120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[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).

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

Nope. I think some are telling the truth.

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

Nope. But then I think the angel Gabriel is actually real.
So I'm more concerned with the content of the discussion.

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

Deciding that someone is a liar is generally the very last conclusion I would reluctantly arrive at. And only if there was...you know...evidence, that a deliberate lie was the only and unavoidable conclusion left.

 

[Lion IRC]

...but automatic disbelief is the default epistemic setting for some/most bible skeptics. And so "lunatic" or "liar" are at the very top of their list of programmed responses.

 

[bilby]

If your life experience has left you with the impression that lying is rare, then either you are hugely gullible, or you haven't had much life experience.

Everybody lies.

Some people lie a lot.

Some people lie even when there's no obvious reason not to tell the truth.

People love to tell stories.

People are very prone to error.

If you go through life without the assumption that people will lie to you, then you are going to get rolled. You might well not even notice. Lots of people have donated large sums of money to religious groups, and never realised that buying something that they cannot claim until they are dead, from someone who can't demonstrate that it even exists, is a hugely gullible act.

People lie. People even lie to themselves, to protect their self image. Victims of fraud often find it hard to accept that they were defrauded - they would rather lie to themselves than accept that they are victims.

Faith in non-existent entities is dumb enough; but faith in humanity, given the ease with which we can observe that such faith is unjustified, is truly bloody stupid.

 

[Keith&Co.]

...but automatic disbelief ... the default epistemic setting ... programmed responses.

And you act shocked that someone might perceive 'sneering' on your part when you talk about the non-believers.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

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

Nope. But then I think the angel Gabriel is actually real.
So I'm more concerned with the content of the discussion.

So, you're saying that Mohammed got the content wrong? That the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to give a message to mankind and chose someone who wouldn't repeat it accurately? Not just a little bit wrong, either. More "Oops, I accidentally started an entirely new religion because of this unintentional error" wrong. That's kind of a miss on Gabriel's part.

Also, if you can't trust the content of what Mohammed was told, what is your reason for trusting the content of what Zachariah was told? Gabriel gave a message to both of them, but why would one be accurate and one inaccurate?

 

[Lion IRC]

Note that Gabriel's message to Zechariah wasn't in invocation for Zechariah to start a 'new' religion. So it's not really a fair comparison.
And in any case, Islam isn't really an entirely new religion.
The modern adherents of Islam would have been "people of the book" of one sort or another in any case in my opinion.
In fact Muhammad relies on Christianity and the Old Testament, without which Islam disintegrates. And Muhammad was certainly in the right place at the right time.
But as to whether his supposed experience of meeting the angel Gabriel and correctly receiving revelation and then correctly passing it on as intended is a highly contentious question.
And as you correctly allude, if Muhammad mistakenly gets it wrong, then either Gabriel has picked the wrong guy, OR, a well-intentioned follower of Muhammad is putting words into the mouth of Gabriel rather than the other way around which isn't Gabriel's fault and doesn't diminish Christianity at all.
False messiahs and false prophets don't nulify anything. Quite the opposite.

 

[Smoker]

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).

I once heard the moon and the birds sing to me when I took a keg of beer and a large bag of weed into the forest so I could be at one with nature. I had the same type of religious experience as when I used to listen to the church choir. All religious experiences are similar in one way. There is no way to explain them rationally. I heard the birds singing to me that night like they were connected to all other living beings, and the moon was their inspiration.

 

[Lion IRC]

Yes, it's amazing how inherently religious we are.

 

[DBT]

The brain seeks both patterns (pattern recognition) and explanations for the patterns it perceives.

If no explanations are available in the form of detectable causality within these patterns (the objects and events of the world), the brain, being creative, imagines explanations where none actually exist.

 

[Smoker]

Maybe, in my opinion it is this inherently religious nature that we all have is probably the major obstacle to world peace. The Christians fight against the Jews. The Muslims fight against the Jews. The Jews fight against the Germans. The Catholics fight against the Protestants. The Orthodox fight against the Catholics.

The Muslims hate the Jews because it is written in their holy book that Muhammad also hated them. Since Muhammad is supposed to be the perfect prophet, then all Muslims kind of also hate the Jews too. I don't think there will ever be two states of Jews and Palestinians co-existing until they start rejecting all the religious nonsense they were taught.

 

[abaddon]

Yes, it's amazing how inherently religious we are.

Depends on the definition of religious.

Is the reason you make a point of a lot of religious folk around, including religious scientists, is the numbers somehow defeats or minimizes atheism?

Religious experiences are not inherently religious. And not theistic whatsoever. “I felt at one with nature”. “I felt that love permeated everything”. “I lost my sense of being a distinct self”. What’s religious about them?

The way puddingheaded theists get from “experience” to “religious experience” or “spiritual experience” is by heavy interpretation. Take any one of those human experiences, but then twist the living shit out of it with an interpretation: “I felt the hand of God!” “It was the love of Jesus filling my heart”. “I felt at one with God.”

The experience in itself isn’t a lie. But the theistic interpretation is.

There are religious atheists too, if that helps your cause. Atheism, yet again, is nothing but an absence of belief in God or gods. Thinking religion and atheism are inherently antagonistic to one another is an incomprehension of both, common among eurocentric folk (both theist and atheist) who take Christianity as their prime example and then start projecting stuff onto the extremely nebulous term "religion" from there.

What is your cause? Is it that there's a God or just that there are a lot of religious people around the world?

 

[Lion IRC]

The brain seeks both patterns (pattern recognition) and explanations for the patterns it perceives.

If no explanations are available in the form of detectable causality within these patterns (the objects and events of the world), the brain, being creative, imagines explanations where none actually exist.

DBT - it's not only in the brain that patterns exist.

 

[James Brown]

Surely you don't think that as a devout Jew he would bear false witness (lie).

That didn't seem to be a problem for Simon Peter. According to the Gospels he was caught lying three times in one night.

 

[Atheos]

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.

Correction:

A story that was written by anonymous people in Rome (1500 miles from Jerusalem) claims that certain events happened "A long time ago (several decades) in a land far, far away (Jerusalem and nearby areas)." The story mimics elements of Jewish and Greek culture and tells of a hero-god who had super powers. As it is retold even more elements of Greek culture are added to it, including a birth narrative that made the hero-god the product of a woman impregnated by a god, an infancy menace and an escape to a faraway land followed by an eventual return. The parallels are so striking that Justin Martyr, an early christian apologist would write:

First Apology 21 - And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.

He later explained these similarities as follows:

First Apology 54 - But those who hand down the myths which the poets have made, adduce no proof to the youths who learn them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race. For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales, like the things which were said by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all nations where they [the demons] heard the prophets foretelling that Christ would specially be believed in; but that in hearing what was said by the prophets they did not accurately understand it, but imitated what was said of our Christ, like men who are in error, we will make plain.

So as a skeptic I have to look back and wonder: Was it really wicked demons that were responsible for the similarities between the "Jesus" mythology and the mythology of Greeks and Romans that had gone before, or is it even a little bit possible that the Jesus mythology is a syncretic mixture of Jewish and Greek culture? Being as I've no reason to believe demons exist and I have plenty of examples from my own lifetime of people inventing really insane religious beliefs and pimping them to gullible people (Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, J.Z. Knight) and only have to go back a little bit before my lifetime to encounter the likes of L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith, I just figure the only rational thing to do is assume that the same thing was happening in the early years of the christian religion.

We have literally thousands of examples of people making extraordinary claims up and selling them to gullible people. If the "Jesus" myth is true it would be the lone exception to all these historical precedents. To accomplish the task of separating the Jesus mythology from all the others requires a lot more than mere popular appeal. But that's all anyone has. Nary a sausage of actual corroborative evidence.

 

[DBT]

The brain seeks both patterns (pattern recognition) and explanations for the patterns it perceives.

If no explanations are available in the form of detectable causality within these patterns (the objects and events of the world), the brain, being creative, imagines explanations where none actually exist.

DBT - it's not only in the brain that patterns exist.

That's not what I said. Please read more carefully.

 

[Lion IRC]

DBT - it's not only in the brain that patterns exist.

That's not what I said. Please read more carefully.

I didn't accuse you of saying that!
How about YOU read more carefully?

 

[bilby]

That's not what I said. Please read more carefully.

I didn't accuse you of saying that!
How about YOU read more carefully?

Are you really that fucking obtuse?

Really?

No wonder you don't have a clue about reality. You can't even keep track of your own conversations here.

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.

 

[DBT]

That's not what I said. Please read more carefully.

I didn't accuse you of saying that!
How about YOU read more carefully?

Actually you did make that claim.

It's clearly implied in what you said - ''DBT - it's not only in the brain that patterns exist'' - which, to explain the obvious, implies that you believe I meant that patterns only exist in the brain....it being your wording 'not only in the brain' that states your interpretation of my remark....which in no way, shape or form suggested that patterns only exist in the brain.

Please read more carefully.

 

[Lion IRC]

Whatever you believe I was 'implying' is entirely in your (pattern-seeking) mind.
That is your contention is it not?
That the brain imagines stuff which isn't really there.

Now can you please comment in reply to MY claim that in many cases patterns actually do exist independently whether we see them or not. That's MY claim. I don't know whether you agree with it or not because you haven't said.
So chill out and stop acting as if you are being accused of saying stuff you NEVER said.


Paranoia is a form of pattern seeking.
All I'm saying is that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

 

[DBT]

Whatever you believe I was 'implying' is entirely in your (pattern-seeking) mind.

Sorry, that is what you said. What you said has implications, which I pointed out.

That is your contention is it not?
That the brain imagines stuff which isn't really there.

Not imagines. Looks for.

Now can you please comment in reply to MY claim that in many cases patterns actually do exist independently whether we see them or not. That's MY claim. I don't know whether you agree with it or not because you haven't said.

I was not the one who said that patterns (the external world and its objects and events) do not exist. Please read what I said.

So chill out and stop acting as if you are being accused of saying stuff you NEVER said.

That's funny, it looks to me that you got into a huff over my remark, misinterpreting what I said and now trying to recover some degree dignity....but that's OK.

Paranoia is a form of pattern seeking.
All I'm saying is that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

That remark as an example of the above.