120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

 

[Keith&Co.]

I just love the idea that there's no independent corroboration of Jesus and/or his miracles because he was an unheard of nobody from nowhere, AND everyone in the first century that called themselves Christain did so because his miracles were so famous so very quickly they can't possibly have been made-up.

Makes me think of Bert and Ernie singing 'one of these things is not like the other...'

 

[Atheos]

Hey, a little slack here. You think it's easy fabricating an argument that incorporates goalpost shifting, sharpshooter fallacy, special pleading, baseless assertion and appeals to both popularity and consequence? Takes walls and walls of text to strike the right balance. Show some sympathy.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Hey, a little slack here. You think it's easy fabricating an argument that incorporates goalpost shifting, sharpshooter fallacy, special pleading, baseless assertion and appeals to both popularity and consequence? Takes walls and walls of text to strike the right balance. Show some sympathy.

Sympathy? Sure. For the carpal tunnel if nothing else.

 

[Lion IRC]

Hey, a little slack here. You think it's easy fabricating an argument that incorporates goalpost shifting, sharpshooter fallacy, special pleading, baseless assertion and appeals to both popularity and consequence? Takes walls and walls of text to strike the right balance. Show some sympathy.

Goalpost shifting - expecting the Christian to simultaneously defend the bible AND debunk Apollonius of Tyana, Honi the Circle Drawer, Hanina ben Dosa, everything written in the quran...

Sharpshooter fallacy - belatedly drawing an artificial polygon around the historical claims about Jesus and demanding that the Christian stay OUTSIDE of that ring fence.

Special pleading - when the skeptic automatically gainsays the Christians claims about what is probable or plausible. If it's special pleading to claim an unfalsifiable "X" then it must be special pleading to claim the opposite of that same "X".

Baseless assertion - Mark was an eye witness. No he wasn't. Yes he was. No he wasn't. Yes he was. Which of these assertions are 'baseless'? You say we don't know who the Gospel writers were. Well how then do you justify any skeptical position as to who they really were? I say the writers were eye witnesses. And you deny this while, at the same time, telling me that nobody knows who they were. Well, how do you know they weren't eye-witnesses?

Appeal to popularity - nobody here believes "X". There's a huge double-standard going on when the Christian apologist is expected to produce more evidence to substantiate the probability that Jesus performed miracles, and yet more testimony is dismissed as nothing more than popular opinion. Lion, it doesn't matter how many people believe something is true. The skeptic appeals to unpopularity whenever it suits them. Eg. why weren't more historians writing about Jesus? That's an appeal to numbers.

Appeal to consequence - what consequence? Global warming scientists appeal to consequence. What's wrong with that? If/since the Christian is right, there are consequences. What would you have us do? Ignore the consequences?

Walls and walls of text - Yep. On both sides. Interesting. I know why Lumpenproletariat and Learner make the effort. What existential, long term difference will your skeptical word count make?

Will the random, spontaneous, uncaused, past-eternal, perpetual motion universe of atheism care that you spent so much time arguing there's no God?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Will the random, spontaneous, uncaused, past-eternal, perpetual motion universe of atheism care that you spent so much time arguing there's no God?

No, neither would it care if we don't argue there isn't a God. There's no reason we have to by default imitate the nature of the Universe- there is no "default". There's no reason we have to act in any specific way.

 

[Learner]

Ya, it could have been. Just like it could have been that the US faked the moon landing because they wanted a propaganda victory against the Soviet Union. The Cold War was real and they had the sound stages in Hollywood and it's possible that they faked the whole thing so that Russia wouldn't be able to claim another victory against them in the space race.

Well, a 'could have been' a plausibility, is still enough to give reason for investigative study untill all is satisfied, concluded or debunked. Whereas (stating the obvious) something that is seen as to be 'unlikely', Santa and Rudolf the red nose reindeer can be accepted as unlikely even by Christians as something other.

Just because a narrative can be invented for a certain plot which pulls various disparate threads together isn't a reason to grant historical accuracy to that invented narrative.

I go along with this point ,unfortunately we're just not going to agree with how and who this would apply to.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Well, a 'could have been' a plausibility, is still enough to give reason for investigative study untill all is satisfied, concluded or debunked.

Not necessarily. As Tom has implied, there are a million 'could have been' stories available to explain just about anything.
It could be that electricity is a scam and tiny fae workers run from under the keys of your computer, down hollow wires to paint the letters you type on the screen in front of you... The fact that a story could be thought up is not a plausible reason to rip apart your computer to find the fairies....

An imaginative could have been is not exactly the same as a plausible explanation deserving investigation.

If, on the other hand, you have any sort of evidence for the fae, that would be something which can ONLY be explained by tiny fairies, or at least cannot be explained by any theory of electricity, then you have something worthy of investigation until it's sussed out.

But just a story? Anyone can make up a story. Look at all the stories Lumpen has made up in this thread.

 

[funinspace]

Walls and walls of text - Yep. On both sides. Interesting. I know why Lumpenproletariat and Learner make the effort. What existential, long term difference will your skeptical word count make?

I seriously doubt any of the words here on this site by any party, and on hundreds of others will make any existential, long term difference for humanity.

Why didn’t you just ask why the non-theists bother to discuss/debate faith? Hum….

Will the random, spontaneous, uncaused, past-eternal, perpetual motion universe of atheism care that you spent so much time arguing there's no God?

Ditto to GenesisNemesis’s comments. As well as the universe also doesn’t care that we humans endlessly discuss/debate politics or sports either. In fact the universe doesn’t care, period.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I seriously doubt any of the words here on this site by any party, and on hundreds of others will make any existential, long term difference for humanity.

Why didn’t you just ask why the non-theists bother to discuss/debate faith? Hum….

Will the random, spontaneous, uncaused, past-eternal, perpetual motion universe of atheism care that you spent so much time arguing there's no God?

Ditto to GenesisNemesis’s comments. As well as the universe also doesn’t care that we humans endlessly discuss/debate politics or sports either. In fact the universe doesn’t care, period.

It does care, just not very much of it, unless one considers himself or herself something other than the universe.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I seriously doubt any of the words here on this site by any party, and on hundreds of others will make any existential, long term difference for humanity.

Why didn’t you just ask why the non-theists bother to discuss/debate faith? Hum….


Ditto to GenesisNemesis’s comments. As well as the universe also doesn’t care that we humans endlessly discuss/debate politics or sports either. In fact the universe doesn’t care, period.

It does care, just not very much of it, unless one considers himself or herself something other than the universe.

But then you could say it cares and does not care, considering the beings who do not care.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Jesus Christ is the "highest" life form we know of.

If it's logically possible for there NOT to be an MGB then there must also be the opposite possibility. (Viz. That an MGB exists) You surely aren't going to say that there is never a best-in-class ? Chess player rankings. Worlds biggest diamond.
Fastest, highest, strongest...

So, what makes a being maximally great?
You've just listed, and implied, a whole slew of varying characteristics by which we can judge individual examples. But do ALL these characteristics have to add up to your MGB? Does the MGB have to be the biggest AND smallest, fastest AND slowest?

The idea of an MGB implies that all beings can be judged and ranked, does it not? So before we get into hypothetical beings, can you show how to rank two beings? Say, a scarab beetle and bombardier beetle. Which one is greater?

That's a dumb example for comparison.

How about a horse and a cockroach.

The horse is superior. Even though the roach can do some things a horse cannot do (every species has some special talents vs. the others), we can judge the overall value of one creature vs. another, where there's a significant difference.

Horses are more intelligent than roaches, and generally the more intelligent creatures are superior to the less intelligent. This is one of the criteria distinguishing the superior from the inferior.

Humans are the most superior of all the species we know of.

Also, we can't leave out plants and rocks. A roach is superior to a rock. Life forms are superior to non-life forms.

"Higher life form" is an illusion based on arbitrary definitions of "higher."

No, we can define this objectively. One clear criterion for "higher" vs. "lower" is that the "higher" forms are less expendable. I.e., we have to give higher priority to their welfare than to the "lower" forms.

This is objective, not arbitrary, just as it's objective to have laws and law enforcement. To say no being is "higher" or "lower" is the equivalent of saying there should be no laws against any "crimes" because the idea of "crime" is arbitrary. I.e., the "shoulds" are not arbitrary, but are objective and based on science and reason.

So the idea of "higher" and "lower" life forms is objective and scientific, and we can categorize or rank or judge different species and even individual creatures based on knowledge.

We don't know for sure what the highest life form is, but the highest we know of is whatever Power or Entity Jesus Christ was connected to. Just based on empirical evidence or historical evidence, that's the highest our species has encountered.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

If we can't explain how the miracle stories emerged as fictions, then it's reasonable to believe they're true.

Calling them "tales" is just name-calling. This is not a basis for determining the truth of what happened.

You're supposed to make a case why these accounts or stories are not credible, but when you make this case by assuming they're fiction, by calling them "tales," then you're committing the fallacy of putting your conclusion into your premise or into step one of your reasoning. You're supposed to arrive at the conclusion, not start out with this conclusion as a step in the reasoning toward the conclusion.

Never said calling them "tales" was a basis for determining the truth of what happened. But as long as all they are is tales that's what I'm going to call them. Demonstrate that they're not tales and I'll quit using that word.

I.e., your PREMISE is that they are tales. This is the point. You didn't conclude that these are "tales" (fiction) by anything other than just starting out from the premise that any miracle stories whatever have to be fictional. So anyone not starting from this premise might reasonably conclude that they are true, or might leave open this possibility.

You are not making the case that the miracle stories are "tales" or fiction. Rather, you just start out from this as a premise.

I don't have to make shit for a case. The case that the stories are not credible is made by the stories themselves which describe a man doing impossible things. Until there is evidence these impossible things were done they are incredible tales, which is to say they are not credible.

There is evidence, but it's not proof. It's just the normal evidence we have for most historical events, which leaves open a measure of doubt.

If you would describe the matter objectively, you would refer to these stories are alleged events or claims rather than as "tales" in order to be able to communicate your reasons to someone who does not start out with your premise that all miracle stories per se must be fiction, regardless of any evidence.

You are the one making a positive claim that these stories are true. I am simply treating them with the same rational skepticism with which I treat the Joseph Smith tales, the Mohammad tales, the Greek myths, the Roman myths, the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction stories, J.Z. Knight's Ramtha bullshit, L. Ron Hubbard's Xenu bullshit and every other myth involving gods, monsters and impossible activities.

I.e., you rule out all miracle claims no matter what, regardless of any evidence in some individual cases. Not everyone does this. Nor does science or logic require us to rule out all miracle claims no matter what.

Demonstrate that a man can overcome the earth's gravitational attraction and levitate off into the sky never to be seen again and I'll revise my skeptical stance on a story that includes such a detail.

In general humans cannot do these things. But this does not prove it has never happened or cannot ever happen in a particular case or some cases. It only means we need some extra evidence, beyond the minimum required, in order to believe it.

Until then I remain rightly skeptical.

A good healthy skepticism leads to disbelief in most miracle claims and probably most religious beliefs, but also leads to belief in Christ because in this case there is evidence. Skepticism does not equate to disbelief, but leads to disbelief only when there's no evidence, as usually there is not.

You've offered all kinds of irrelevant sharpshooter justifications for treating your favorite tale differently from all these I've mentioned.

You've mentioned no "tale" for which there is evidence, or significant evidence. In all those cases we can explain how the miracle fiction stories originated and were believed. In most of your examples there were many generations or centuries of story-telling between the time of the alleged event and the first appearance of the story in the written record.

And in all the cases the "tale" is about someone who was a famous celebrity during his lifetime and accumulated followers who were impressed by his charisma or personality over many years. This explains how the mythologizing took place and the legend evolved, in some cases even during the hero's lifetime.

These are not "irrelevant sharpshooter justifications" because these explain how the miracle hero became mythologized, whereas the Jesus case cannot be explained this way. The difference is that in all your examples we can easily see what produced the miracle stories, even though they are fiction. But there is no explanation what produced the Jesus miracle stories.

I.e., in one case there is no explanation, but in all the other cases we can easily explain what produced the miracle stories.

You've yet to offer anything objective that merits tossing aside thousands of years of observable traits about the nature of the universe . . .

Nothing requires tossing that aside.

. . . in favor of the premise that people didn't simply fabricate these tales of this god-man who could defy the laws of physics.

The evidence is that the stories were not fabricated. You believe they were fabricated because this is your premise, not because any evidence leads to this conclusion.

And now you're trying to shift the burden of proof.

It is a reasonable possibility that Jesus did perform those miracle acts, based on the evidence we have, and we do not have evidence for other miracle legends or claims, or, we can easily explain those other claims as examples of mythologizing.

The burden of proof is on anyone who insists that this is not a reasonable possibility.

I admit it's a reasonable possibility that the events did not really happen, based on the premise that no miracle events can ever happen. But that's an optional premise not everyone has to accept.

An alternate premise, just as reasonable, is that miracle events may have happened in some cases, where there's evidence, even though most miracle claims are false because there is little or no evidence for them.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, a 'could have been' a plausibility, is still enough to give reason for investigative study untill all is satisfied, concluded or debunked. Whereas (stating the obvious) something that is seen as to be 'unlikely', Santa and Rudolf the red nose reindeer can be accepted as unlikely even by Christians as something other.

Just because a narrative can be invented for a certain plot which pulls various disparate threads together isn't a reason to grant historical accuracy to that invented narrative.

I go along with this point ,unfortunately we're just not going to agree with how and who this would apply to.

All true, but if, in the debunking and investigating, you need to make up more stories to account for the story that's being made up, then chances are that you're getting further and further away from the truth.

That's what this is - a story on top of a story. The initial ckaim was that Jesus was a popular guy who many people knew about. That didn't match up with the evidence that there's not many mentions of him. Then that's responded to by saying that there were these guys who were actively suppressing him. That's not investigating, it's twisting evidence to have it match a claim no matter what that evidence may be.

It could end up being the truth, but the more flaws you have to account for by making things up, the l so chance that this would the case.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The gospel accounts are as reliable for the historical events as many other sources we routinely accept.

The numerous contradictory tales offered by the gospels tells us we should not take them seriously.

No, it's normal for reports of real events to contain discrepancies. There are many "contradictory tales" contained in the normal historical accounts we trust for our knowledge of history.

We can see that these tale peddlers were making stuff up and not reporting actual happenings.

Probably some of it is made up, but we can also see that in many instances they did not make it up but relied on their sources. In some cases they reported something they didn't understand themselves, or something they disagreed with or which conflicted with their theory, but they reported it because it was in their sources.

The story of the "rejection at Nazareth" is an example of something the later gospel writers/editors would not have invented. This story had to come from their earlier sources. And there are many other similar examples, where they could not have invented the story but must have gotten it from something earlier.

The differing tales of what happened after Jesus allegedly arose from the dead are a prime example.

GMark has Jesus arising to heaven from a house in Jerusalem.

This later version (the longer ending) obviously relied on the Luke account. This is a good example of how they relied on something earlier and did not "make up" the story themselves. They stuck to the earlier reports they had as much as possible.

GMatthew has the apostles hiking to Galilee to meet Jesus.

The simple explanation for this is that Jesus did encounter some of the disciples in Galilee, as most of them agree on. However, it probably was not "the eleven" (minus Judas) who saw him there, but others from earlier who had remained in Galilee rather than going with him to Jerusalem. So Matthew added this one element, that it was "the eleven" including Peter who went to Galilee, which probably is not correct.

Discrepancies like this do not mean the resurrection did not happen. It's normal for there to be discrepancies about a high-profile event which had a strong impact and which happened in a short time interval.

John has yet another tall tale, Luke another, Jesus arises to heaven from Bethany on the same day he is resurrected. Acts tells us he was in Jerusalem 40 days then arose [ascended].

This was the same author, Luke, contradicting himself. And this does happen in historical accounts. Josephus contradicts himself many times when he tells the same event in two different versions. It doesn't mean the event did not happen. It means there is confusion on the details. The "40 days" is only in Acts and is probably incorrect.

These guys are not trustworthy.

Not for 100% perfect accuracy. No author is. It's the general account that is credible, making room for some element of discrepancy. We should allow the same latitude as we do for any other accounts which we rely on for historical events. If we toss out everything that contains some inaccuracy or confusion or discrepancy on the details, then we have no historical record we can trust.

Also if we toss out everything where the author had an "agenda" or a bias or was on a crusade for some cause, certainly most of the history we accept has to be scrapped.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Horses are more intelligent than roaches, and generally the more intelligent creatures are superior to the less intelligent. This is one of the criteria distinguishing the superior from the inferior.

Where do you get this criteria from? Is there an objective list of criteria available?
I mean, it's a little suspicious that one of the most intelligent species on the planet is sure that intelligence is how to detect superior animals. How do we know it's objective and not simply ego?

Humans are the most superior of all the species we know of.

Yeah, I'm going to have to ask for a second opinion. Would a lion agree that intelligence is the superior quality?

Also, we can't leave out plants and rocks. A roach is superior to a rock. Life forms are superior to non-life forms.

Why? How? Is there logic behind this or just a self-serving assertion?

No, we can define this objectively. One clear criterion for "higher" vs. "lower" is that the "higher" forms are less expendable. I.e., we have to give higher priority to their welfare than to the "lower" forms.

Dude, that's not objective. That's subjective. WE give our own species higher priority because that's how we evolved, as a gregarious social animal. That's not a means of objectively determining 'higher' species.

 

[Keith&Co.]

[So the idea of "higher" and "lower" life forms is objective and scientific, and we can categorize or rank or judge different species and even individual creatures based on knowledge.

Lumpy, this was my point. If there's an objective system, and higher/lower are actual values, then we can plug any two animals into the comparison and it can be objectively determined.

If you can't do that, if there's no objective system to determine which beetle is the higher life form, then I suspect your dependence on gross differences is more of your made-up-shit. You pick animals that you think no one would argue about the superiority, but the fact is you can't show how you obtained or determined an objective system for judging them.

Your opening premise is that god made humans to be in charge, so you're going to support humans being the superior, so you pick values where humans are superior. Big circular surprise.

And of course, if there's no objective system to determine 'higher' animals, then there's no system to pick between two beetles. So you can either admit that the system doesn't work, or you can say that the comparison is dumb.
But that just means you didn't grasp the point of the question.

 

[Brian63]

Well stated, Keith. We could say whichever animal is the "fastest swimmer" is how we determine which one is superior or inferior. Really though, we have no means of justifying that being any kind of objective criterion, it would just be our own subjective preference. We can try to justify "intelligence" being the criterion to use, though in the end it comes down to our own subjective values and preferences.

What we use as a goal is our subjective preference, and the strategy we use to try and meet that goal is what is objective.

Brian

 

[James Brown]

"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this."

--Emo Phillips

 

[funinspace]

So, what makes a being maximally great?
You've just listed, and implied, a whole slew of varying characteristics by which we can judge individual examples. But do ALL these characteristics have to add up to your MGB? Does the MGB have to be the biggest AND smallest, fastest AND slowest?

The idea of an MGB implies that all beings can be judged and ranked, does it not? So before we get into hypothetical beings, can you show how to rank two beings? Say, a scarab beetle and bombardier beetle. Which one is greater?

That's a dumb example for comparison.

How about a horse and a cockroach.

The horse is superior. Even though the roach can do some things a horse cannot do (every species has some special talents vs. the others), we can judge the overall value of one creature vs. another, where there's a significant difference.

Does it not require a criteria? And is the criteria only human centric?

How about if one asked whether the 2016 Rolls-Royce Phantom is better or if the Telsa S P100D is better?

Or is a McLaren 675LT better than a Lamborghini LM002? Is pulling a 0.95g on a skip pad better than being able to climb over small mountains?