Taking Sides: Atheism vs. Christianity

no problems there.

one writer may be bad and another good but they both write in english.

the apostles were human beings same as the gaters. they used similar tools to convert ppl. they didnt try to kill any-one no.
but they probably frothed at the mouth.

life doesnt make things easy to distinguish. which is why simpletons believe what they hear on fox news. but being a discriminating adult means you can that two things might appear the same but one is being transmitted in a spirit of love and trust and another out of ignorance and hatred. course sometimes one cant tell.

I think there has been some sort of collapse of the idea of proof as this thread has developed, so that now fiction seems the only available resource of meaning. When someone says that God is unprovable and that the burden of proof lies with those asserting (without any ground) that He exists, this is not equivalent to Eyeball saying "what if I told you I was 50 foot tall" because the claim about your height is provable one way or the other, by measuring the distance from your feet to the top of your head. That is not unprovable, its measuable. Can you see the difference?

So the atheist who says that God is unprovable is not obliged to say that everything in the universe is unprovable, only that some assertions - such as the existence of God and phlogiston - cannot be proved because we have no evidence of their existence. Agnosticism is not the rational response to unprovable assertions. Agnosticism makes the mistake of concluding that if something is unprovable then it is unknowable (that there must always be doubt about its existence). The unprovable and the unknowable are not the same thing.

The atheist is not simply subject to a rival fiction. The atheist behaves rationally given the lack of evidence, just as it would be rational to cross the road when there's no traffic even when you're child is telling you that a dinosaur is going to come round the corner at any minute.

The main flaw with the theist's argument is that it seems to believe it knows the truth without reason or reasonable proof or good reasons.

I've not really got anything to add, but Thomas Tallis, your posts have been very interesting.

sometimes, maybe that's true. What about the other times?

There was this bloke in my mum's book club who, whenever my mum or I tried to talk about the history of the church, not even anything particularly hardcore theological, would just throw up his hands and declare "Oh no, I don't want to know about theology. Faith for me is a heart thing, not a head thing!"

I kind of wrote him off as an illiterate loony fundie, but then, later on in the conversation, he mentioned that he was an accountant, and started talking about some fairly sophisticated things. I realised that this guy is not a dummy. But the accountant thing tipped me off.

Some people are *so* rational, they live so much in their heads - with figures, with mathematics and logic - that they like to assign anything that *isn't* totally logical and rational to this strange area of "FAITH" and "heart stuff" that they don't understand, and don't *want* to understand. There are people who compartmentalise love into the same place.

To me, the division between heart and head is irrational and arbitrary. I want to understand the things that I love, and I want to love the things that I understand. But some people seem to feel the need to do this.

Best thing said on ILX in at least ten minutes (that's a BIG compliment, btw).

Tell me about these facts that you say I have faith in.

And I haven't made any such arguments about the Bible being altered, so it hardly matters whether its authors got rich or got killed. This is simply not the issue.

So, if you'd be so kind as to look up thread at my actual points, maybe we could have a conversation.

A relevant passage from another site examining this question:

In the closing years of the first century, Josephus, the celebrated Jewish historian, wrote his famous work on "The Antiquities of the Jews." In this work, the historian made no mention of Christ, and for two hundred years after the death of Josephus, the name of Christ did not appear in his history. There were no printing presses in those days. Books were multiplied by being copied. It was, therefore, easy to add to or change what an author had written. The church felt that Josephus ought to recognize Christ, and the dead historian was made to do it. In the fourth century, a copy of "The Antiquities of the Jews" appeared, in which occurred this passage: "Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

but Brooks I get the feeling you're not actually interested in getting to the bottom of things. You would be a Christian even if God Himself came down and told you "Jesus never existed."

Oh, that author?

I'm starting to think Aja is the 40 year old and Brooks is the 12 year old...

Why do you think that?

I need to know this for some of the stuff in the Bible to make sense to me.

Anyone know?

You know, the Hindu scriptures are even older than the Bible - they've been around forever, and there are millions of believers in them worldwide - do you accept them to be true because people still believe in them?

x-post: not to make sweeping generalizations or anything, but the general rule of Christian discourse is "ignore anything you can't answer"