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| Re: nonsense about atheism (241861) | |||
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Re: nonsense about atheism |
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Posted by soton si on Tue Aug 28 13:21:12 2007, in response to Re: nonsense about atheism, posted by RonInBayside on Tue Aug 28 09:57:07 2007. "If you were secure in your faith, you would not have to wear it on your sleeve and stick it in other people's faces to convince yourself of its value. If you're looking for my approval to be a Christian, you don't need it - but the converse is true too - I don't need your approval to not be one."I am secure in my faith, very very secure - if I wasn't sure, I wouldn't be putting it to the test right now. I'm wearing it on my sleeve because it's true, and the consequences of it being true is that I have to wear it on my sleeve, as it's the most important thing for everyone - a matter of life and death. I have to tell other people, to allow them a free chance to decide. I chose not to stick it in your face, but you constantly said I was wrong, so I felt justified to show why I am right. I'm not looking for your approval, I'm looking to fight the intolerance and ignorance of yourself. "Ultimately, the issue is that you fear that somehow your faith will be taken from you, or that you will fail, or that, like the reformed whore (the most pious and yet the most obnoxious among us), you will fail to "save" us from some heresy - never mind that heresy is a religious concept that not everyone feels bound by. Maybe a better approach is for you to go to a church of your liking, attend a religious school of your liking (you seem to favor the Christian equivalent of a madrassa, or perhaps a pre-Vatican II Catholic Church) and not worry about forciby converting other people. I should point out something else -Mel Gibson's views on Catholicism are an excellent example of someone who advocates as you do. It turns out, though, that what he's realy expressing is his ethnic and cultural hatred more than anything else." I can't and don't try to forcibly convert people - I just stated lots of facts that you said don't exist. You also seem to be seeking to stifle my freedom of speech, and saying that I shouldn't be able to speak to people who aren't Christians. I also see that you are having to resort to ad hominem to try and score points. You seem very very threatened by this all, as if you realise that it's true but you don't want it to be. I don't seem to favour a mandrassa, I favour a school that teaches facts of importance, like "if you follow Jesus you will not perish eternally", not brushing them under the carpet, like the state schools in both the UK and the US do. As for ethnic and cultural hatred - while ethnicity holds no bounds, I do have a hatred of this culture, the one which is apathetic to the truth, seeks selfish gain and is so scared of upsetting other people that they taboo viewpoints in case they offend people (unless those people are the majority, like in the evolution case in the US (though I'm not part of that majority)). "He (mis)uses religion to justify his own phobias. Are you sure you're not doing the same thing?" Are you sure that you aren't? Your intolerance of me seems, using your agnostic faith, and the circular reasoning that atheists use are seemingly being used to justify and cover up your theophobia and fear of the truth. You can't seem to handle the truth, so you make excuses and reasons as to why it's not true in the hope that goes away. "False statement. The sheer number of manuscripts simply meant somebody was writing a lot. Anne Rice and Stephen King are very prolific - doesn't make their works non-fiction." While it doesn't make the New Testament true, it makes it a far more reliable manuscript. As both the Gospel accounts and Acts, as well as the Gallic Wars are deliberately written as non-fiction, rather than as fiction, that makes the history given in the NT far more reliable as that in the Gallic Wars. Other things come into it. Anne Rice and Steven King, as far as I know, didn't intend to write their books as covering real events. "One of the strengths of the Old Testament is that there is corroboration for various events in it. For example, the exodus from Egypt, though suffering from mistranslation, describes a very wet year in the Nile Delta, the biological consequences of a flood, and a military victory by the Jews over an Egyptian Army not suited to infantry combat in the reeds. By contrast, you rely solely on the New Testament to support itself - therefore, it collapses on itself." Seeing as what we were discussing was the NT, and I didn't want to write a book, I chose to leave out the historicity of the OT, and the archaeological evidence for the NT. ""If they were secular documents, no one would have any problem with their accuracy," See above. You're getting paranoid." No I'm not, that's a quote from FF Bruce, an expert in this field. It's simply true that, because the documents are religious, that people reject them. Look at you - you reject the teaching of the resurrection of Jesus in schools, but you allow the teaching of, say, Julius Caesar existing, which is less historically certain. You reject the first one, simply as it has religious significance. Luke wrote as a historian. His writings have a far better manuscript testimony than any of his contemporaries, yet we take the contemporaries word as truth, but not Luke, because his history isn't secular. If you can take the Gallic Wars, which we only have 10 copies, all dating to 1000 years later, as history, why can't you take Luke with thousands of copies dating to 100-200 years later all testifying back to it being written about the time when the events happened? I think it's you who is getting paranoid, you are resorting to taking down my evidence by attacking me, not it. "however because they aren't people are instantly prejudiced, and despite the evidence, by faith (with no proof), reject them out of hand as historical sources." There is no such thing as evidence by faith. Evidence by faith is an oxymoron." I never said evidence by faith - learn to read - I said that they reject the validity of the evidence, despite the evidence. They cannot prove why they can ignore the evidence, they just believe that it's wrong. By faith they ignore the evidence, because of their believes that such a thing can't happen. "The New Testament, unlike the Old Testament, is not primarily a historical text." Though parts of it are histories. Try reading Luke-Acts. It was written by a doctor, in the style of Greek histories and was to be used as evidence at the trial of Paul before his trip to Rome (with the last few chapters added on) - he would have been let off had he not appealed to the Emperor - the Roman authorities couldn't find anything to say that he was spreading lies. It is a political text, an advertisement for one brand of monotheistic religion." so's the OT. so's the newspaper. Just because the 'Independent' (a UK paper) blamed Katrina directly on the oil rigs in the sea, doesn't mean the events described in there are false, just the reasoning. The NT does have that biased explanation of the events, but you try and give another explaination - no one, to my recollection has. "So we can conclude the darkening didn't happen at all, or it was allegorical." Evidence that we can conclude those things? Thallus couldn't get round the darkness to try and debunk the validity of the Christian texts, so he came up with a reason. Just like the Independent's crap reason above, it made no sense at all. "Very similar to modern fantasies. Hundreds of people claim to see aliens coming out of spaceships." at the same time? with them all verifying that they saw one? People who didn't believe that Jesus had rose again (which is all of them initially), even people who had never met Jesus? Why did they stop after 40 days (with the exception of Paul)? Where was the body of Jesus - if it was just hallucinations, then the body would still be somewhere? They would have been very good hallucinations, as the hallucination could teach them what they didn't know, eat, be touched, etc. The hallucination theory has been looked at over the years, many times, by physiologists. If they were hallucinations, then the minute that someone touched him, or was in the room and couldn't see him then the whole thing would have been realised as just madness. "You have no evidence." No, you have decided to ignore the evidence that I have put forward (which wasn't all of it, but for length reasons I only used some of it). Can I ask you to prove to me why my evidence is invalid? You seem to just assert that it is! "As to Edward Clarke, you do him an injustice. His accomplishments are well-known, but they are in politics and law:" Surely if I quote him, it's not me, but him that is doing himself an injustice? However, you would think a lawyer would know what evidence would look like, wouldn't you? By saying there is none, perhaps you are doing him the greater injustice? |
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