120 Reasons to Reject Christianity

[Keith&Co.]

If you don't like this version of the "Law" then what's YOUR version? Don't just whine that you don't like this version -- say what's wrong with it and rewrite it or produce the correct version.

I did say what's wrong with it, Lumpy.
It's not a law.
You made it up.

You cannot provide a citation that shows any other historian thinks there's any such thing as a universal law of history. You can't show this to be a consensus among historians or even among a certain faction of historical researchers.

You cannot just 'make up' historical truths, especially in a discussion about how one determines the facts of history.

But you're not qualified to discuss what historical evidence is or means, much less have the foundation needed to dictate your fantasies to people.

Translation: All historical facts that you know do conform to the above "Universal Law" -- you can't identify any fact of history which doesn't conform to this "Law."

Piss poor job of translating a written statement, there, Lumpy.
I have not examined whether or not any historical facts conform to your made-up-bullshit-law because that would be granting it too much credibility that it, and you, do not deserve.
I'm not going to play your game unless and until you can show that this is an actual, not fantasy, developed and defended law used by real historians. I'm just going to preemptively reject it out-of-hand as more of your bullshit. Not because i can't counter it, but because I don't need to.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If people believe a story, then it must be true?

That appears to be Lumpy's litmus test for historicity.

 

[Keith&Co.]

If people believe a story, then it must be true?

That appears to be Lumpy's litmus test for historicity.

Actually, in Lumpy's case, if people believe LUMPY'S favorite story, everyone else shoudl take it as true. If Lumpy doesn't believe it, no amount of attestation or corroboration can compel belief.

 

[Atheos]

Because we know for sure what some of the historical facts are: George Washington was the first President, Julius Caesar was assassinated, etc. etc. -- and if all the examples of such facts fit this "Universal Law," that shows that the "Law" is reliable.

Then you need to take a logic course along with the history course you so desperately need.

The logic here is:

All S are P
Therefore All P are S.

This is clearly a bad syllogism. In this case you list a few "facts" and claim that they all fall into a category of facts that are recorded in historical documentation (All S are P). You then summarize that anything that fits that criteria is a historical fact (All P are S).

Worse yet you ignore that there are many other ways to gain knowledge about historical facts that do not involve written documentation. As but one example we know about dinosaurs because of fossil evidence, not because some clever velociraptor wrote about them in his diary. We know that there was a partial eclipse of the sun in Tokyo, Japan in 1401 BC (May 2 by our reckoning today) not because anyone wrote about it, but because we can use mathematical models predictively and regressively to determine the exact time and path of eclipses. Some historical facts are products of anthropology, geology and other scientific disciplines unrelated to simply pouring over ancient documents.

You also ignore the very real fact that people make shit up; that people believe made-up shit. That even if you have a dozen witnesses to a vehicular accident you'll get a dozen different stories. If you were lucky enough to get the thing on video you might find out that none of the stories were accurate portrayals of what happened.

We *know* this to be the case and still yet you persist in suggesting that rational people should abandon all reason and skepticism for your favorite fairy tale because you can piece together a fallacy-ridden magic puzzle of circumstantial argument that cannot be presented simply but has to be hidden in the smoke of huge text walls.

Let's put the shoe on the foot where it actually needs to go: Go find us one single example of someone doing something as extraordinary as floating off into the sky never to be seen again, which is only documented by anonymous mythology, and which rational people take seriously. Do that and I will back off on insisting that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

 

[Barbarian]

There is no appeal here to "popularity" except in the sense that ALL historical knowledge is based on evidence showing that the events were believed to have happened, and thus they were "popular" or believed by a large number, and this is the main evidence that those events really happened.

So how do you imagine those events became widely believed? Did everyone who ended up believing them, empire-wide, were eyewitnesses? How else did they ensure they knew the truth of those claims? Did they all travel to Jerusalem and did their own investigation. What about twenty years later, did they still have the chance to do forensic examination of physical evidence? Or did they just believe others? Why did they do so and why do they count?

Because what happened was this: miracle stories were a dime a dozen in those times, so the population was already somewhat primed to believe yet another such story. Disheveled madman comes to town, preaches about Jesus. Say, three out of fifty people believe the tall tales, sell their possessions and travel to other cities to preach about Jesus, becoming disheveled madmen in the process. Nowhere does the truth of the claims enter the equation.

 

[Lion IRC]

...And, dirty little secret: there were quite a few events that never got mentioned by mainline historians, like about 99.9999999999% of all the events that happened. And everything they wrote was only about the rich and powerful, not about ordinary people.

Since Jesus was a person of no recognized status or repute during his lifetime, it is amazing that we have any mention of him at all in any historical document, i.e., the brief mention in Tacitus and Suetonius and Josephus, who wrote only about people in high positions of power and military conflicts, and certainly about no one whose public career was less than 10 years.

There is probably not one other example of anyone ever mentioned in any history source, prior to 1500 or so, whose public career was so short.

Excellent point.
What did Jesus do to deserve any permanent mention in written form?
If He was a fake or an imaginary character, He should have disappeared from oral tradition long before any secular historian picked up a pen to write about this Rabbi from...
...from where!

 

[Keith&Co.]

...And, dirty little secret: there were quite a few events that never got mentioned by mainline historians, like about 99.9999999999% of all the events that happened. And everything they wrote was only about the rich and powerful, not about ordinary people.

Since Jesus was a person of no recognized status or repute during his lifetime, it is amazing that we have any mention of him at all in any historical document, i.e., the brief mention in Tacitus and Suetonius and Josephus, who wrote only about people in high positions of power and military conflicts, and certainly about no one whose public career was less than 10 years.

There is probably not one other example of anyone ever mentioned in any history source, prior to 1500 or so, whose public career was so short.

Excellent point.

No, it's not.
It's his only point, that the details of the Jesus story could not possibly have been made up, for various justifications he will not grant to other myths and legends.
This ignores humanity's great facility at making shit up, and our great gullibility to accept made-up-shit.

 

[Lion IRC]

The claim that something is "made up" is itself just a claim.
#gainsaying #nil_all_draw

 

[Lion IRC]

Aren't you just special pleading Keith&Co?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The claim that something is "made up" is itself just a claim.
#gainsaying #nil_all_draw

Well, not really. Positive claims require proofs. Not accepting the validity of a claim absent that proof is just common sense, since one can't actually ever prove a negative. For instance, what is your position on the existence of mermaids? There have been numerous claims of sailors sighting them over the centuries, but knowing what we know about biology and the makeup of the ocean, I feel quite comfortable saying that mermaids are fictional. That's less of a positive claim on my part than it is a rejection of the positive claim that they're real since that claim not only lacks evidence but any potential positive evidence for their existence would contradict facts which we already know. Now, we haven't actually mapped every inch of every ocean and there are new species found there all the time, but I still feel comfortable in my complete rejection of the claim that mermaids are real (or my own claim that mermaids are fictional, however you want to word it). Would you agree with me about that or are you more agnostic about the existence of mermaids and you feel that you need to withhold judgment and avoid coming to a conclusion about them?

I feel the same with Jesus claims. There is no evidence that the guy from the Bible existed and his miraculous activities would require his being able to act in ways which contradict facts that we already know (altering the molecular structure of water so that it can hold his body weight or be converted into wine molecules, reanimating his own and others' corpses, etc). That's enough in and of itself to reject the claim (or state that the claim is false, however you want to word it). Now, whether or not there was some other dude / combination of other dudes who may or may not have borne some resemblance to the guy in the Bible and was the inspiration for the character is another question. The Biblical account of Jesus, however, is one that can be rejected without much concern.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

...And, dirty little secret: there were quite a few events that never got mentioned by mainline historians, like about 99.9999999999% of all the events that happened. And everything they wrote was only about the rich and powerful, not about ordinary people.

Since Jesus was a person of no recognized status or repute during his lifetime, it is amazing that we have any mention of him at all in any historical document, i.e., the brief mention in Tacitus and Suetonius and Josephus, who wrote only about people in high positions of power and military conflicts, and certainly about no one whose public career was less than 10 years.

There is probably not one other example of anyone ever mentioned in any history source, prior to 1500 or so, whose public career was so short.

Excellent point.
What did Jesus do to deserve any permanent mention in written form?
If He was a fake or an imaginary character, He should have disappeared from oral tradition long before any secular historian picked up a pen to write about this Rabbi from...
...from where!

OMG you are right! You have opened my eyes to the truth after all these years! I am in tears! King Arthur and Robin Hood and Hercules were real people and everything written about them is true!

 

[Keith&Co.]

The claim that something is "made up" is itself just a claim.
#gainsaying #nil_all_draw

But you miss the point.
I am not claiming that the Jesus story is made up.
I am claiming that the story being a made-up fiction is certainly a possibility for which believers have a burden to counter.

Lumpy's effort to prove that the Jesus story is NOT made up is based on quite a bit of made-up-bullshit. Lumpy pretends to knowledge of history and historians and invented a completely fictional 'universal law of history' that he tries to say is applicable to the Jesus story.

- - - Updated - - -

Aren't you just special pleading Keith&Co?

I shouldn't think so.
Are you really making an accusation? Where am i special pleading anything? Where's the post you think i've made a logical fallacy?
Can you support this, or are you just throwing out terms?

 

[funinspace]

I did say what's wrong with it, Lumpy.
It's not a law.
You made it up.

You cannot provide a citation that shows any other historian thinks there's any such thing as a universal law of history. You can't show this to be a consensus among historians or even among a certain faction of historical researchers.

You cannot just 'make up' historical truths, especially in a discussion about how one determines the facts of history.

But you're not qualified to discuss what historical evidence is or means, much less have the foundation needed to dictate your fantasies to people.

Translation: All historical facts that you know do conform to the above "Universal Law" -- you can't identify any fact of history which doesn't conform to this "Law."

Piss poor job of translating a written statement, there, Lumpy.
I have not examined whether or not any historical facts conform to your made-up-bullshit-law because that would be granting it too much credibility that it, and you, do not deserve.
I'm not going to play your game unless and until you can show that this is an actual, not fantasy, developed and defended law used by real historians. I'm just going to preemptively reject it out-of-hand as more of your bullshit. Not because i can't counter it, but because I don't need to.

I realized that this thread is kind of like a dull version of Douglas Adam’s ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ where the apologetics are like a parody to the real thing, much as Douglas Adams penned his classic series with much parody of science fiction. Lumpy also clearly utilizes unique and custom definitions of simple words like ‘clearly’, which he seems to use to wave things away, much as a towel is the must have traveling item.

This long and winding saga comes with a MHORC, LOUT, and imagined definitions:
Logical Hero Official Requirements Checklist
Lumpy Observer Unaffiliation Test
"DEFINITION OF INSTANT MIRACLE-WORKER"; also a commercially available facial cream

And freshly added: an imagined ‘"Universal Law" for historical facts’; I’m guessing that it should somehow equate to 42, but beyond that, past experience suggests this imagined law will be as vacuously defined as the MHORC and LOUT.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

If the gospels are history, if Jesus worked miracles, if Jesus was resurrected as reported, if Jesus was the son of God, does that mean we should all follow the commandments of Jesus?

Such as to sell all we have and give to the poor? Which Jesus commanded repeatedly. Just asking.

Luke 18
²² Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.
²³ And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.

 

[Lion IRC]

The claim that something is "made up" is itself just a claim.
#gainsaying #nil_all_draw

Well, not really. Positive claims require proofs. Not accepting the validity of a claim absent that proof is just common sense, since one can't actually ever prove a negative.

I think you can prove a negative. Eg. (Positive) There is ice in Antartica. (Negative) There is no ice in Antarctica - it all melted because of global warming. Surely you're not going to try and debunk global warming science by saying that they can't "prove" the absence of God...err, I mean ice.

...For instance, what is your position on the existence of mermaids? There have been numerous claims of sailors sighting them over the centuries, but knowing what we know about biology and the makeup of the ocean, I feel quite comfortable saying that mermaids are fictional.

There's the rub. You say you "feel" quite comfortable that something is true or false.
But I can likewise say that I "feel" otherwise.
And depending on the specific claim in question, "feelings" of belief or disbelief might be all we ever get to have.

I "feel" that scientists are telling the truth about global warming but I don't KNOW for sure because I can't go to Antarctica and observe the absence of ice. And even if I did go and see for myself, how could I know that I wasn't hallucinating?

... I feel the same with Jesus claims.

Again with the "feelings".
Why can't I just accuse you of not wanting those claims about Jesus to be true in the same way you might accuse me of wishful thinking in the other direction?
Surely it's a nil-all-draw if a person claims they saw Jesus do a miracle and you - hundreds of centuries later, long after the fact - come along and start making brute assertions that such a claim is false. In fact, I would say it's not really a case of gainsaying in equal proportion on your part, because you weren't even there when Jesus supposedly performed the miracle.
The historical character (in the bible) who claims something about Jesus would be well within their rights to challenge Mr 2016 skeptic and ask how it is that someone who wasn't there can claim to know that it never happened.

... There is no evidence that the guy from the Bible existed and his miraculous activities would require his being able to act in ways which contradict facts that we already know (altering the molecular structure of water so that it can hold his body weight or be converted into wine molecules, reanimating his own and others' corpses, etc).

The bible doesn't claim that water and wine are the same molecular weight or that Jesus relied on the water to support Himself. In any case, if you do ever happen to visit Antarctica you will find that walking on water is very easy.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Well, not really. Positive claims require proofs. Not accepting the validity of a claim absent that proof is just common sense, since one can't actually ever prove a negative.

I think you can prove a negative. Eg. (Positive) There is ice in Antartica. (Negative) There is no ice in Antarctica - it all melted because of global warming.

Um... 'all the ice in Antarctica melted because of global warming' is a positive claim.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, not really. Positive claims require proofs. Not accepting the validity of a claim absent that proof is just common sense, since one can't actually ever prove a negative.

I think you can prove a negative. Eg. (Positive) There is ice in Antartica. (Negative) There is no ice in Antarctica - it all melted because of global warming. Surely not going to try and debunk global warming science by saying that they can't "prove" the absence of God...err, I mean ice.

...For instance, what is your position on the existence of mermaids? There have been numerous claims of sailors sighting them over the centuries, but knowing what we know about biology and the makeup of the ocean, I feel quite comfortable saying that mermaids are fictional.

There's the rub. You say you "feel" quite comfortable that something is true or false.
But I can likewise say that I "feel" otherwise.
And depending on the specific claim in question, "feelings" of belief or disbelief might be all we ever get to have.

I "feel" that scientists are telling the truth about global warming but I don't KNOW for sure because I can't go to Antarctica and observe the absence of ice. And even if I did go and see for myself, how could I know that I wasn't hallucinating?

... I feel the same with Jesus claims.

Again with the "feelings".
Why can't I just accuse you of not wanting those claims about Jesus to be true in the same way you might accuse me of wishful thinking in the other direction?
Surely it's a nil-all-draw if a person claims they saw Jesus do a miracle and you - hundreds of centuries later, long after the fact - come along and start making brute assertions that such a claim is false. In fact, I would say it's not really a case of gainsaying in equal proportion on your part, because you weren't even there when Jesus supposedly performed the miracle.
The historical character (in the bible) who claims something about Jesus would be well within their rights to challenge Mr 2016 skeptic and ask how it is that someone who wasn't there can claim to know that it never happened.

... There is no evidence that the guy from the Bible existed and his miraculous activities would require his being able to act in ways which contradict facts that we already know (altering the molecular structure of water so that it can hold his body weight or be converted into wine molecules, reanimating his own and others' corpses, etc).

The bible doesn't claim that water and wine are the same molecular weight or that Jesus relied on the water to support Himself. In any case, if you do ever happen to visit Antarctica you will find that walking on water is very easy.

Those weren't "feelings". The word was used as a synonym to "I conclude that". As in "I have analyzed the data and find it supports a given position".

Water and wine have different molecular structures. In order for Jesus to have turned water into wine, he would have needed to change it from having the molecular structure of water into having the molecular structure of wine. That's what "turning water into wine" means - he altered it from one state into a different state. There is no mechanism by which that can be done which does not directly clash with what we know people are capable of.

Also, you didn't reply to the mermaid question. Where do you stand on them - factual, fictional or can't say? Why?

 

[Lion IRC]

I think you can prove a negative. Eg. (Positive) There is ice in Antartica. (Negative) There is no ice in Antarctica - it all melted because of global warming.

Um... 'all the ice in Antarctica melted because of global warming' is a positive claim.

It certainly is. And it's a separate and different claim to the existence of ice in Antarctica. (Don't get them confused.)
I think you can prove a negative in relation to many things.
Is. Is not.
Does. Does not.
Guilty. Innocent.
Present. Absent.
Pass. Fail.

 

[Keith&Co.]

In any case, if you do ever happen to visit Antarctica you will find that walking on water is very easy.

IIRC, the story of Jesus walking on water included people in a boat that were rowing hard against the wind.
I don't need to travel to either of the poles to walk on water, they have a strong tradition of ice-fishing just up the road from here. People are all the time 'walking on water' as you'd have it. But the conditions in which they do that do not include anyone using boats or jet-skis.
Conversely, in the conditions where they use boats and jet-skis and go waterskiing, people don't fish by drilling holes in the water.

So what's the point you are trying to make by the comment?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Um... 'all the ice in Antarctica melted because of global warming' is a positive claim.

It certainly is. And it's a separate and different claim to the existence of ice in Antarctica. (Don't get them confused.)

You did not make it a separate claim, though. It's not even a separate sentence. It's appended there, so your statement appears to be more of an attempt to mock climate change.

And 'there is no ice in Antarctica' is not a negative statement that can be compared to 'there is no god.'
For one, there is a lot of historical data about the observation of ice in Antarctica. Ice has been observed at the poles. The people tracking climate change are making positive statements about where we would expect to find ice, where we have found ice, historically. No one would rationally dispute that ice was in Antarctica. No one is really arguing that there is less ice in Antarctica. Not rational people, anyway. The big argument is about WHY there is less ice.

The claims of the various gods do not compare to the amount of ice in Antarctica. It's not like there used to be objective evidence for one or more gods but now they can't be found, for reasons that are under dispute in the media...