The Fool hath said in his heart 'there is no god.' (evolution, myth)

[bert62]

This may not be the place for this, but I just wanted to make an observation. My kids picked out a silly book at the bookstore. It's all about the history of giants. It's really quite ridiculous, but my kids are enjoying it for a moment. The weird thing is the book really rankles my christian wife. She thinks the book is nonsense, which of course it fully is. She clearly is troubled by this made up history, I guess because in some way it pretends to be factual. However, my kids asked me why she was so upset over it. I said, "look at the bulls**t your mother believes." I mean, if ever there was a fairy tale. She's been brainwashed to believe the biggest fantasy of them all. I am glad I got out. Incidentally, I'm reading Harry Potter to the kids. Strangely, she doesn't seem to mind that at all. I'm vexed.

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by Rejoicer

I will probably never be able to provide enough empirical evidence to prove that I am right. I accept that. But, atheists have also not given me any empirical evidence that God doesn't exist other than they don't believe He does.

Rejoicer, I disagree with you fundamentally here. If we are to accept the Christian God, and accept the word of the bible as inerrant and prophetic, but then we systematically find that most (or all?) of the various stories are simply not true, and that the prophesies only come true under the most ambiguous of conditions, what then do we conclude about the entire story?

I mean, if Christianity requires these things to be true, and we find they are not, isn't that a pretty convincing denouncement of the whole religious thing?

So. We find, to our complete satisfaction, that our species arrived here through an ongoing process of adaptation to our environment, and we also find that a host of, frankly, very reliable high-tech methods all support each other in identifying many ancient artifacts and fossils as being literally millions of years old. And wherever we predict results or evidence supporting our version of the past, and then we find those very things, as predicted, what should we conclude?

Putting aside the frantic need of many Christians to stick to their faith and their trust in the bible no matter what, consider this.

If we were to present the ever-expanding and increasingly more accurate totality of scientific evidence, as well as the totality of faith-only, evidence-free Christianity, before an anonymous, unbiased team of adjudicators (who had absolutely no prior knowledge of either side) which one would be the likely "winner" do you honestly think?

So. To my mind, and the minds of my fellow atheists, we see it all as rather conclusive at this point. The paucity of evidence for a supernatural god, placed alongside the staggering mass of secular evidence from various disciplines that is seductively and coincidentally co-supportive, leads to only one rational conclusion.

Wouldn't you say?

[Rafius]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

I might add to that point that it wasn't known to any Christian writers (who would surely have mentioned it if it was) before Constantine's time,.......

You are correct sir. Origen never mentioned it and he was certainly well acquainted with 'Antiquities of the Jews' and would have made good use of it had it been there in his time. The culprit for this blatant act of 'lying for Jesus' is undoubtedly Eusebius.

[MaggieZ]

Ok, I have this silly question ..was Christianity and its god and jesus and all of that biblical stuff invented as a political ploy by the Romans so that they could control the world and all it's people? This way they could keep control and add to their fortune and land?

[Rafius]

Originally Posted by MaggieZ

Ok, I have this silly question ..was Christianity and its god and jesus and all of that biblical stuff invented as a political ploy by the Romans so that they could control the world and all it's people? This way they could keep control and add to their fortune and land?

I think it's safe to say that Biblejesus was invented, probably by Saul of Tarsus (Paul) who wanted a figurehead for his new religion which he no doubt wanted for political/financial reasons....but by the Romans, no. In fact, the Romans had little to no interest in Christianity (apart for a few isolated persecutions by one or two earlier Emperors who considered them trouble-makers) until the Emperor Constantine made it the state religion in the 4th century CE.

Constantine claimed to have converted to Christianity in his 40's though this may well have been a 'ploy' to get people to convert to it (people do what I do sort of thing). He wanted to use a single religion as a stabilising influence and stop all the fighting and back-biting that was going on (yes, they were at it even then) between different religious sects of the time. So, he came up with the 'one religion' idea. It was decided by vote that Christianity should be the religion of the Empire....and once it was.... that's when killing really took off. The Arians, who were the 'opposing side' if you like for the state religion, were massacred in their thousands by Christians drunk with power.

Although Christians love the story about the hard Roman Emperor Constantine who 'found Jesus' and converted to Christianity, Constantine continued to worship Apollo all his life and remained the head of the Pagan Church as Pontifex Maximus. He agreed to being 'baptised' when he was on his death-bed (no doubt as a bit of extra insurance).

[Lamplight]

I've often wondered what the predominant religions of the world would be now had it not been for Constantine. Or if we would have moved beyond religion by now (probably not).

[Gplex]

Originally Posted by agnostic soldier

You hear this argument from alot of theists. I find it interesting that they think atheists are the fools. They make claims based on lies and fallacious logic, then when you explain the facts clearly to them, what you say is automatically wrong in their understanding because the facts are contrary to their beliefs. They often claim to know the answer to things which are unknown(ie the origin of the universe) even though they have no evidence to support that what they claim is true is actually true. Have you ever wondered if theists(not all of them) are the fools?

Theist have been calling me, fooled, closed minded, bias etc etc etc, where in fact they are the very thing that they accuse me of.
I do not find it funny. I find it disturbing that people can delude themselves to the point, that they can not see, the very thing they are trying to attribute to others, is in fact the thing they are.

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by Gplex

Theist have been calling me, fooled, closed minded, bias etc etc etc, where in fact they are the very thing that they accuse me of.
I do not find it funny. I find it disturbing that people can delude themselves to the point, that they can not see, the very thing they are trying to attribute to others, is in fact the thing they are.

Pointless circular argument.

Generally a person is accused of being closed-minded when they demonstrate a closed-minded attitude. As in: evidence, especially some recent research, using some new and very reliable techniques, and the person still covers their ears and yells "NahNahNahNahNahNahNah".


Example. Two simple questions, Gplex. You can choose not to answer, or to try to second-guess where I'm going with this, I suppose, but that would be closed-minded.

Can you just answer these two questions, pretty much with a yes or no?

1) do you understand and trust the basics of how DNA evidence is now used regularly to "finger" some felon in a murder case? (quite a few convicted rapists, for example, have now been exonerated [the original case against them dismissed] because of such DNA evidence.)

2) do you understand that DNA is thus a very unique "genetic fingerprint" for each of us?

[Gplex]

Originally Posted by rifleman

Pointless circular argument.

Generally a person is accused of being closed-minded when they demonstrate a closed-minded attitude. As in: evidence, especially some recent research, using some new and very reliable techniques, and the person still covers their ears and yells "NahNahNahNahNahNahNah".


Example. Two simple questions, Gplex. You can choose not to answer, or to try to second-guess where I'm going with this, I suppose, but that would be closed-minded.

Can you just answer these two questions, pretty much with a yes or no?

1) do you understand and trust the basics of how DNA evidence is now used regularly to "finger" some felon in a murder case? (quite a few convicted rapists, for example, have now been exonerated [the original case against them dismissed] because of such DNA evidence.)

2) do you understand that DNA is thus a very unique "genetic fingerprint" for each of us?

Clearly if you read what I have posted, you will find that I did not present and argument, but made a statement that was link too the OP.

But for fun I will play your game.
1) I understand the basics of DNA, and I understand that it can be used as evidence in a court of law.
2) I understand that the probability that someone has my DNA would be very low.

I do not know what DNA has to do with the OP, but I'm very interested in finding out.

You example on how people are closed mined doesn't explain the majority of the closed minded behavior I have run into.
Here is a great video on how people tend to be closed minded.

[MrBlueSky_]

Originally Posted by MaggieZ

Ok, I have this silly question ..was Christianity and its god and jesus and all of that biblical stuff invented as a political ploy by the Romans so that they could control the world and all it's people? This way they could keep control and add to their fortune and land?

The mythology behind Jesus was directly lifted from earlier "savior" cults, gods and man-gods like Mithras, Dionysus, Horus, Hercules, Krishna, etc. All of these share similar stories to the Jesus - virgins births, healing, water to wine, ascension, resurrections, walking on water and other miracles etc.

The Old Testament is clearly lifted from various texts of the Babylonians, Sumerians and Egyptians - texts such as the Enuma Elish, Code of Hammurabi, Epic of Gilgamesh and The Egyptian Book of The Dead. For example, you can clearly see that the ten commandments were inspired by these lines from chapter 125 of the Book of The Dead:

Homage to you, Great God, the Lord of the double Ma’at (Truth)! (i.e. You shall have no other gods before me.)
I have not scorned any god. (have not taken the lords name in vain)
I have not defrauded the poor of their property. (do not steal)
I have not killed man or woman
I have not acted deceitfully
I have not defiled the wife of man
I have not oppressed members of my family (honor thy mother and father)
etc. etc.


These lines were intended to be recited by a deceased Egyptians spirit, while being judged worthy to enter the afterlife.

These were written hundreds of years before the Torah/Old Testament were authored by the creators of the Hebrew monotheistic Yahweh cult. Yahweh was original a lowly god of war in a pantheon of gods, with the godhead going to EL, the creator god/overlord (possibly passed down from the Sumerian god Enlil). Yahweh also had a wife then, named Asherah. I guess he got divorced when they went monotheist.

In short, anyone who believes The Bible is original material or the inspired word of God hasn't done their homework, and should probably be worshiping Enlil, EL or Marduk.