Questioning Religion & the Religious

[FluffyNinja]

Could you share some? I've always found the opposite, that there is practically no such evidence, so I would be interested to hear any new evidence on the subject.

I never said anything about "new" evidence. But there are the obvious writings of Flavius Josephus, as well as references in authenticated writings by the Roman historian Tacitus, the writings of Greek satirist Lucian, references in writings from Pliny the Younger, references to the crucifixion in the Mishnah of the Babylonian Talmud as well as archaeological findings from Ancient Babylon, Assyria, Corinth, and Egypt that corroborate events that relate both directly and indirectly to the emergence of the first Christian Church and of the Gospel of the Christos.


Then, of course, there are the most obvious......the Gospels themselves......written at different times, in different places, and by different authors.....which all seem to tell a very "similar" story.

Even Wikipedia, with it's obvious Liberal lean admits in an article:

"Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed,[1][2][3][4] and biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of his non-existence as effectively refuted."

 

[Cephus]

Not to mention he selects venues like Notre Dame, a Catholic College. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett are all leaps and bounds ahead of him intellectually. His arguments never change, in any debate. It's always the same crap.

Of course, but that's typical of religious debates, the theist wants to select the venue where they can pack the audience with their supporters who aren't going to change their minds no matter what is said. It's not just him, it's typical of most apologists who, even when their claims are 100% disproven, even when they admit they were wrong, they go right to the next debate and repeat the same wrong claims that they already admit were wrong, just because the new audience hasn't see him discredited.

 

[Cephus]

I don't feel that I have to prove my "beliefs" to anyone. They are mine. Like I said, I'm not asking you to believe what I do.

Fine. Just don't expect anyone to take you seriously. 'nuff said.

 

[Cephus]

Yeah, then it really wouldn't be called "Faith" now would it?

Faith is idiotic. Faith is the justification that people give when they can find no legitimate reason to believe a proposition is actually so.

 

[Fisher]

Faith is idiotic. Faith is the justification that people give when they can find no legitimate reason to believe a proposition is actually so.

What does it mean "to know" something then if faith is "idiotic"?

 

[FluffyNinja]

Faith is idiotic. Faith is the justification that people give when they can find no legitimate reason to believe a proposition is actually so.

Faith gives hope, meaning, and guidance to hundreds of millions. Not all people of faith completely reject reason and science. Why do you insist on stereotyping?

 

[Cephus]

What does it mean "to know" something then if faith is "idiotic"?

Knowledge requires evidence. Let us know when you find some.

 

[Cephus]

Faith gives hope, meaning, and guidance to hundreds of millions. Not all people of faith completely reject reason and science. Why do you insist on stereotyping?

Why do you insist on operating in black-and-white thinking? Someone can be entirely rational in some aspects of their life, then throw all of their reason and rationality out the window when it comes to religion. Being rational in one thing does not mean that you are rational in all things. Religion is not rational.

 

[Fisher]

Knowledge requires evidence. Let us know when you find some.

Let me know when you find a definition for what it is "to know" something.

 

[Cephus]

Let me know when you find a definition for what it is "to know" something.

What, Google doesn't work for you?

 

[Fisher]

What, Google doesn't work for you?

Yeah, that is what I thought. If epistemology cannot agree on it, it was probably wishful thinking on my part to think you had something to offer on it.....carry on; have a blessed day and all that jazz....

 

[Paschendale]

I never said anything about "new" evidence. But there are the obvious writings of Flavius Josephus, as well as references in authenticated writings by the Roman historian Tacitus, the writings of Greek satirist Lucian, references in writings from Pliny the Younger, references to the crucifixion in the Mishnah of the Babylonian Talmud as well as archaeological findings from Ancient Babylon, Assyria, Corinth, and Egypt that corroborate events that relate both directly and indirectly to the emergence of the first Christian Church and of the Gospel of the Christos.


Then, of course, there are the most obvious......the Gospels themselves......written at different times, in different places, and by different authors.....which all seem to tell a very "similar" story.

Even Wikipedia, with it's obvious Liberal lean admits in an article:

As I said before, there were several such preachers living around the same time, preaching similar things. A few of them were indeed crucified. I have studied several of the items you mention, and they do not all refer to the same person, nor do they include any indications that the preachers they speak of are anything besides otherwise ordinary wandering Jewish preachers at the time.

What do any of those real life preachers have to do with a mythological figure who could perform feats of magic, and why should we conclude that any of what those men were preaching oughtn't to be critically examined? When you say "THE Jesus of Nazareth", there's a lot of baggage attached to that label, and even a real life preacher named Joshua, from Bethlehem (which is not in Nazareth, so the nomenclature is very odd), who was crucified, does not entail attaching all of that baggage. Just the same way that finding historical evidence of a Greek warrior whose name was kind of like Heracles and what looks like a big lion pelt buried with him would not have any bearing on whether or not that person had super strength and a divine origin.

 

[Cephus]

Yeah, that is what I thought. If epistemology cannot agree on it, it was probably wishful thinking on my part to think you had something to offer on it.....carry on; have a blessed day and all that jazz....

You wanted a definition of a term. I am not a dictionary. You can do your own work. If you have anything to discuss regarding that definition, let me know.

 

[Knowledge=power]

Faith gives hope, meaning, and guidance to hundreds of millions. Not all people of faith completely reject reason and science. Why do you insist on stereotyping?

You can have all of those things and be secular.

 

[Paschendale]

You can have all of those things and be secular.

Not to mention how relying on faith for those things can give rise to all sorts of unintended consequences. Like Pogroms, Jihad, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, and thousands of other massacres throughout history.

 

[Knowledge=power]

Not to mention how relying on faith for those things can give rise to all sorts of unintended consequences. Like Pogroms, Jihad, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, and thousands of other massacres throughout history.

Precisely. If you, I, or anyone was born into a secular culture, we would still experience those emotions and have morals. No need for superstition to accompany it.

 

[FluffyNinja]

As I said before, there were several such preachers living around the same time, preaching similar things. A few of them were indeed crucified. I have studied several of the items you mention, and they do not all refer to the same person, nor do they include any indications that the preachers they speak of are anything besides otherwise ordinary wandering Jewish preachers at the time.

What do any of those real life preachers have to do with a mythological figure who could perform feats of magic, and why should we conclude that any of what those men were preaching oughtn't to be critically examined? When you say "THE Jesus of Nazareth", there's a lot of baggage attached to that label, and even a real life preacher named Joshua, from Bethlehem (which is not in Nazareth, so the nomenclature is very odd), who was crucified, does not entail attaching all of that baggage. Just the same way that finding historical evidence of a Greek warrior whose name was kind of like Heracles and what looks like a big lion pelt buried with him would not have any bearing on whether or not that person had super strength and a divine origin.

The name Jesus comes from the Hebrew "Yeshua"....which is Joshua. You should also perhaps do a bit more extended research into Biblical translation. Also, no, I have not seen the studies which show that any of these writings which I have mentioned refer to anyone other than THE Jesus of Nazereth from the New Testament Gospels.

You may have attempted to interject a strawman fallacy here by throwing in the miracles of Jesus......but I won't bite. What we were discussing was the historicity of THE Jesus of Nazereth who lived, preached, started a church, and was crucified when and where the New Testament Gospels says.

I'm also assuming here that you do have some understanding of how historicity is analyzed and documented using both subjective and objective corroborating evidence (accounts). I'm hoping that you are not under the assumption that eyewitness accounts and other primary sources are the only determining factor or even necessary when compiling a credible history. Compared to many events/people in ancient history texts - taught in schools as fact,.......there is a great deal of evidence which defends Jesus' historicity. I've listed it and you've done little more than dismiss it without providing anything credible to contradict it.

After all of your talking points and hyperbole are stripped away.....your position is quite weak, especially when held up to the historic record and to a historicity found credible by the vast majority of scholars of historic antiquity.

 

[FluffyNinja]

You can have all of those things and be secular.

True, but why does it matter so much to you WHERE people find their motivations for these things? You can also have faith in God and simultaneously believe that living things evolve and that there are universal laws of science, or that humans are capable of great intellectual acheivement. Why are so many atheists hung up on the fallacy that ALL people of faith interpret their holy books literally.....or believe that the earth is only six-thousand years old? Why so much stereotyping? Why the closed-mindedness? Why the need to convert believers to your way of thinking? Isn't this what so many atheists rant so strongly against........forcing your way of thinking upon others? The double-standard has gotten quite old.

.....the Crusades and Inquistion ended quite a while back.........Christians today are not the Christians who fought Saladin for the Holy Lands. Can we begin to accept that and move on?

Probably not.

 

[Adagio]

But what is moral and immoral if there is no objective standard of morality? Subjective morality is no morality!

I know of no demonstration that is undeniable. Moreover that misses my point. Truth is a value. It is not the content of the assertion or idea. Therefore it is separate from the assertion or idea. When you say "standard" you mean some kind of positive methodology. Any "standard" would be a result of some authority. Appeals to authority are always logically invalid. Even an expert can be wrong. Positive methodologies have about as much humanity as a software program. Positive methodologies are automatic. They tell people exactly how they must judge the truth, so that they need *not* judge the truth. I’ve never known a positive methodology that actually works. What I have known are several people who are dogmatic and dictatorial because they think they have a positive methodology. Moreover, as I pointed out before, the positive methodology can’t demonstrate it’s own truth. It’s own standards can’t justify it’s own standards. So those with positive methodologies either have to resort to circular arguments or hypocrisy or both.

I guess you could say I believe in the rational unity of man, reason is the same for all of is. Although the burden of truth falls on each of our shoulders individually, we are all united in the sense we share the same world. Truth is the same for all of us. There is only one truth. We just see it from different points of view. We’re each approaching it from different directions and positions and situations. We never see the entire truth. Nobody can possess it. Imagine 10 people standing in a circle in a room all looking at a sculpture representing truth. When asked to describe it, you'll get 10 different descriptions of the same thing. They all see the same thing from a different persepective. Each Comparing, contrasting and criticizing these positions helps all of us to weed out error and get nearer to the truth. At least those of us who have an interest in the truth. I believe that we must work to share our ideas and take part in critical discussions and that this is how we progress. I propose a negative methodology. We learn by imaginatively thinking up new idea, new values, new approaches, new positions, then once they are mature enough, subjecting them to criticism. As this is a negative methodology, it need not resort to circular arguments of justification and is therefore not hypocritical. Nor does it attempt the impossible task of taking the burden of judging the truth off our individual shoulders. Instead of looking for truth, reveal it. It's a stripping away process. Not an additive one. If you want to see a persons face, remove their mask.

 

[Adagio]

If I think it is right, then is it wrong? It doesn't matter what you think if morals are subjective.

As I said, if I posed a legitimate threat to you or your family, something life threatening, you would be right, and I'd be dead. My bad for threatening you or your family. I paid the consequences of my own immorality (or stupidity). There is nothing moral in depriving another of their right to life. But self-defense is a moral argument that you could certainly make. We have laws in this country that deal with agreed upon views on something like that. If your religion tells you that it's morally ok to kill me, then your religion is in conflict with our secular laws that don't accept that morality as a justification for murder. You can think whatever you want regarding morality, but that doesn't mean you can act on it.

 

[Adagio]

But if morals are subjective, whose morals ultimately win out? Mine or yours?

Win out in what instance? Is this a competition over morals? You can't demonstrate your own morals as true, so why should I be concerned with them. Truth is the only value that has any meaning to it, as far as I can see. I really don't give a crap about your morals. They're yours. Not mine. I'll deal with mine. If they come into conflict, we'll let a court decide and that decision will be based on reason and logic. I'll take my chances with an unbiased court. My own morals come out of reason and logic anyway, so I'm probably in a good position.

My own may change over time. We only shift ideas when criticism is brought to bear on them and better alternatives are presented. No idea is ever proved or justified. That includes ones morals and values. It’s clear we favor some ideas over others without any appeal to bases. Clearly critical discussions cause shifts in our ideas, even without the presence of any bases. Clearly to both you and me, some statements, or let’s say ideas or positions, are more valuable than others. If you believe in the truth, and I scarcely see how you could get by without it, then the question is *NOT* how to demonstrate it, but how to approach it. Clearly we learn. And clearly the way we do so is by replacing bad ideas with better ones. So what we need to do is look at what rules facilitate this. Our philosophy is thus concerned with these rules. The only criteria or standards is human judgment. And we’ve got to recognize that while we can approach the truth, no one possess it. We are fallible. You asked this question before; "But what is moral and immoral if there is no objective standard of morality? I’m not clear on why you think a standard is required to change an idea. In fact, I thought we’d just resolved this. Clearly we both value some ideas over others, even without any basis. We also both believe in the concept of truth. How exactly a human being arrives at judgments of the truth is an interesting question, but, as far as I know, it appears unanswerable. Why? Because every statement about how we judge the truth in any ultimate sense, would have to logically entail itself. But if it logically entailed itself, it could not judge itself. As I pointed out before, the positive methodology can’t demonstrate it’s own truth. It’s own standards can’t justify it’s own standards. If all truth requires bases, then what is the basis for the base? Trying to find that leads to infinite regress. It's just one justification for anothe basis for another justification...ad infinitum. In my view, that's no way to live. I think there's an alternative that makes more sense.

By looking for a standard or a positive methodology to give you a standard, it would remove the need for truth and the value for truth altogether. I can’t fathom that as a logical possibility. We would say as we now know how human beings judge truth, in physical or psychological terms, we can now judge the truth without any human present. If a criteria is undeniable, human judgement may as well be automated. We can program a computer to do it. You know, there are so many possible criticism of this viewpoint it’s hard to know where to begin. For one, it would mean that truth was no longer a value, but a kind of fact. As such there would be no value of truth, as such there would be no truth. However, if there was no truth, then how did we determine how humans judged the truth in the first place? What I am saying is that we have to accept that judgments of truth can only rest on human shoulders and can not ever be factually explained.

 

[Adagio]

Just because morals are objective does not mean that people always hold or are born with correct moral views.

What are "correct" moral views? Who decides that?

 

[Adagio]

Actually all notions of gods have their roots in folklore. Folklore is entirely human based. By asserting that the notion of god is not falsifiable you somehow accepted the belief that a god could exist without any reason why. And further the notion of gods isnt even a hypothesis much less a theory. What is testable is determining what the notion of gods actually is. The notion of gods are excuses for things that people do not understand. The entire notion of gods comes exclusively from human minds. the isnt anything metaphysical at all really, theres just stories. We must treat the notion of gods the same way we treat any story.

When a child shares that they have a imaginary friend we do not search the universe to confirm that the friend is actually not real. There is literally no difference between the notion of gods and imaginary friends. We dont allow a possibility that a imaginary friend exists even though we could never physically prove that it doesnt. We also do not accept the stories of people who claim that they were abducted by aliens or that they are jesus. There isnt anything metaphysical about asserting that peoples imaginations are fantasy. If I write a short story there is no reason to believe that any of it is true and no reason to be agnostic about it either.

Everything isnt possible just because you thought something could be possible doesnt mean that it could be possible. We dont need to disprove everything that is impossible or every story that homo sapiens make up. People can make claims till their faces turn blue and they pass out and start all over again but that doesnt make their claim a valid subject of reason.

Example:

person 1: The universe is going to end in 1 Billion years from this exact moment.
person 2: How do you know?
person 1: I was told so in a dream by a faceless voice.
person 2: I dont believe you at all.
person 1: The dream was real.
person 2: Oh well

The correct answer to: Is there a god? is: Oh well. There isnt anything to discuss with people that believe that their imagination is real. We dont need to disprove their imagination or leave room for the possibility of their imagination being by chance correct. I could imagine countless scenarios on my own each different and each is as pointless as the first or the last imagined scenario. Take a look at my example should we try to disprove person 1 even though person 1 came from my imagination? Am I prophet or is person one the prophet?

By asserting that the notion of god is not falsifiable you somehow accepted the belief that a god could exist without any reason why.

No. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that metaphysical concepts are not the realm of science.

And further the notion of gods isnt even a hypothesis much less a theory

Yet it certainly seem to be a topic of discussion, not to mention the millions of people that believe in this concept. I don't deny that it's not a hypothesis or a theory. Those are things that can be tested. God doesn't fit that. Yet here we are, arguing with people over what amounts to a superstition.

The notion of gods are excuses for things that people do not understand. The entire notion of gods comes exclusively from human minds. the isnt anything metaphysical at all really, theres just stories. We must treat the notion of gods the same way we treat any story

These are the branches of Metaphysics (Aristotle)

Aristotle's Metaphysics was divided into three parts, which are now regarded as the proper branches of traditional Western metaphysics:
Ontology The study of being and existence; includes the definition and classification of entities, physical or mental, the nature of their properties, and the nature of change.
Natural Theology The study of a God or Gods; involves many topics, including among others the nature of religion and the world, existence of the divine, questions about Creation, and the numerous religious or spiritual issues that concern humankind in general.
Universal science The study of first principles, such as the law of noncontradiction (logic), which Aristotle believed were the foundation of all other inquiries.

Everything isnt possible just because you thought something could be possible doesnt mean that it could be possible. We dont need to disprove everything that is impossible or every story that homo sapiens make up. People can make claims till their faces turn blue and they pass out and start all over again but that doesnt make their claim a valid subject of reason.

I agree. I can't prove that there aren't pink unicorns on Venus, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to prove there aren't. For one thing I'm not in the business of trying to prove a negative. Proving something doesn't exist. You can't do it. My feeling on this is that the burden of proof is always on the person making the claim. People that would say "absense of evidence is not evidence of absense may be correct, but it really doesn't get us anywhere does it. I"m not compelled to believe in something without evidence of some kind. I don't need evidence to prove somebody wrong. They need it to prove their right.

We dont need to disprove their imagination or leave room for the possibility of their imagination being by chance correct

I would hope you're not suggesting in any way that I'd be of that mind. I think I've been pretty clear on that.

 

[zgoldsmith23]

Just because morals are objective does not mean that people always hold or are born with correct moral views.

What are "correct" moral views? Who decides that?

When the hell did morality become objective? This most certainly is false.

 

[Adagio]

Gee I wonder where this is headed?

Answer this one first: Did time exist before the big bang?
And further: Has time always been constant?

You dont really need to answer those questions because they will just lead to other more complex questions. My point is that if you are going to bring causation into the conversation you should be prepared to bring forward real concepts not cartoon concepts that ignore the complexities of the situation. Like fore example infinity refers to something without any limit. mathematically the concept of infinity has been proven as a undeniable truth. There isnt any proof that the Big Bang represents a beginning. You would need to be able to analyse the Big Bang and determine if anything existed before expansion occurred. And you would need to know that there was a causation that resulted in the Big Bang. A chain of events has to be established. But as I am sure you know those are things that we do not yet know.

But yes everything that happens requires a cause. But acknowledging that fact does not somehow make a creator a valid hypothesis. Without any valid reason for the notion of a creator you are just talking pipe dreams.

I kind of like the theory of the Big Crunch. A pulsating universe that expands outward in all directions and like a rubber band begins to contract on itself as a result of gravity until it is reduced and compacted so tightly to a singularity at which time it once again Bangs outward, only to repeat the process endlessly. It's like a metaphore of our breathing in and out. We exhale until we have to inhale and then once again exhale. An undulating universe. I kind of think that the universe is becoming aware of itself through intelligent life forms. It's alive. We're examples of it. The more we explore it the more we understand about how it works, and the more we understand our relationship to it. Ultimately, I think we'll find out that it's us.