Arguements against the Christian God

[KennyJC]

You put so much stock in your rational explanations that you don't realize how anachronistic your "rationality" is. Miracles weren't the invention of the Bible authors, there were other prophets, miracle workers, oracles (like the one at Delphi) and exorcists around. These things were a reality to these people. What made Jesus' miracles significant is that they fit a specific model, served a specific purpose, and displayed an undeniable authority - so much so that instead of questioning their validity, his detractors and sketics argued (for long after his death) that it was either borrowed from God (Toledoth Yeshu) or by the help of the devil (Matt. 12:24). Unlike us, they took it for granted miracles were possible. Even if they were mistaken about what they witnessed, they would still not be lying.

This says absolutely nothing for it being an actual event that Jesus rose from literal death and bodily ascended to heaven. Or that he was the actual son of God, or that he was born of a virgin mother, or that he walked on water. The list is endless, and these myths are simply embellishments that are typical of story telling of the time.

The remarkable thing is that it is easy for lazy minded people like yourself to be seduced by them to the point were every fantasy in the Bible has place in reality and historical event.

And how do you account for this belief? What makes it any more valid than someone who have "always thought" the Bible was verbally inspired from start to finish?

I don't know if you have ever actually read the Bible, but there are several explanations which are infinitely more likely than the Bible being infallable. Such as: Some of the Bible is based on actual events but is marred by embellishments throughout. Or that all/most of the Bible is fiction based on myths spread by preachers over many years.

Your only argument is that it somehow accurately extracts actual events from trustworthy sources and accordingly writes them down without bias, and doesn't let the growth of myth get in the way.

I think that then exposes you as having irrational wishful thinking - as based on the nature of the story told in the Bible, the above is impossible.

 

[Jenyar]

This says absolutely nothing for it being an actual event that Jesus rose from literal death and bodily ascended to heaven. Or that he was the actual son of God, or that he was born of a virgin mother, or that he walked on water. The list is endless, and these myths are simply embellishments that are typical of story telling of the time.

Gospels, like epistles, aren't among the types of literature associated with pure fiction, and its authors didn't intend to tell a story. Myths don't take care to cite real people, dates and places. You might find your embellishments in the apocryphal literature, which is one of the reason why the early church rejected them.

There's no problem with you calling it a story, but your opinion is based on a very dogmatic view of reality, and doesn't make it a story. If what everyone believed was true were really true, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The remarkable thing is that it is easy for lazy minded people like yourself to be seduced by them to the point were every fantasy in the Bible has place in reality and historical event.

If God chooses to be mythopoeic -- and is not the sky itself a myth -- shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher. -- CS Lewis, Miracles.​

Not everything in the Bible lies on the same level. Yes, some are mythologies retold, some are stories (like the parables), some are poems, some are letters, or genealogies or prophesies. Each genre has its own devices, ways of conveying meaning and truth. And yes, even myths can have meaning. It was either Tolkien or Lewis who said he always wonders at laymen who lecture him about mythology and what it says about truth. The same people who would object if he lectured them about a field he knows nothing of.

I don't know if you have ever actually read the Bible, but there are several explanations which are infinitely more likely than the Bible being infallable. Such as: Some of the Bible is based on actual events but is marred by embellishments throughout. Or that all/most of the Bible is fiction based on myths spread by preachers over many years.

I have read the Bible, and I know there are different explanations. It happens to be my point: these beliefs can't all be right, no matter how likely they seem to their adherents - what makes your belief "that the 40 year gap may have been filled with chinese whispers" different from the beliefs you reject?

Your only argument is that it somehow accurately extracts actual events from trustworthy sources and accordingly writes them down without bias, and doesn't let the growth of myth get in the way.

I think that then exposes you as having irrational wishful thinking - as based on the nature of the story told in the Bible, the above is impossible.

They included various accounts from eye-witness sources and ordered the information into a meaningful (not always chronological) structure. If someone writes about World War II today, 64 years later, using eye-witness accounts and primary sources, how much of it would be myth? Unless their sources created the myths, there was no "growth" that could "get in the way" (in the way of what?) The gospels authors accumulated and ordered the facts according to their intended audience and the significance it had. Publishers and journalists still do the same today. It's unfortunate that we can't go back and verify everything, but that's evidence of time, not deception.

And regarding bias - you don't even perceive the reality in front of your own eyes without a specific bias (in your case, probably 20th century post-modern naturalistic bias). If you're trustworthy, you're trustworthy. If you're not, you're not - and that's what will make the difference when you have to report something to a journalist.

 

[Jenyar]

I'm not entirely sure how you got from us discussing the similarity between gods and santa to some kind of attempted comparison between religion and science. How you claim it's on faith, (which shows a serious lack of understanding of science) - which is not only entirely irrelevant, but wrong as well.

The question of "evidence" intersects both discussions. Science operates on faith - not on a day to day basis - but on the assumption that nature acts uniformly. There is no conclusive evidence that tomorrow will be like today, or that the same laws that hold today will hold tomorrow, it just seems extremely probable. But the past is not and has never been evidence of the future, no matter for how long you've been measuring it. We even know it was once different, beyond Planck time. We don't observe the laws of the universe as they were at the time of the Big Bang, and we can never replicate those conditions completely, yet we know they existed. It's reasonable faith to believe we know the future, but if it's not 100% certain, there is faith involved. All good theories are built on such faith, because good theories are always provisional.

Your proposal is gibberish if, as you are, trying to make a comparison between the two.

A moment ago, mere apparent similarity was enough for a valid comparison. A scientist claims his theory has been validated; the same scientist claims his faith has been validated (like Francis Collins). I argued that the nature of the claim - the evidence - was more important than the similarity. Do you understand why, now?

Indeed, and yet to date there is no evidence to suggest the exstence of gods.

Not of 99% of gods, perhaps. But for at least one, there has been evidence at least on a few known occasions in history, and people believed it. You don't, but that doesn't mean there has never been evidence. Unless you mean specifically in your experience and your lifetime, then I'll just have to take your word for it.

 

[perplexity]

Not of 99% of gods, perhaps. But for at least one, there has been evidence at least on a few known occasions in history, and people believed it. You don't, but that doesn't mean there has never been evidence. Unless you mean specifically in your experience and your lifetime, then I'll just have to take your word for it.

And if you mean evidence at least on a few known occasions, specifically in somebody else's experience and lifetime, then one would just have to take your word that. Right?

Or more to the point, would anything presently change your belief apart from your own experience?

If anything would affect your belief one wonders what it would take, and if nothing would affect you belief one wonders what all this is for anyway.

I don't really understand your way of handling conflict (almost to the point of obsession). When I get into an argument I like to know what my purpose is, what exactly I might hope to achieve in real terms.

--- Ron.

 

[Jenyar]

And if you mean evidence at least on a few known occasions, specifically in somebody else's experience and lifetime, then one would just have to take your word that. Right?

Right. That was my point about it coming down to a matter of trust.

Or more to the point, would anything presently change your belief apart from your own experience?

My beliefs continue to change as I discover new insights, new ways to connect the dots, so to speak. And this comes more often from other people's experience than my own. I don't think of it as an all or nothing scenario.

If anything would affect your belief one wonders what it would take, and if nothing would affect you belief one wonders what all this is for anyway.

I guess it would take something stronger or more persuasive than my current beliefs to modify them. It seems the most natural and intuitive way of coming to any sort of belief. I try to let every belief fend for itself, each on its own terms and according to its own strengths. Accordingly, my weaker beliefs have changed considerably, and the stronger beliefs have proven more resilient.

And even then, one may still wonder what it all is for.

I don't really understand your way of handling conflict (almost to the point of obsession). When I get into an argument I like to know what my purpose is, what exactly I might hope to achieve in real terms.

It wasn't meant as an insult. I've certainly witnessed my own obsessions with equal perplexity - indulging arguments without knowing where they come from or where they're going. Maybe I'm used to arguments having an eventual point, even if I don't see it immediately, so I tend to follow them with a mixture of hope and curiosity. The payoff is that I sometimes learn something unexpected, something subtle and, at least in my opinion, real.

Your approach is more direct and deliberate, more confrontational. The payoff could be clearer, more immediately relevant results. I just don't know how representative those results would be, since people sometimes act differently (even uncharacteristically) under pressure, and their arguments become more defensive and less objective. But maybe this evens out on the long run. Of course, nothing prevents either approach (which may also have a lot to do with our personalities) to work with some people and crash with others. We could compare results.

 

[perplexity]

Your approach is more direct and deliberate, more confrontational. The payoff could be clearer, more immediately relevant results. I just don't know how representative those results would be, since people sometimes act differently (even uncharacteristically) under pressure, and their arguments become more defensive and less objective. But maybe this evens out on the long run. Of course, nothing prevents either approach (which may also have a lot to do with our personalities) to work with some people and crash with others. We could compare results.

I am at an age when people are known to be cantankerous They look back at the times they were tolerant and patient and they ask themselves what good it did.

Issues may be painful at the time but I scarcely regret them in the long term if I do at least come to terms. The stuff I regret is where to this day I want to know what the story was, the why and what for.

--- Ron.

 

[SnakeLord]

Science operates on faith - not on a day to day basis - but on the assumption that nature acts uniformly. There is no conclusive evidence that tomorrow will be like today, or that the same laws that hold today will hold tomorrow, it just seems extremely probable

Slight error in your understanding. That is not "faith", that is probability based upon collected evidence. Every day you wake up and gravity is there. You don't float off into the sky, and while it might be possible that one day you will, the probability based upon collected evidence suggests you wont. To say that gravity is caused by an invisible monkey's fart and yet have nothing to suggest it's existence - that is faith.

It's reasonable faith to believe we know the future, but if it's not 100% certain, there is faith involved.

It isn't faith, and even if it were - certainly not the 'faith' that is called into question with concerns to ghosts, goblins, elves, mothmen, mermaids and gods. All the evidence suggests that gravity exists and will continue to exist - that is evidence based. That there is a floaty fairy in space is not evidence based in any way whatsoever.

It seems you realise the utter and extraordinary stupidity of 'faith' and thus try to assign it to everything in the hopes that it would make it look less stupid. Bizarre behaviour.

Not of 99% of gods, perhaps.

100%, but you were close.

But for at least one, there has been evidence at least on a few known occasions in history

Oh yeah?

You don't, but that doesn't mean there has never been evidence.

Thousands of years and you've provided diddly squat. If that was how science worked, (and how 'evidence' was viewed), we'd still be living in caves. Come back when you have something that actually means something.

 

[KennyJC]

Not of 99% of gods, perhaps. But for at least one, there has been evidence at least on a few known occasions in history, and people believed it.

Is this evidence obtained by 'eye witnesses' who saw Jesus' body float up into the sky? LOL

Or that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse of fire?

Haha! It's not so much what you are claiming that is hilarious, it's just the way you expect to be taken seriously...