120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[funinspace]

Proof is for math. When it comes to piecing together what happened in the past it's always a little bit grey. Not all murders get solved but a forensic investigator does not begin with the premise that it is equally possible god smote the victim as it is that a human did.

Mythology traditionally blurs the line between reality and fantasy in much the same way Marvel or DC comics do. In the movie Superman II, Superman repairs damage done to the White House by super villains while making a promise to the President of the United States that he will never again disappear like he did when they needed him most. The fact that there's a Washington DC, a White House and a POTUS doesn't mean there's a Superman.

The same thing can be observed in ancient mythology from Egyptian, Greek, Roman, etc., sources. Actual cities and known people are often interwoven into the exploits of gods and demigods to create fantastic stories of things that never happened.

When I read the mythology of Jesus I see the same type of thing. The character lives in real places and encounters real people, but the events are fantastic and some of them that we can check on turn out to have never happened. Herod never issued a general order of execution of all male children under age 2 "throughout the coasts." Quirinius never issued an order for a census that required people to relocate to the city where their ancestor lived. What an idiotic concept requirement anyway. Never happened.

Yep! I'm sure it has been pointed out a few miles back in this thread, but....I find it ironic that Pilate is about the only actively involved member of the cast (besides John the Baptists) with contemporary external documentation. And in that Roman document, it has Pilate recalled for his brutality. That is somewhat at odds with the patsy Pilate within the Gospels. Just imagine if this god really wanted to save lots of people from his torture chamber, how hard it would have been for it to make sure that Pilate wrote a letter back to Rome about this odd Jew claiming to be king, and willing to die for it (among some other easy things it could have done w/o thwarting free will). And then this god would only have to help these record happy keeping Romans preserve it among the other hundreds of thousands of saved documents....nah...tough shit humans.

 

[Lion IRC]

Still having difficulty telling the difference between assertions of historical fact and people who write/draw cartoon comic book fiction for a living. Jesus of Nazareth. Clark Kent. Whatever.

Fair enough. You just go ahead and decide for yourself what is and is not evidence. Make up your own mind who to believe and who not to believe. And obviously, if it has anything whatsoever to do with religion it's automatically presumed to be a lie or a delusion.

You guys are just like the young earthers who automatically dismiss the fossil record as a hoax.

 

[Elixir]

You just go ahead and decide for yourself what is and is not evidence.

No, Lion - that's not how it works in reality. Observations need to be repeatable, or they are just hearsay - like your fav book.

 

[funinspace]

Still having difficulty telling the difference between assertions of historical fact and people who write/draw cartoon comic book fiction for a living. Jesus of Nazareth. Clark Kent. Whatever.

Fair enough. You just go ahead and decide for yourself what is and is not evidence. Make up your own mind who to believe and who not to believe. And obviously, if it has anything whatsoever to do with religion it's automatically presumed to be a lie or a delusion.

Yet, for some reason you in all probability discount the historicity of the Joseph Smith claims, even though he and his group thought that they were spreading a truth. I wanda why....hum.

You guys are just like the young earthers who automatically dismiss the fossil record as a hoax.

We atheists are not Borg...

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The 4 Jesus mythologies wildly contradict each other in many parts. Obviously not trust worthy.

 

[Learner]

You just go ahead and decide for yourself what is and is not evidence.

No, Lion - that's not how it works in reality. Observations need to be repeatable, or they are just hearsay - like your fav book.

Historic individuals are more than difficult to "repeat" (if such a thing were possible) but I gather this is not what you actually mean.

 

[Keith&Co.]

No, Lion - that's not how it works in reality. Observations need to be repeatable, or they are just hearsay - like your fav book.

Historic individuals are more than difficult to "repeat" (if such a thing were possible) but I gather this is not what you actually mean.

No. Saying 'observations' need to be repeatable does not, in fact, refer to eyewitnessing something.
The way you know about a 'historic individual' has to be repeatable, and dependable.
Documentation and corroborating evidence needs to be available, that stands up to scrutiny, no matter who is evaluating it.

 

[DBT]

Pontius Pilate ?
Who is Pontius Pilate?
Some imaginary character I suppose. Just like Harry Potter and Rumplestiltskin.

There is more evidence to support the existence of Pontius Pilate than there is for the existence of Jesus, there being a Roman Plaque where he dedicated a temple to the people of Caesarea ''in honor of Tiberius.”

“Pontius Pilatus, Prefect of Judea, has dedicated to the people of Caesarea a temple in honor of Tiberius.”

 

[Atheos]

Not having any difficulty at all. Did the first person who told the tale of Hercules slaying a Gorgon do so for entertainment purposes or was this person asserting historical fact? Lion IRC, it is you who are having the difficulty. Your difficulty is that you cannot get past the mental block that makes it impossible for you to look at your favorite fairy tale with the objectivity that you can use when looking at the mythology of every other religion before or since.

I was once victimized by this sort of brainwashing myself, and for 16 years I was a preacher of a fundamentalist variant of Christianity. So I know something whereof I speak. It is just like having a blind spot, a place one cannot see.

For the umpeenth time you do not know what the motivations of the people who originated the tales of Jesus the Magic Jew were. The most likely scenario is that these stories developed over time in the same way all other mythology develops: Stories are told that extol the virtues and super powers of the hero. Many of these stories borrow upon the culture and stories of prior hero gods, or attempt to demonstrate the new hero god's superiority over previous gods (such as turning water into wine, demonstrating greater power than Dionysus who simply presided over the harvest, or calming storms to demonstrate greater power than Zeus who could cause storms). Eventually these stories are collected into a narrative.

You read these finished products hundreds of years later and appeal to them as if they were the products of someone you know personally and can vouch that the story was written as an account of actual history. It appears that you cannot even seem to bring yourself to consider that perhaps this was not the case. It is very much possible that GMark was originally written as a play (something of a Greek Tragedy - the "hero" dies in the end and is never seen again; the ladies leave the tomb and tell no man "for they were afraid.")

We can infer that the "primitive" Jesus written about in Paul's letters for 20 or so years was devoid of biological details. Paul only talks of the crucifixion and resurrection. He never mentions the miracles, the interactions with the disciples, the virgin birth, Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, any of that. Even when addressing subjects Jesus ostensibly spoke about such as Marriage/Divorce/Remarriage (Matt 19) Paul doesn't appeal to what Jesus said but gives his own commandments, some of which don't exactly match what Jesus said (Paul implies that a christian woman is free to remarry if her non-believing husband decides to leave over purely religious reasons. Jesus said the only condition in which remarriage was legit was adultery). A sensible review of evidence such as this leads to the implication that the Christian mythos was under development. Paul was channeling a Jesus who spoke to him from heaven, not talking about a Jesus who had recently lived).

These are the facts. It is reasonable to suspect that Jesus started out as entertainment mythology (just like Superman) and morphed into a structured religion over time due to the charismatic efforts of Paul. You are more than welcome to provide any evidence to the contrary. Lots of Christians have tried for centuries. No such evidence has been forthcoming.

 

[Smoker]

There is no such thing as historical facts. History isn't a science. The people who win the war get to write history. If I search for the terms "historical fact" in google it gives me thousands of answers to that question. The vision of history you have in your mind will no doubt be different than mine, because you believe Jesus is going to save you.

 

[DBT]

Events during the course of time happen, if an event in fact happened, it is a historical fact whether we know all about it or not....of course, we usually only get a distorted or partial version of the event and try to piece it together with the information we have.

 

[bilby]

The big difference between the various Romans mentioned in the bible and Jesus & Co is that the Romans in question have histories that are also recorded in the archaeological record - not just in historical writings. And there is a great diversity of historical evidence for their reality as well.

Herod and Pilate have a huge amount of mundane workaday bureaucratic mentions. Jesus, despite having allegedly coexisted with these people left no trace of any kind in the bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, nor in the archaeological record. If he existed, he certainly didn't strike anyone other than his immediate friends and associates as being worthy of special mention.

 

[Lion IRC]

The 'various Romans' in the bible are there because they are part of the historical account.

What is so hard about viewing the bible as a historical account? It wasn't called "The Bible" when the various manuscripts were written. So trying to claim that there's either historical documents OR there's "The Bible" is an unscholarly approach.

Instead of saying it never happened, why not just say - if you must - that it's a historical account of events which can be viewed in an atheistic way just the same as if a newspaper were to report that a man named Bill Smith saw a ghost or UFO or whatever.

You wouldn't accuse the newspaper of fabricating the whole story. You wouldn't disbelieve in the existence of Bill Smith just because you think Bill Smith was hallucinating. You wouldn't be expected to suddenly start believing in ghosts.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What is so hard about viewing the bible as a historical account?

Well, not believing in miracle magic stories, we have to view at least part of it as fictional.
And we don't have a corroborating document to use to determine which parts are made-up shit to take out of any 'historical' documentation, to leave the history part.

ou wouldn't accuse the newspaper of fabricating the whole story.

But if we find a newspaper pretending to tell news, and discover that at least part of the story is made-up-shit, we reject the newspaper as a tissue of lies, unless and until they can provide corroboration for the parts they will insist on being factual, won't we?

If a newspaper were to say that Bill Smith reports seeing a UFO, that's a news item.
If the newspaper were to say, "Bill Smith Saw A For-Real UFO" we'd ask for support for this item, or think that the newspaper was not credible.

 

[Atheos]

The 'various Romans' in the bible are there because they are part of the historical account.

What is so hard about viewing the bible as a historical account? It wasn't called "The Bible" when the various manuscripts were written. So trying to claim that there's either historical documents OR there's "The Bible" is an unscholarly approach.

Instead of saying it never happened, why not just say - if you must - that it's a historical account of events which can be viewed in an atheistic way just the same as if a newspaper were to report that a man named Bill Smith saw a ghost or UFO or whatever.

You wouldn't accuse the newspaper of fabricating the whole story. You wouldn't disbelieve in the existence of Bill Smith just because you think Bill Smith was hallucinating. You wouldn't be expected to suddenly start believing in ghosts.

I've maintained all along that there may have been a Paul Bunyan who inspired the myths of the giant lumberjack with his companion giant blue ox. The fact that there may have been an itinerant preacher of some charisma named Jesus who acted as an historical nugget for these myths is irrelevant. The NT gospel narratives are collections of extraordinary tales unsubstantiated by even the most mundane physical evidence. The fact that people believe these stories is no more relevant than the fact that people believe Joseph Smith's bullshit or J.Z. Knight's Ramtha bullshit. People believe myths because charismatic people incite them to, not because they actually happened.

Provide an objective reason to take these myths seriously that cannot be used to justify the same respect towards thousands of myths of other competing religions (don't forget L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology bullshit) and we've got something to work with. Until then all we have are myths wrapped up in hundreds of years of acceptance and tradition. In other news just because I believe George Washington existed doesn't mean I believe he hurled a coin across the Potomac.

 

[Lion IRC]

The historical claim is that people witnessed something.

The bible skeptic says (variously)

- nobody witnessed anything because they are all lying.

- nobody witnessed anything because the witnesses themselves never existed.

- nobody witnessed anything because we all know that the thing they claimed to have seen is absolutely impossible irrespective of whether God exists.

- the witnesses perhaps did see something but were mistaken. Fake miracles. Accidental martyrs.

- the witnesses perhaps did see an actual miracle but I wasn't there at the time and I refuse to believe in miracles unless they happen right in front of me instantly on my command.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Exactly. I mean, Hercules tore off the gates of Troy infront of the entire city. We're not supposed to believe any of them?

 

[Lion IRC]

Zechariah claims to have seen an angel.
Is Zechariah a historical person? A known liar? Motivated by greed? What?

I get it that you don't believe in angels. But do you assert that Zechariah never existed?
Do you assert that he was hallucinating? Surely you don't think that as a devout Jew he would bear false witness (lie).

 

[Keith&Co.]

The historical claim is that people witnessed something.


The bible skeptic says (variously)

Well, the Bible Skeptic mostly asks, 'Can you provide some reason to think that people actually witnessed SOMETHING?'
Telling a skeptic how to skeptic the bible doesn't really show that the skeptic is wrong about the bible, does it?

I mean, humans have historically had this tendency to make shit up.
Just look at any supermarket tabloid about Hillary's love-nest with the Kardashians, or Kanye's secret addiction to tire-inflating cannisters, or Trump's short list of picks for the assassin-of-the-white-house. And wonder if we really do have to believe that such stories are at all likely to have any truth at the center?

- - - Updated - - -

Zechariah claims to have seen an angel.
Is Zechariah a historical person? A known liar? Motivated by greed?

I get it that you don't believe in angels. But do you assert that Zechariah never existed?

Is that our only choice? IS that the only way to interpret a report that Zechariah saw an angel, that he must not have existed?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Zechariah claims to have seen an angel.
Is Zechariah a historical person? A known liar? Motivated by greed? What?

I get it that you don't believe in angels. But do you assert that Zechariah never existed?
Do you assert that he was hallucinating? Surely you don't think that as a devout Jew he would bear false witness (lie).

Or just mistaken. Do you think that all the people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are liars?

Do you think that Mohammed was a liar when he claimed to have been visited by Gabriel?

Do you think that Joesph Smith was a liar when he claimed to have been visited by Moroni?