Historical Jesus

[DrZoidberg]

Dawkins is gonna convert on his deathbed I suspect like Hitchens probably did.

This is why everybody sensible can't stand Christians and Muslims. The complete and utter lack of any kind of humility. It even says in your sacred text to stay humble. Why do you care so little about the wishes of your God? Why this extreme level of arrogance on your part?

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

Dawkins is gonna convert on his deathbed I suspect like Hitchens probably did.

This is why everybody sensible can't stand Christians and Muslims. The complete and utter lack of any kind of humility. It even says in your sacred text to stay humble. Why do you care so little about the wishes of your God? Why this extreme level of arrogance on your part?

It's also, in its dishonesty, why non-believers don't take the claims of Xians and Muslims at face value. "Pious fraud", "all things to all men", "lying for Jesus" ... call it what you will, there's always been this streak of dishonesty running down the spine of theism that makes it always worth double-checking even the most trivial claims put forth by its proponents and apologists.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Dawkins is gonna convert on his deathbed I suspect like Hitchens probably did.

This is why everybody sensible can't stand Christians and Muslims. The complete and utter lack of any kind of humility. It even says in your sacred text to stay humble. Why do you care so little about the wishes of your God? Why this extreme level of arrogance on your part?

It's like talking to a person with a mental handicap who is unaware of their handicap. My pastor friend was explaining to me the other day how Paul is explicit about no women ministers and how his fav book is from an invisible spaceman. Seriously, this is unrecognized mental illness, simply extremely common and not always harmful.

I should probably bring this up directly in conversation but always wish to maintain relationships. Someone has to be the adult and it ends up being me. It's like listening to a five year old telling me about how much money they got from the Tooth Fairy. That's okay for a five year old. But when a fifty year old tells you about his invisible spaceman who talks to him and is interested in all our sexual habits and that persons with vaginas cannot be listened to and how an old man built a floating zoo, it does test adult patience.

 

[Sarpedon]

Why not simply say yes, OK. A historical person named Jesus was born in a manger and (religious) shepherds did believe they heard what they (mistakenly) thought were something called 'angels' and His family did flee to Egypt for fear of a Middle Eastern despot who may or may not have committed atrocities against his own citizens etc etc.
You're not compromising your atheism by accepting a secular history of Jesus.

I would accept that this is a possible story. However, acknowledging that a particular story you made up could have happened is not the same as accepting a historical Jesus. The standard of evidence I would have to have would be lower for this story than for the water to wine story, but even that is absent.

We know that Egypt had a substantial Jewish population during this era. The idea of a jewish family going to Egypt to escape local trouble is certainly a plausible one. Likewise the belief in the Messiah is ancient in Jewish belief, and there's no problem believing that people might believe a non messiah is the messiah.

But again, you don't have any records to suggest this is true, and there are no confirming evidence of any of the larger events associated with the story: For example, there was no Empire wide census by Tiberius, People were not required to return to their forefather's hometown to be counted in a census, like ever, because that is stupid, there was no independent confirmation for the 'star' which would have been visible to lots of people. (China during the Han dynasty, for example, was very interested in astrology, so they would have noticed and recorded such a star, had it happened.) And there was no massacre of the innocents, as said in the bible. You try to wave this away by saying that Herod may or may not have done such a thing. But what you fail to understand that if a story invents such a massacre wholesale, what is preventing them from making up other things, like Jesus himself?

You expect us to accept a plausible, watered down version of the story, while ignoring things in the story that are blatantly false. Unreliable account is unreliable. And you don't have anything else.

 

[funinspace]

It's my understanding that the scholarly consensus is that there was an actual Jesus person who existed and was executed. While I do have concerns of bias due to the religious backgrounds of those scholars, that's enough for me to defer to them.

On the other hand, so what? It doesn't make any of the fantastical elements of the Christian mythos more believable, any more than finding out that King Arthur was based on a real person would make me believe in magic swords or wizards.

Isn't it more likely that he dodged out of view when he was wanted by the cops. They thought he was crucified, and then he returned they thought he had been resurrected. When the rumor started spreading he decided to become scarce again. There's just so many versions of the story that are a hell of a lot more likely than the Biblical narrative. Including everything about it is made up.

I like my three amigos: Possible; Plausible; Probable.

I find it hard to fathom that this purported Jesus 'dodged out of view' being more probable than being killed by the Romans or the Sanhedrin. What information would suggest that this is more plausible or probable? It is possible that Jesus is pure fabrication, with no grain of sand for the pearl. I find the purely fictitious Jesus less plausible than a basic story of a Jewish heretic/preacher making too much noise and then getting snuffed out by some authorities. What I don't find possible is that this Bible is God-breathed, and the Truth from alpha to omega. I don't find the various liberal Christian vaguely defined theologies plausible either, but they are at least possible (its hard to demonstrate falseness of a slippery pig).

 

[PyramidHead]

Something Lion (hi, Lion) said a few weeks ago-

Absolutely.

But I would argue that it goes further than just a coincidental connection.

Surely there's something like a sort of numinous awe about the act of discovery which keeps us searching the 'horizon' of the unknown.

And when I listen to scientists like Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, etc. talking (existentially) about that horizon, I can't help but smile. Do they know how 'religious' they sound?

Do you think this qualifies as religious, Lion? I certainly consider it awesome and uplifting- but is it religious?

[Dawkins quote]

I would consider it religious, in that it is a remnant of religious-inspired thought: that we living beings are the recipients of something like a gift. The notion that many secularists promote is that the "uplifting" function of religion can be preserved in the absence of belief in God. I suspect this is partly in response to those who cannot face a reality that is in no way uplifting. To cope with this problem, such people were assured that their urge to worship something could be sublimated by adopting a certain psychological attitude towards scientific knowledge. It's like worship, but without the overt sense of servitude. As with all religious ideas, the delusion that we should be thankful for our chance at existence rests on mostly unquestioned and entirely unjustified assumptions. The first of which, as Lion IRC indirectly pointed out, is the claim that in a counterfactual scenario in which we didn't exist, we would suffer a deprivation similar to being denied entry into a wonderful garden or an exclusive club. In fact, we wouldn't care in the slightest. I'm pretty sure Dawkins knows this and is just being poetic. The second unexamined premise is not mere poetry on his part. It is the fact that he uses poetic language to make his readers think of being admitted into a wonderful garden or an exclusive club, rather than a more honest analogy for what it means to exist, that betrays the religious origin of his thinking.

What he should have said is: "because your parents were looking for a reason to stay married, you, the self-aware consciousness that is reading this sentence, now exist and must contend with the inadequacy of reality to satisfy your deepest instinctual needs, while maintaining a constantly decaying body in the face of innumerable threats to its integrity, as you stave off boredom and frustration by pursuing projects that will inevitably harm others to some degree, all the while utterly powerless in the face of the one thing your genes have caused you to dread the most. If you want to feel better about your situation, try marveling in wide-eyed reverence at the cosmos (whose laws tug you inexorably back to the undifferentiated chaos that is the beginning and end of everything), or better yet become a Christian. Both are valid ways to ignore everything I just said. "

 

[Treedbear]

...
What he should have said is: "... If you want to feel better about your situation, try marveling in wide-eyed reverence at the cosmos (whose laws tug you inexorably back to the undifferentiated chaos that is the beginning and end of everything), or better yet become a Christian. Both are valid ways to ignore everything I just said. "

People say they're going fishing when all they really want to do is stand in the river.

 

[Lion IRC]

This is why everybody sensible can't stand Christians and Muslims. The complete and utter lack of any kind of humility. It even says in your sacred text to stay humble. Why do you care so little about the wishes of your God? Why this extreme level of arrogance on your part?

It's also, in its dishonesty, why non-believers don't take the claims of Xians and Muslims at face value. "Pious fraud", "all things to all men", "lying for Jesus" ... call it what you will, there's always been this streak of dishonesty running down the spine of theism that makes it always worth double-checking even the most trivial claims put forth by its proponents and apologists.

There's nothing dishonest about thinking Hitchens converted in his final days, weeks.
And it is my sincere belief that Dawkins will too.

I would provide my many reasons for thinking this but, given your obvious sensitivity to this topic you'll just think I'm trolling you.

Here. Have a bandaid. I wouldn't want that raw nerve to get infected.

 

[none]

People do all kinds of stupid shift under duress
Heck something might be out there out everywhere, who knows.. Christianity is faith and faith is unreliable
Evidence that's what is important to truth, I'd say, would you?

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

There's nothing dishonest about thinking Hitchens converted in his final days, weeks.
And it is my sincere belief that Dawkins will too.

I would provide my many reasons for thinking this but, given your obvious sensitivity to this topic you'll just think I'm trolling you.

Here. Have a bandaid. I wouldn't want that raw nerve to get infected.

View attachment 10718

Oh, don't worry about my nerves, they're all fine.

The dishonesty was in taking a flippant remark out of context and using it to support a ludicrous claim. But then again, if it's really your "sincere belief" that Hitchens gulped the kool-aid before popping his clogs, please accept my sincere apologies; it was not my intention to mock whatever condition it is you have that prevents you from understanding human beings.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It's also, in its dishonesty, why non-believers don't take the claims of Xians and Muslims at face value. "Pious fraud", "all things to all men", "lying for Jesus" ... call it what you will, there's always been this streak of dishonesty running down the spine of theism that makes it always worth double-checking even the most trivial claims put forth by its proponents and apologists.

There's nothing dishonest about thinking Hitchens converted in his final days, weeks.
And it is my sincere belief that Dawkins will too.

What would that demonstrate wrt a religious spaceman that gave birth to a half human hybrid? Lots of kids die believing that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are real.

 

[angelo]

It's also, in its dishonesty, why non-believers don't take the claims of Xians and Muslims at face value. "Pious fraud", "all things to all men", "lying for Jesus" ... call it what you will, there's always been this streak of dishonesty running down the spine of theism that makes it always worth double-checking even the most trivial claims put forth by its proponents and apologists.

There's nothing dishonest about thinking Hitchens converted in his final days, weeks.
And it is my sincere belief that Dawkins will too.

I would provide my many reasons for thinking this but, given your obvious sensitivity to this topic you'll just think I'm trolling you.

Here. Have a bandaid. I wouldn't want that raw nerve to get infected.

View attachment 10718

http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...ens-did-not-convert-christianity-his-deathbed

I do Hope this clears up the bullshit!

 

[Tars Tarkus]

There's nothing dishonest about thinking Hitchens converted in his final days, weeks.
And it is my sincere belief that Dawkins will too.

I would provide my many reasons for thinking this but, given your obvious sensitivity to this topic you'll just think I'm trolling you.

Here. Have a bandaid. I wouldn't want that raw nerve to get infected.

View attachment 10718

http://www.newstatesman.com/politic...ens-did-not-convert-christianity-his-deathbed

I do Hope this clears up the bullshit!

A quote of Hitchens from the article:
“the mere fact that such deathbed ‘repentances’ were sought by the godly, let alone subsequently fabricated, speaks volumes of the bad faith of the faith-based.”

 

[DrZoidberg]

There's nothing dishonest about thinking Hitchens converted in his final days, weeks.

And it is my sincere belief that Dawkins will too.

I would provide my many reasons for thinking this but, given your obvious sensitivity to this topic you'll just think I'm trolling you.

Here's in Hitchens' own words right before his death. When he's giving this talk he is actually dying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4cPe_YS8i8

It's not a question of honesty. It's a question of stupidity. First off, the idea that there's a life after death is preposterous. I suspect that the only way anybody can find it remotely plausible is after a life of brainwashing. No, I don't have any evidence against it. I don't need any. If you don't understand why then you don't understand how to make a logically consistent argument.

Secondly, these are among the most intelligent people who have ever lived. Most smart people in Pascall's lifetime saw the hole in the logic of Pascall's wager. I'm pretty sure Hitchen and Dawkins does/did as well.

Deathbed conversions are dumb. When I'm dying I'll keep a gun near my death bed just so I can shoot whatever insensitive bastard thinks it's something I'd like to ponder on as I draw my final breath. What are they going to do about it? Arrest me?

I just had a lovely discussion over lunch with a colleague who has just recovered from cancer, and now is diagnosed with Parkinson. She's great. "I'm absolutely fine. It's my family who's completely lost it. You wouldn't believe how much I've had to console them."

This is Denmark. The topic of afterlife isn't likely to come up. Since almost nobody here believes in it. And even less seem worried about it.

I think the idea that we'll continue on after death will keep you from growing up. I think it's important to accept that shit happens and whatever is going to happen will happen. It doesn't matter what you believe about it. Reality doesn't care what you believe. It just is. The whole notion that the creator of the universe/super daddy, gives a rats ass about what you believe about anything is just narcissism. How about growing the fuck up?

 

[Jobar]

Something Lion (hi, Lion) said a few weeks ago-



Do you think this qualifies as religious, Lion? I certainly consider it awesome and uplifting- but is it religious?

[Dawkins quote]

I would consider it religious, in that it is a remnant of religious-inspired thought: that we living beings are the recipients of something like a gift. The notion that many secularists promote is that the "uplifting" function of religion can be preserved in the absence of belief in God. I suspect this is partly in response to those who cannot face a reality that is in no way uplifting. To cope with this problem, such people were assured that their urge to worship something could be sublimated by adopting a certain psychological attitude towards scientific knowledge. It's like worship, but without the overt sense of servitude. As with all religious ideas, the delusion that we should be thankful for our chance at existence rests on mostly unquestioned and entirely unjustified assumptions. The first of which, as Lion IRC indirectly pointed out, is the claim that in a counterfactual scenario in which we didn't exist, we would suffer a deprivation similar to being denied entry into a wonderful garden or an exclusive club. In fact, we wouldn't care in the slightest. I'm pretty sure Dawkins knows this and is just being poetic. The second unexamined premise is not mere poetry on his part. It is the fact that he uses poetic language to make his readers think of being admitted into a wonderful garden or an exclusive club, rather than a more honest analogy for what it means to exist, that betrays the religious origin of his thinking.

What he should have said is: "because your parents were looking for a reason to stay married, you, the self-aware consciousness that is reading this sentence, now exist and must contend with the inadequacy of reality to satisfy your deepest instinctual needs, while maintaining a constantly decaying body in the face of innumerable threats to its integrity, as you stave off boredom and frustration by pursuing projects that will inevitably harm others to some degree, all the while utterly powerless in the face of the one thing your genes have caused you to dread the most. If you want to feel better about your situation, try marveling in wide-eyed reverence at the cosmos (whose laws tug you inexorably back to the undifferentiated chaos that is the beginning and end of everything), or better yet become a Christian. Both are valid ways to ignore everything I just said. "

But 'undifferentiated chaos' seems to always give rise to order, organization, pattern. Those opposites seem to arise mutually, and one is not more basic than the other. That is perhaps the most awesome thing about existence.

In Hinduism, there's a famous image of the god Shiva performing the dance of creation/destruction. His face is expressionless, without joy or pain; but still containing both.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I would call it religious thinking to look at a world where 82% of the overall global population is religious, and 51% of all scientists are religious, and think there's a significant connection for researchers to be religious...

 

[Tom Sawyer]

In Hinduism, there's a famous image of the god Shiva performing the dance of creation/destruction. His face is expressionless, without joy or pain; but still containing both.

Well, that's too bad. Creating and destroying universes sound like the kind of things which would take a lot of effort and it would be nice if he were able to enjoy his job more.

 

[PyramidHead]

But 'undifferentiated chaos' seems to always give rise to order, organization, pattern. Those opposites seem to arise mutually, and one is not more basic than the other. That is perhaps the most awesome thing about existence.

I would quibble about one not being more basic than the other. Ask yourself this: what's more likely to happen by accident, a sandcastle being formed by a wave crashing into the shore, or one being destroyed by a wave? That's not to say order does not arise spontaneously, but some kind of mechanism is needed to preserve it from being immediately squashed. On our planet at least, natural selection fills that role. Energy is always needed to escape the pull towards decay. The default state, without any extra input, is slow but certain dissociation into one's component parts.

I like how Shiva personifies the process, and I think Dawkins would too. He always stresses that nature is totally indifferent--even hostile--to our needs, but never applies that datum to his religious optimism about existence.

 

[bilby]

I would consider it religious, in that it is a remnant of religious-inspired thought: that we living beings are the recipients of something like a gift. The notion that many secularists promote is that the "uplifting" function of religion can be preserved in the absence of belief in God. I suspect this is partly in response to those who cannot face a reality that is in no way uplifting. To cope with this problem, such people were assured that their urge to worship something could be sublimated by adopting a certain psychological attitude towards scientific knowledge. It's like worship, but without the overt sense of servitude. As with all religious ideas, the delusion that we should be thankful for our chance at existence rests on mostly unquestioned and entirely unjustified assumptions. The first of which, as Lion IRC indirectly pointed out, is the claim that in a counterfactual scenario in which we didn't exist, we would suffer a deprivation similar to being denied entry into a wonderful garden or an exclusive club. In fact, we wouldn't care in the slightest. I'm pretty sure Dawkins knows this and is just being poetic. The second unexamined premise is not mere poetry on his part. It is the fact that he uses poetic language to make his readers think of being admitted into a wonderful garden or an exclusive club, rather than a more honest analogy for what it means to exist, that betrays the religious origin of his thinking.

What he should have said is: "because your parents were looking for a reason to stay married, you, the self-aware consciousness that is reading this sentence, now exist and must contend with the inadequacy of reality to satisfy your deepest instinctual needs, while maintaining a constantly decaying body in the face of innumerable threats to its integrity, as you stave off boredom and frustration by pursuing projects that will inevitably harm others to some degree, all the while utterly powerless in the face of the one thing your genes have caused you to dread the most. If you want to feel better about your situation, try marveling in wide-eyed reverence at the cosmos (whose laws tug you inexorably back to the undifferentiated chaos that is the beginning and end of everything), or better yet become a Christian. Both are valid ways to ignore everything I just said. "

But 'undifferentiated chaos' seems to always give rise to order, organization, pattern.

No, it doesn't.

It might seem that way if you take a very local and parochial point of view; But the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that order tends to become disorder in a closed system, and we have good reason to think that the universe is an adequately closed system for this Law to hold true.

It's also obvious that Nature Abhors a Vacuum - but again, that's only true if you take a local, planet-bound perspective. Most of nature IS a vacuum; and most of nature IS undifferentiated chaos. We just happen to live in a bit that is neither - and from what we know of how life works, we couldn't live anywhere else.

Once again, religion gives us fundamental rules about the universe that turn out to be exceptions that apply only in the very small experience of Bronze and Iron Age inhabitants of a small area of the world.

It's almost as though the whole thing was made up by people who assumed that their tiny patch of existence was representative of the entirety of the universe because they knew no better, and without any input from an all-knowing deity at all.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

But 'undifferentiated chaos' seems to always give rise to order, organization, pattern.

No, it doesn't.

It might seem that way if you take a very local and parochial point of view; But the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that order tends to become disorder in a closed system, and we have good reason to think that the universe is an adequately closed system for this Law to hold true.

It's also obvious that Nature Abhors a Vacuum - but again, that's only true if you take a local, planet-bound perspective. Most of nature IS a vacuum; and most of nature IS undifferentiated chaos. We just happen to live in a bit that is neither - and from what we know of how life works, we couldn't live anywhere else.

Once again, religion gives us fundamental rules about the universe that turn out to be exceptions that apply only in the very small experience of Bronze and Iron Age inhabitants of a small area of the world.

It's almost as though the whole thing was made up by people who assumed that their tiny patch of existence was representative of the entirety of the universe because they knew no better, and without any input from an all-knowing deity at all.

When does undifferentiated chaos become something differentiated and non-chaotic? It's all subjective and arbitrary. How does one recognize undifferentiated chaos?