John A. Broussard

Let me get this straight.

All you know is that Joshua made the sun stand still.

Do you want to take even a stab at explaining how Joshua could have made the sun stand still when it wasn't even moving in the first place?

Thank you.

John A. Broussard

You are terribly confused.

You are a Christian, if and only if rhutchin says you are.

Got it?

JPD

Rigghhhht. Of course that's what it is. When someone points out a problem with the Bible you can say that, because you have "studied it more" that the problem doesn't exist because "studying it more" means that you completely rework the verse to bring it into line with your own wishes, and because you want it more you must be right. Powerful reasoning. Formidable argument.

John A. Broussard

Shhh!

The most formidable argument against Christianity is the bible, itself.

Give the Catholic Church credit, for example. It doesn't encourage its adherents to read the big book. Instead, the Church is the authority.

The bible is the reason why the cults that encourage bible reading keep splitting up all over the place. Read closely enough, the bible can only encourage strained attempts to make it reasonable and, inevitably, doubts.

Wayne Delia

Further, you used the phrase "historical document" to attempt to bring credibility to an obviously incredible event, as if you had supported your point. You haven't, and you aren't willing to grant the same credibility to the holy scriptures of other non-Christian religions on the same basis.

You don't need to be aware of the claims. All you need to know is that the non-Christian assertions are made in what the believers call a "historical document." On that basis, you should accept them as true - whatever the claims are - because that's the same basis you're now using to support your own arguments about the Joshua story in your particular holy book.

Again, you don't have to research anything; all you need do is blindly accept them based on their inclusion in a "historical document." Obviously, you're not willing to do that, so your own line of reasoning is used against you. And it would be totally irrelevant, as usual, for me to research anything - it has nothing to do with your current special pleading of a story such as Joshua's battle being true because it's part of a "historical document," which only applies to religious claims if it's from the Bible. Why not apply that to other historical-based religions?

The conclusion of the atheist view is based on the actual fact that the amount of information and evidence is so limited it's completely missing. There's nothing particularly wrong about that approach.

That's about the weakest argument you could give to support anything, and it's not the first time you've tried to use it. When asked for support for your own beliefs, and why your own standards for authority of Christianity can't be applied to other non-Christian religions, you sidestep the whole discussion with essentially "Everyone believes what they believe." That's bordering on cowardice. If you can't support your religious fantasy assertions, you can save yourself a lot of time by not making them as if they were fact in the first place.

That's exactly how I characterized it - the common attribute of so-called strong atheists and weak atheists is an absense of belief in the existence of gods.

Two problems with this: the hyperlink connecting to the Wikipedia term "nontheism" characterize it as an absense of belief in the existence of gods and an absense of belief in the non-existence of gods. As such, it is a properly contained subset of atheism as defined in the source link. As another example, suppose we made up a term for red-headed atheists as those who lack belief in the existence of gods and who have red hair. One could point to that narrower, rarely used definition to say that definitions of certain types of atheists require something other than a disbelief in the existence of gods. Sure, but so what? We're all still atheists. If you don't think I'm an atheist, can you identify what form of theism I supposedly believe in? Presbyterian?

Here, this Wikipedia article contradicts itself. The single ideology, the common characteristic, is a lack of belief in gods, by Wiki's own definition.

No need for us, then, to use the "No True Scotsman" logical fallacy you're so fond of using when presented with examples of Christians who don't fit your criteria.

Sorry, those two sentences do not parse in conversational English. Please try again, without making the tautological claim that an atheist is [either] a theist or not a theist, and without using the noun "belief" as a verb (believe).

WMD

Wayne Delia

That would be correct, but woefully incomplete. "God" (capital-G) is generally used to refer to the Christian God, much like a family who names their dog "Dog". Atheists are characterized by a lack of belief in gods of any kind, not just the Christian God. And, by your own admission, atheists are characterized by a lack of belief, not any particular belief. That lack of belief happens to be a lack of belief in any gods, but it's a lack of belief nonetheless.

That's stupid. Did you mean that as a joke? I have no strong belief that there are no gods at all, but I can (and have) logically disproved the existence of certain definitions of gods, including the Christian God. So with no belief in gods of any kind, and lacking the "strong belief" you seem to think that atheists have, what kind of theist do you figure I am? Methodist?

Here, you have equivocated your mistake (or joke) of "Atheists have the strong belief that there is no God" into "Atheists have very strong beliefs arising from their lack of belief in God." Those are two completely different statements. The first one mistakenly claims that atheists - ALL atheists - possess a certain belief, which is as wrong as a turtle fucking a rock. The second statement is probably true, but those strong beliefs - about the acceptability of theism in government, public education, and medical procedures - have nothing to do with a necessary strong belief in the lack of existence of any gods. Whether you realize it or not, you are employing the same shifty definitions and semantic slight-of-hand that may have persuaded you to accept what you believe, but it's not working on people who can understand and identify exactly what you are trying to do.

Of course, as others have pointed out - real cave men probably didn't use their bare feet as automotive brakes. But the point is that there are fundamentalists who actively seek evidence that man co-existed with dinosaurs, as in the Flintstones, in order to bolster their own fragile beliefs about what the Bible claims.

WMD

Wayne Delia

I figure it's a combination of a need to imagine that the Bible stories in Genesis are true, with in-their-face evidence that dinosaurs existed a very long time ago, with the obvious embarrassment of their desired scenario resembling a Flintstones cartoon. After a while, it gets pretty ridiculous.

WMD

Bearlaker

Gen. 38:24 And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.
Ex. 21:7 And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.
Ex. 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Ex. 25:11-12 When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets then thou shalt cut off her hand and thine eye shall not pity her.

Wayne Delia

That's a concern, but "atheists have strong beliefs about the social effects of people who use religion to promote an agenda" is materially different from "atheists have strong beliefs about the non-existence of gods," which is the path you wandered off.

Seriously? Again, did you mean that as a joke? The more that believers study their texts, the more errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions appear, which tend to deteriorate belief instead of strengthening it. Sure, there are naive, usually young and enthusiastic proselytizers who proclaim the Bible is the true, inerrant word of God, but when faced with huge lists of unresolved contradictions and factual errors, some take that as a challenge to the strength of their faith, and make a concentrated effort to ignore or dismiss the counter-arguments without any rebuttal at all. Rather than a demonstration of the validity of the Bible, it's more of a demonstration of the strength of their stubbornness and intellectual dishonesty.

That's demonstrably wrong. I've read the Bible five times from cover to cover, twice as a believer, once as a fence-sitting agnostic, and twice as an atheist. The more I read, the more glaring errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies appeared, which were more in line with the ignorance of the anonymous, ancient authors rather than the supreme, unassailable wisdom of an omniscient God.

You got that right! You're pretty ignorant regarding the Bible, unless you're intentionally misrepresenting it, as you did with your fiasco about trying to justify "Atheists are thieves" in the previous thread in GRD. I would strongly recommend you not attempt the same assertion in BC&H.

WMD

Wayne Delia

How do you figure that happened, and why didn't God provide that same sort of innate advanced intelligence for people today, at least in the area of knowledge that He exists? Do you still think that Adam wrote down everything in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis, and did you ever figure out how these "manuscripts" survived the Flood and were discovered by the right people?

Oh - then you misunderstood the reference to Answers in Genesis. Their set of beliefs involve quiet mentions of dinosaurs co-existing with men, and they get somewhat annoyed when the comparisons to the Flintstones inevitably arise. But the "cave man mystique," the images of primitive man co-existing with dinosaurs, is entirely their invention.

WMD