is a lot of the reason behind the implosion of the atheist movement that you’ve been talking about quite a lot the last few months. The lack of any real vetting process (especially of its leaders) has allowed the atheist movement be overrun by ,unfortunately, some people with values that you absolutely deplore. It really isn’t much different than religion. I mean we have Westboro we have to deal with.
This isn’t even remotely true.
Biology converges on the truth with each new discovery. It is self correcting.
It gets better with time.
Religion diverges in real time. Since it is not anchored to reality in any way, it is free to evolve in any and all directions simultaneously.
The result is an ever growing list of new religions and new sects within religions.
And those sacred and eternal truths can and do change in a heartbeat.
The only way religion has ever found to decide what is true or not is well known. Force of arms on the battlefield. We managed to mostly stop the xians from killing each other over doctrine. The Muslims are still fighting over their doctrines though e.g. ISIS, Sunnis, and Shiites.
ctech, do you think questions about whether Jesus existed could be answered by “theology”? Is it the case that professionals in that field (as you described them in #15) have some kind of expertise, perhaps relevant/useful methods, the right pieces of paper from degree-granting institutions, etc., which enable them to handle that topic?
@21 Leo Buzalsky: Sure it could be mostly news headlines but they are reporting the researchers many times and the people reading those headlines are the people we are talking about and not your college professors. Sensational or not, the idea that I am describing is that the basis of determining truth and lies is modification of stories. It is the main procedural element for detectives and lawyers and therefore the unscientific don’t really read between the lines. All they know is they were told or grew up being told one thing but now it is another. I am simply pointing out a flaw in the human condition as it relates to biological controversial topics.
Change is inherent to science. Your brain is fried because you are taking it as a knock against science so you incorrectly try to equate religion to it in order to make an argument. However, religious sect doctrine may change based on how they want to handle contemporary issues but it is clear and concise to its followers but the premise of Christianity has not changed. For example, Jesus was said to be born in Bethlehem and it has always been that. So, I am having a hard time understanding you.
What are the odds that an intelligent, well-intentioned designer would create a process by which such a dumbass as this creationist could exist?
@#29 consciousness razor: Yes, that is typically what degrees from colleges and universities allow you to do.
@#28 raven : Ok, there are no controversies in biology. Other than that your post is laughable as you cite Sunnis and Shiites in which their controversy dates back to basically their founding. You should join a church and then measure how many times your doctrine changes. Otherwise, yes you can get sects like the Davidians who may first start with the Bible as its basis but then start changing its sacred and eternal truths in cult-like fashion, but you would have to send me any recent major overhaul in either the Quran or Holy Bible because any “sect” that maintains those books typically have a pretty stable doctrine.
The idea is that most people are quite simple and so the doctrine needs to be simple and easy to follow. That is great you understand science as self-correcting. Self-correcting would involve a changing narrative so you are only talking to hear yourself talk.
The existence of Jesus is in the same category as John Frum: might have been one or more individuals forming the core of the myth, but not sure. There almost certainly existed many hebrew men preaching similar things in that time and place, but there is no solid evidence supporting the existence of a single Jesus as told by any of the often contradictory gospel narratives.
On the other hand, the existence of Mohammad is pretty well supported just like numerous other historical leaders. Why? Because he actually had a major impact on the region he lived in during his lifetime. Pretty pathetic messiah that Jesus; couldn’t even get his name in any everyday Roman records about the region and some of his early believers did not even think he ever actually existed at all.
@31 busterggi: hate speech much, buster?
ctech:
It’s very weird to think of an event’s location as an article of religious doctrine. Even if it is supposed to be one, given of course that no reliable/independent standards exist to determine what counts, it’s still not a typical or representative example of religious doctrines in general.
Plus, both the time and the place and are not consistently described in the Bible. So even if we leave aside the fact that you’re being highly selective and idiosyncratic about the type of “doctrine” you’ve chosen to make this point, which isn’t even remotely supported by many other compelling and important examples (consider e.g. whatever heresies, schisms, inquisitions you want), it’s also true that what it “has always been” isn’t clear and has at best a very limited scope, which doesn’t commit such a doctrine to much of anything at all.
That’s not an answer to anything I asked. PZ has a degree. I have a degree. Lots of fucking people have them for all sorts of different fucking things. Is it specifically a degree in theology which is required in this specific case? I think a specialization in ancient history would be more appropriate. Is that incorrect? I sure as fuck do know that that is a type of degree, so I don’t need your help with that.
@ctech #27:
Please present this evidence.
That won’t be a problem for you, will it?
You are rather stupid as shown by your writing.
I was a xian for 45 years. Most of us are ex-xians. We know.
My social justice mainline Protestant church wasn’t much for dogma and doctrine. They supposedly had one but few knew what it was or cared.
To cite just two well known examples.
1. The xian churches have been splitting since their founding. There are now 43,000 xian sects. They don’t agree on anything. The Catholics think the Protestants are heretics. The Protestants think the Catholics are the church of satan.
Up until the start of this century, the Catholics and Protestants were still killing themselves in Northern Ireland. It’s only been 500 years and for xians, that isn’t enough time for hatreds to die out.
2. The Mormons are a good example of how new xian sects arise. People just Make Up Stuff. And it changes all the time.
Polygamy was a sacred principle of theirs and then one day it went away.
Blacks were marked as inferior and condemned. Now they are supposedly equal in the church.
To be a proper Religionist, you need an Advanced Degree in Handwaving, Sneering and Misdirection.
Now you are simply lying.
Xianity is a lie. It never takes xians long to start lying some more.
1. The bible gets overhauled all the time.
They retranslate it and change it and hope no one notices.
The fundie version, NIV, is very readable and has some major changes.
2. More to the point, the bible is a hopeless multi-author kludge of fiction and mythology that contradicts itself everywhere.
All xians are cafeteria xians. They all just cherry pick and quote mine passages from the bible and Make Stuff Up. If you actually follow their bible quotes back, they are usually taken out of context and don’t mean what they say they mean.
The bible is just One Giant Rorschach Inkblot, saying whatever anyone wants it so say.
1. Science changes if and when we get more data. This is just being honest and reasonably bright.
2. Religion just guesses and gets everything wrong.
People who point out it is wrong get persecuted and sometimes killed.
Eventually no one cares any more.
Good examples are Geocentrism and the demon theory of disease. Even today in the USA, millions of xians believe these superstitions.
@37 Rich Woods: I think you need to re-read all the passages. No one is saying anything about evidence for the afterlife except for Hambek which is pointed out and mocked by PZ. However, PZ encapsulated the entirety of the Jesus story which I am pointing out is in error. So, speaking on preponderance of evidence that Jesus existed then many would say that there is enough evidence that points to a Jesus character that actually lived and died. Ultimately, you should be careful asking people you don’t know to show you the afterlife.
@consciousness razor: I didn’t bring up the idea of a mutable religion. I stated that science is mutable which I have now been told that is wrong by raven and then I was told, “yes, but religion is too” by first grader Leo Buzalsky. My discussion was that I know doctrines can change but overall there are not wholesale changes to the stories in the Bible.
A theology degree helps. Can historians weigh in? Sure. Is it better? Who knows? There are plenty of segments of ancient history. I’m sure theology covers a wide range of topics as well but either one of those are probably better than someone with a hotel restaurant management degree. Should we listen to MattP? Probably not. My sister was a pre-med student for a while. Then, swapped over to journalism. Should I listen to her about prescription medications? NO!
So, I am not really sure what we are discussing here. We both agree that there are some people more qualified to discuss the history of Jesus. I don’t know if that falls to people with specialization in ancient history and biology majors.
I prostrate myself before you, O Refuter of Infinite Patience. I would have just said one of two things (depending on mood, random luck, etc.):
#1 would be: Are you having a laugh?
#2 would be: Oh, fuck off you maroon, you.
(The latter tends to emerge once #1 has employed enough times toward the same person.)
(Shit, I can’t edit comments. Anyway:)
Followed by a conscious uncoupling, naturally.
@ raven: I haven’t disagreed that religions can undergo change. However, translations of the Bible is a far cry from changing the content. Trust me. If your pastor is using NIV and you have CSB then you will do just fine during the service.
The changing nature of religion was juxtaposed with the changing nature of science by another poster, not me. I agreed religion changes but you are having to go back 100 years or more to find major changes which caused sects and within those sects their overall doctrine stays pretty stable to where most members don’t even care about it.
My only two points were that there are more changes in science than religion and that those changes breed disbelief and confuse the general populace. Just like the few changes in religion confuses people trying to pick which church they want to go to.
@41 raven:
1. Yes, and that is basically every day. So, it is changing. Great we all agree.
2. Wtf? What is this? Religion guesses and gets everything wrong? You mainly talk about xians but then you blast some other group as getting persecuted for pointing out religion is wrong. Are you still talking about xians here? Surely, you are not saying there is some unfair balance of persecution between xians and non-believers? Maybe you mean religions as a whole. I am not a world religion expert and if you are making that claim then I will have to submit to your knowledge on the matter.
Magic is a more reasonable explanation…?
@ctech
Please give examples of any Greek, Roman, or other contemporaneous records documenting the existence of Jesus son of Joseph; not his followers, the man himself.
John Frum was supposed to have lived on an island in the Pacific under Allied control during living history, but there are no solid records as to whether he even existed.
ctech@45,
Which is why marketers and other scammers claim their products and techniques are “scientifically-proven”, right?
(Heh)
Cthulhu, you are stupid and nearly illiterate. Once again, although I’m getting the idea that you have limited reading ability. .
1.. The xian religion has killed tens of millions of people for disagreeing with one branch of it or another. The whole religion is soaked in blood.
2. The xian persecution and slaughter of nonxians and heretics started as soon as they could, when Constantine made it the state religion of the Roman empire. They went after the Jews and the Pagans.
The Albigensian genocide alone killed a million people.
One crusade were directed against…Orthodox xians.
The Inquisition and witch hunts killed even more.
The Reformation wars killed many millions.
3. Xianity has maintained itself with the power of the noose, gun, and stack of firewood.
Up until a few centuries ago, being an atheist was a death penalty offense.
Without the ability to kill whomever they want, whenever they want, the religion is doomed to die out. US xianity loses 2 million members a year.
@48: Good point.
@47:
This article notes two Roman politicians.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/what-is-the-historical-evidence-that-jesus-christ-lived-and-died
I understand you will probably start googling and regurgitate some refutation but my post discussed preponderance of evidence. So some people will continue to disagree because the evidence does not meet their requirements.
@49: raven, go find something else to do like fact check your religion wars bloodshed. You should really cross reference the death tolls with the number of people, time frames, and non-religious war death. Religious war death is a drop of blood in that bucket. Your insults are meaningless when you consider the source.
Ctech is lying some more.
That is all he has.
theguardianlol
My recollection is that the current historical consensus on Jesus is that a) he lived, b) he was baptized by John and c) he was crucified. Any other biographical details contained in the NT are at best insufficiently substantiated to be considered factual.
I don’t see any issue with accepting this and still considering PZ’s summary to be reasonable.
@50 ctech: I don’t even have to google to recognize those are exactly what you were asked not to give. Pliny and Tacitus are talking about Christians, and so quote what Christians say about their founder. They are not documenting the man himself at all.
As for the constancy of religion, let me just note how very important the notion that life begins at conception is to modern Evangelicals – worth hurting a lot of people over – and that it apparently does not even go back a generation with them. There are lots of similar examples; polygamy was once key to the LDS and now is not.
Sure, the scripture says Jesus of Nazareth is born in Bethlehem in accordance with prophecy, and that’s going to stay that way. But for you to take that as an indication of constancy as if other aspects of doctrine could not be any more fluid, while treating new learning in biology as a sign of constantly changing narrative, is a horrible double-standard. Surely you can do better.
ctech:
Does it? How? How does it help to answer the question of whether or not Jesus existed?
You actually seem to have no clue what you’re talking about, if what you’re talking about can even be pinned to anything in particular. As usual.
I know why a historian is probably more capable, but why a theologian (Christian or otherwise)? Besides, restaurant managers presumably do learn in the course of their studies that, if and when something happens, then it happens at some particular place and time, since that isn’t just any old vague and/or inconsistent story that somebody may have written about once. When someone actually does some practical work for a living, such as managing restaurants for instance, they’ll typically come to appreciate the finer points like this. Theologians, on the other hand….
# 47 MattP
Please give examples of any Greek, Roman, or other contemporaneous records documenting the existence of Jesus son of Joseph; not his followers, the man himself.
Best I can do.
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/09/jesus-mythicism-1-the-tacitus-reference-to-jesus/
The assumption is that Jesus was one of your common or garden shit-disturbing preachers than infested the Judea at the time. No suggestion that the biblical stories have any basis except that he may have ended up on a cross.
I had never heard of John Frum before. The story-line does sound familiar.
@ Ctech
If the bible is pretty stable, how come Luther dropped a few books from the Vulgate? This could not be selective editing could it?
@ 51 raven
Ctech lying.
No, he is partially correct. A lot of your assertions and time-lines are wonky. For example, the Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople was not a crusade against Eastern Christians; it was a case of the Venetians taking advantage of the Crusade arriving in the city to weaken/destroy a major trading rival.
Where he is wrong is in saying “Religious war death is a drop of blood in that bucket.” As you point out, the death toll from the various wars following Luther’s 96 whatsits, alone, is in the millions.
I am not sure but I think you are considerably overstating the death toll from the Albigensian Crusades. I am sure that de Montfort and his merry band of murders would have happily killed a million but I doubt that the population was that large.
To jrkrideau
IIRC, Carrier cites rather compelling evidence that the Tacitus reference is an interpolation, and it originally read “Crestus” and not “Cristus”, and that it referred to some other group, and not to Jesus Christ nor Christians.
Scientist: Based on the evidence, this tree appears to be distantly related to this other tree.
Believer: This tree is possessed by demons.
[Five years and 500 peer-reviewed papers intervene.]
Scientist: In light of a careful review of the new evidence, this tree now appears to be much more closely related to this other tree.
Believer: This tree is possessed by demons.
ctech: People reasonably distrust science.
How amusing that you choose an example that so decisively refutes your case! Non-fundie Christian scholars recognise that the birth narratives in gMatthew and gLuke are simply retcons*, invented to justify the claim that Jesus, a Galilean, was born in Bethlehem as the Messiah was supposed to be; while before Bible criticism really got going in the 19th century, effectively all Christians would have accepted that they were true accounts, and overlooked or explained away the absurdities within and contradictions between them (and of course many unsophisticated Christians still do). So while the Biblical text has not changed in this regard, beliefs about that text have altered radically. Similarly, of course, with regard to the historicity of much of the Old Testament.
*Of course they tend to use more respectful terminology, waffling about theological implications, parallels with the Old Testament and so on.
EL @58: Christian, Chrestian, let’s call the whole thing off…
@EnlightenmentLiberal
The link from jrkrideau at #56 does actually cover the Chrestus/Christus issue and Carrier’s arguments in particular.
Bottomline: Tacitus probably was actually describing the founder of the Christians as a real person supposed to have been killed by Roman authorities in the correct time frame. Did Tacitus directly meet any eyewitnesses of one specific preacher in Judea or find obscure records of some pissant preacher’s execution? Probably not as said execution of pissant preacher not worth reporting to Rome, but also unlikely to simply be parroting the Christian myth without explicitly noting it as hearsay (unless the ‘it is said’/’some say’ wording that Tacitus used elsewhere to describe things he did not reasonably believe true were selectively edited out).
How anyone can read Tacitus, Pliny and Suetonius and come away enthused by such a trite and tedious bit of nothing as whether one minor character mentioned in one aside was real or confected by his followers is beyond me.
There is a whole rich culture of Roman imperial thought to grapple with there. A rewarding study into how a society grappled with the burdens of autocracy, how aristocrats adapted to new political realities, and how Roman horizons expanded with their awareness of other peoples and other ways of doing things. It’s a masterclass in contrasts – from Tacitus’s world-weary, cynical disdain for Imperial excesses and the hypocrisy of the Roman elite to Suetonius’s gossipy indulgence of slander and lurid stories about the Imperial family to Pliny’s studied insincerity and careful Panglossian refusal to acknowledge that anything might be wrong with his privileged little world. Even if you are only interested in the history of religion there is plenty there on real and interesting issues, such as how the Roman establishment dealt with foreign cults, how religious differences shaped Roman attitudes to non-Romans, and how traditional ideas of orthodox Roman piety were transformed and challenged by exotic alternatives.
To come away from all that thinking that the historicity or otherwise of a minor Jewish rabble rouser is at all interesting by comparison bespeaks a profoundly skewed set of priorities.
Jrkridideau, I’ll answer you because AFAICT, you aren’t a pathological liar and a waste of time.
1.
Some historians put the number killed at 1 million. Don’t forget that this is where the Inquisition started. The RCC systematically hunted down and killed all the Cathars. It took a while but they got every single one of them.
2.
That wasn’t my point either.
Ctech just ignored my point and pretended I made another one. Which is dishonest.
My point was that xianity was spread and maintained by murder and the threat of murder. Going all the way back to Constantine in the 4th century.
Up until a few centuries ago, being an atheist was a death penalty offense.
Xianity was and still is a violent religion.
Xian terrorism is currently a big problem in the USA.
3. I left out a lot of other xian massacres and wars. Why bother, I could tell Ctech was a liar and had difficulties with reading comprehension and logic.
There were the Crusades. The northern crusades. The genocides of the natives of the New World.
The bloodiest civil war in history, the Taiping Rebellion, was started by a heterodox xian and killed 18 million people.
My goal was simply to say that saying a Jesus character never existed goes against the belief by many scholars that beyond a reasonable doubt he did exist. I am not talking about the supposed miracles in the Bible or the resurrection, but first the Jesus myth people start by saying he didn’t even exist. It is that claim that is flimsy. It seems as though there is now a general concession that we all agree that a Jesus character, more likely than not, did exist.
As for religious doctrine changing, Yes by all means it changes. I never said it didn’t. Please read and stfu replying to me telling me how religious sects formed. My stance is that change causes confusion and disbelief. You can test that assertion. Go commit a crime and tell the detective 2 different stories.
As for raven, I am done with discussing something with someone who just keeps ramming their own head into a wall. I don’t have to argue with you on this because it is freely available for anyone who wants to go look and compare the numbers of death. Talk about your same ol’ atheist arguments. The “look at how awful and destructive religion is” argument is quite old and has been readily debunked.
Proteins assembling themselves? I am always amused that someone would attempt to comment on origin-of-life scenarios but apparently has never heard of the RNA World theory.
I find it funny that we are arguing over the existence of a guy who was probably not born at the time and place most commonly linked to his birth, who probably did not say and do what is most commonly attributed to him, who may or may not have died in the way most commonly described, and who definitely did not do any of the post-death stuff most commonly attributed to him. If pretty much all the info we have about a particular guy is at best very highly unreliable… what does it mean to affirm or deny his “existence”?
Rejecting Holy Zeus is also an act of faith! And there is a *lot* more documentary evidence for Him than for that Johnny come lately Jesus…
@12 He is the guy wot turned into a swan to bonk someone ,is he not
ctech: “…but the premise of Christianity has not changed.”
Which is how you get talking snakes and other patented stupidities.
@ 64 raven
Jrkridideau, I’ll answer you because AFAICT, you aren’t a pathological liar and a waste of time.
Ah gee, I’m flattered.
To ctech
Read Richard Carrier’s work on the topic. Many / most “Jesus myth” authors and models are wildly ridiculous. Carrier’s work is one of the few that’s respectable. I agree it’s not mainstream. I agree the apparent consensus is that Christianity was based on some guy named Jesus. I just find the mainstream arguments to be woefully unconvincing upon examination.
The creationist repetition of the same old stuff is incredibly annoying. When the recent story about the oldest evidence of life being found in deposits from terrestrial hydrothermal systems (as opposed to the deep ocean hydrothermal vent scenario that is usually postulated – although given that oceanic crust gets subducted every few hundred million years maybe this is not so surprising), I was interested to try and find out more, but any abiogenesis-related search ends up being so poisoned by creationist sites and stealth creationist sites that I didn’t get far. What is the current thinking about oceanic versus land-based origin of life scenarios?
Molecular fossils reveal evolution.