The Athiest Thread

[MONEYMUFFINS]

You won't change anyone's opinion.

I CHANGE MY OPINION ALL THE TIME.

 

[UnseenWombat]

I DO NOT HAVE TIME RIGHT NOW TO ADDRESS EVERYTHING YOU WROTE.

READ THIS ESSAY. IT FITS MY TAKE ON THE MATTER.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/resurrection/lecture.html



TL;DR SUMMARY:

"We have no trustworthy evidence of a physical resurrection, no reliable witnesses. It is among the most poorly attested of historical events. The earliest evidence, from the letters of Paul, does not appear to be of a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. And we have at least one plausible reason available to us as to why and how the legend grew into something else. Finally, the original accounts of a resurrection of a flesh-and-blood corpse show obvious signs of legendary embellishment over time, and were written in an age of little education and even less science, a time overflowing with superstition and credulity."

Okay, that's fine, and I could go now and get an article that says precisely the contrary of that one. But, before we get on that merry-go-round, let me say you're missing the deeper point of my post. It's true I was making the case that Christianity is historically reliable, and we can go back and forth for months and months posting an article for and an article against every thing either one of us says, but underneath that, and underneath the entire discussion, everything I post is meant to show that Christianity is not simply a belief accepted on "blind faith" by the unwashed ignorant masses. There are many Christians like that to be sure, and I know you love to hold them up as examples of how stupid we must all be, but there are some very learned people, who don't take everything at face value whostill hold that it's plausible, if not out and out more likely than the alternatives. Did you know, for example, that the head of the human genome project is a Christian, believes in evolution, (and has convinced me of it as well), and yet still believes that God is ultimately responsible for creation? He's not a supid guy, obviously, does not just blindly accept whatever the church leaders told him, (he started as an atheist before he reasoned that the Christian God must be real), so don't be so quick to dismiss it.

That was what I was trying to say.

 

[Synalon]

You won't change anyone's opinion.

I've changed my mind before as a result of discussions about god, and I've witnessed other people doing so. No, it doesn't happen very often. But it happens.

 

[Synalon]

"Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life."

Of course this is true, but claims that violate certain natural laws (like that Jesus rose from the dead) require extraordinary evidence. This is exacerbated by the fact that the writers of the gospels had perhaps a bit of a...vested interest in proving the resurrection.

I don't think every Christian has blind faith. But when people believe that we all descended from one couple, that some old guy managed to part the red sea and that Noah put two of every animal on a vast boat and sailed around for years (not to mention that he lived until he was like a thousand), it's a little difficult to take them seriously.

 

[Norik]