A Response/Challenge to a Christian on Facebook: Part 3

Well, I got a response. This should be fun.

"Blogger: Beliefs can be false and practical. To argue that religion is useful is not to argue for the truth of religion. Religion can be the most useful thing in the world, and the most untrue. The video below may be of interest.

Me: You did not argue that religion was useless so I’ll assume you agreed as for why you should believe the Christian Religion we will start with the holy text that defines its whole dogma. The New Testament. Scientifically speaking if you cannot trust the New Testament you cannot trust any ancient text. Let me explain. There are more copies and fragments of this ancient document than there are for any other ancient document IN THE WORLD. 5,600 copies to be exact. Second on that list is Homer’s The Illiad with only 643. In fact most ancient documents only have about 10 copies. The next factor that plays a role in the factual credibility of any ancient text is the time between when the original was written and when the first copies show up. The New Testament again ranks NUMBER ONE with a gap of less than a generation which approximately 100 years which historically speaking is less than the blink of an eye. Again Homer’s Iliad comes in second with about a gap of …..wait for it ….. 500 years. The next factor any scholar uses in determining factual credibility of any ancient text is looking at how much each of the texts agree with each other, which is to determine if they all say the same thing. Well guess which ancient text ranks number one in that category also. The New Tesatment of course comes in at 99.6% agreement between the texts. This fact is bolstered by the fore mentioned amount of copies we have in existence of the new testament. So back to the truth of religion, I don’t know about that. But arguing for the truth of Christianity? There you go Mr. Myterious Athiest Blogger and his over hype brother."

The poster didn't provide any source for these claims, but it doesn't matter. I would implore him to do so in the future.

This is simply a non-sequitur. There could be one million copies of the New Testament, but that does not make any of its claims true. Is there some rule that states that untrue narratives cannot be copied thousands of times? Do the Celestial Truth Police prevent this from happening? The only thing 5,600 copies proves is that there are 5,600 copies. Would civilizations 2000 years from now be justified in believing in Scientology if they discover millions of copies of Dianetics?

The accuracy between copies is another non-sequitur. All this proves is that people were paying close attention when they made copies. This does not make any of the claims true. I think the poster here may have a fundamental misunderstanding of the historical method. Historians give more credence to claims when multiple independent sources agree on events. Copies are not considered different sources. I ask again, When civilizations 2000 years from now come across copies of Dianetics  and find that the copies agree with each other, would they be justified in believing in Scientology?

Consider the dating of the earliest copies: approximately 100 years. So, all of these copies were made by people who weren't there and who had no way of verifying the truth of these narratives, one hundred years after the original texts were produced--originals which, I should remind readers, came decades after the events happened. So, a bunch of people copied an unverified story. So what? If there were 5,600 unique eyewitness accounts, not people who weren't there passing along a century-old story, I would be impressed. This historical "blink of an eye" isn't as inconsequential as the poster wants us to believe.

It should also be noted that the earliest Gospel comes along more than thirty years after the supposed death of Jesus, but the poster doesn't seem to feel any need to address this. I would need the reliability of the original texts to be proven, not the reliability of copies as copies.


I hope people find this piece of paper where I wrote "Michael Epperson is the Son of God" one hundred years from now and make thousands of copies. I might get a few naive followers.

How does the poster deal with the many contradictions in the Gospels?

 http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_carlson/nt_contradictions.html

It seems silly to talk about the accuracy of copies of stories that show very little internal consistency. 


Nevertheless, all any of this proves is that people were passionate about spreading these narratives.


If there were 5,600 unique sources, not copies, that reported miracles and were all agreement, I would be impressed. However, there are no contemporaneous non-biblical sources reporting any of the miracle claims at the time. There aren't even contemporaneous non-biblical sources for Jesus' existence (which I accept anyway), let alone any miracles he supposedly performed.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

The argument from copies is one of the worst I've seen, honestly. Is this really the sole criterion for determining the trustworthiness of a text--how many copies there are? Not how many unique, unbiased sources report events, but how many copies there are? And what about the originals? I'm not sure how anyone can take this argument seriously. I suggest readers take a look into the historical method instead of accepting the poster's claims about the opinion of scholars, because scholars do not operate is this fashion (see below). The poster's approach is far too superficial and oversimplified and dangerously negligent of other essential considerations. It has literally nothing to do with the content or construction of the original texts.

Not only is the argument being bad in its own right, but the poster chooses to isolate this single questionable method of determining historical accuracy of a text. Scholars use several methods to determine the reliability of ancient texts, but the poster makes no mention of them here--I'm guessing because the Bible flat-out fails to meet other scholarly standards (see link below and put the Bible to the test for yourself). For example, he mentions the time between the original and copies, but he blatantly ignores the passage of time between the supposed events and the original documents; historians are more concerned with the latter, and common sense should reveal why. Historians do not judge the credibility of a text based on one criterion any more than a building inspector judges the safety of a building by only checking to see if the doors open properly. 

In his response, I would like to see the poster cite sources about scholarly methods and opinions, and be very specific about what exactly scholars use the volume and accuracy of copies to prove. I would also like to see the poster address the relationship between the historical method and supernatural events--since we're appealing to scholarship we need to ask, How do scholars actually approach supernatural claims? I would also like to see the poster actually take the multifaceted scholarly approach, not isolate one method because it supposedly supports his point. Coming to a judgment about a text based on one criterion, no matter how useful a criterion it is, is the antithesis of historical scholarship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method

"Blogger: I'm not sure why Christians even bring up free will. It's not even a Biblical concept, so I'm wondering where this belief that Yahweh gives people free will even comes from. Judging by the Bible, there are many reasons to believe that free will is not compatible with Christianity

Me: Click the link and suck it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wivgDck1l88   …. The video is pretty long so I’ll paraphrase, break it down, and explain why it is a relevant counter argument.  You’re basically saying that the concept of free will is not possible in Christianity. Well your not Christian first of all how would you know. Being an atheist you don’t even accept the existence of hell or punishment for how ever you choose to live so what difference does it make if Christians live a certain way because we know there are eternal consequences for our actions. Aside from that a simple grasp of Christian principles and how God works makes it easy to understand. You are an atheist that is your free will. You chose to ignore Christs teaching and resolve your cognitive dissonance with dumbass evolution facts philosophical conundrums. Free will in the Christian religion is having the choice of doing what you want despite the fact God knows it is bad for you and the fact that you may face eternal consequences for them. Free will is not anarchy. God’s word is the law and if you break the law you go to Jail. You can’t say oh I have no freewill because if I murder a three year old I’m going to jail. Silly Atheist.lol"

Speaking in terms of physical causality, free will is an incoherent concept. So, even if the poster manages to show that there is "free will" in Christianity, he has to show that free will is even a psychological possibility. See the Sam Harris video from part one. Without a fundamental psychological free will, any type of Christian free will can't get off the ground--unless we're supposed to assume that the creator of the universe has a third-grade understanding of causality.

"Free will" is one of those terms people like to throw around without being clear on what they mean. I need to know how he's using this term. He seems to be using "free will" in a way that is specific to his religion (people in other religions talk about their religion the same way). Again, free will is not a Biblical concept, so I would like him to explain why free will is part of his religious beliefs. Anyway, the problem with his usage of "free will" is that it's completely contradictory to how this term is used in the English language. Here a few examples:


"The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion." (Google Dictionary)
"Spontaneous or unconstrained will; unforced choice; (also) inclination to act without suggestion from others." (Oxford English Dictionary)

It's obvious how coercion of any sort contradicts the notion of free will as defined above.  The poster is using a self-serving definition of "free will" that is specific to his religion, and at odds with the English language, philosophy, and psychology. Given all of this, I wonder why he won't stop hijacking this term that, in its non-religious use, is completely at odds with the believe-or-burn religion he believes in. If, in the context of your religion, you consider coercion to be compatible with free will, that's fine. You can also consider torture an act of love if you want, or you consider bats to be birds--that's if you're redefining these terms. But the poster should know that the term he is using is antithetical to how it is defined in the English language.

If someone holds a gun to my head and tells me to give them my money or die, would we really say I have "free will"? If the poster agrees that I have "free will" in this scenario, then at least he's consistent. It would still be at odds with the English language, and I see no reason why I should entertain his religious butchering of a term.

But even if he's consistent, I wonder how he feels about the terroristic threat at the core of his religion. A terrorist who gives you free will is still a terrorist.

"Blogger: According to the Bible, Yahweh endorsed slavery. Why wasn't "thou shall not enslave" a commandment, anyway? I will agree with the claim that the Biblical god didn't enslave only on the grounds that he never existed to enslave anyone.

Me: Well I am glad you agree …. Secondly the Yahweh leads by example. This was the whole point of sending  Jesus Christ, because in the Christianity he is divine, God in the flesh. He was suppose to be an example for the rest of us. I’m sure you are familiar with the phrase …. What would jesus do?"

Did the poster miss this the part where I said, "I will agree...only on the grounds that he never existed to enslave anyone"? According to the Bible, Yahweh did endorse slavery, and not once did he condemn it (sources in part one). The poster needs to respond to that. Here the responder jumps off-topic to preach.

Yahweh leading by example is interesting, though. Slaveholders in antebellum South surely took up Yahweh's example when it came to slavery. We are talking about a deity who supposedly committed near-genocide with a global flood--some example. Let's not forget that Christianity is a believe-or-burn religion, and that Jesus went around threatening people with Hell. Is that the type of example people are supposed to follow? Terrorize and torture people who don't do what you want them to. If Christianity is true, Jesus is at the head of the most powerful terrorist group of all time--a universal terrorist group with a victim count in the billions. That really undermines all of the fuzzy stuff Jesus said in the Bible, doesn't it?

"Blogger: This is an opinion. “X created Y; therefore X has the obligation and right to judge and punish Y.” That is a personal judgment—albeit one that many people share, but still an opinion. Rights and obligations do not exist outside of minds. They are derived from minds, and are therefore subjective. Quite simply, they are made up. I could easily say the contrary--that it would not be his job or right to judge anyone or anything, and we would be stuck with two opinions.
 Now, the poster might say, "But this is not my opinion. God created this rule. And as the creator, he gets to make up the rules."

Me: This was a rubuttal to me saying God has the right to judge because he is creator. Just because we have two opinions does not mean one of us isn’t wrong.  Secondly if my stance is considered made up for the simple fact that it is an opinion  “that many people share”  then yours must be also made up for it is also an opinion. The only difference is less people believe in your stance. That is all."

My point is not that we have two opinions, but that we have two opinions that cannot go beyond being opinion. They are subjective calls and, therefore, cannot "graduate" to the level of fact. The poster needs to go back and read through the logic again. Although any claim about rights and obligations cannot go beyond opinion, I would be interested in hearing how one rationalizes the "right" and "obligation" to subject billions of human beings to eternal torture.


"Blogger: To be infinitely merciful and vengeful to any degree is a contradiction. It makes as much sense to say that I am an infinitely calm being--except when I'm excited. Mercy is suspended when an act of vengeance occurs. If a god were to commit an act of vengeance, there is obviously a limit to its mercy--it is not infinitely merciful. The god who commits no acts of vengeance, who shows mercy in every instance, would be the god who is infinitely merciful. Any other god fails to be infinitely merciful.

Me: Ok so he’s not infinitely merciful ….. sue me lol. He is merciful though!  For the simple fact that anyone……ANYONE!!! …. In the Christian religion can make it to heaven. Provided you profess Jesus Christ as lord, savior, and only way to eternal life. Also that you repent for all your sins and continue to whole heartedly seek a close and meaningful relationship with God."

Did I actually get a Christian concede on a point? Nice.

What happens if you don't comply with Yahweh's demands? Eternal torture. Yahweh isn't any more merciful than an abusive husband who promises to be nice to his wife as long as she doesn't disobey him--but as soon as she disobeys him, he Chris Browns her. You see a character who is merciful. I see a character who is just another terrorist.

"Blogger: To make this claim, one would have to have studied the literally tens of thousands of religions to have ever existed. I would be willing to bet that no human being alive has done this. I would be interested in hearing evidence for this claim, though. Why is Christianity less trustworthy than, say, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, etc.? Has the poster truly done a fair comparison of all religions?I would like some evidence for this claim. Is there a poll that shows that scholars deem the Christian religion to be the most trustworthy? I don't understand this appeal to authority here. Given current academic standards, the claim doesn't make sense. The vast majority of universities, academic journals, and publishers do not accept religious scripture as evidence of anything other than what scripture says. Backing up an argument with Biblical support is considered to be invalid and unsophisticated amongst scholars and academics. I thought this was general knowledge. I shouldn't have to explain this to anyone who has taken a college course--even a high school course. If scholars considered the religion so trustworthy, academic standards would be drastically different. I don't think the poster wants to play the game of appealing to what most academics would vouch for. He would, then, have to deal with the fact that the vast majority of scientists accept evolution as fact. That is a claim that can actually be proven with a five-second Google search, unlike the wild claim presented here about Christianity's standing amongst academics. And does "most trustworthy" mean that all its major and miraculous claims are trustworthy or accepted by academia? Since most trustworthy is relative, a religion can be the most trustworthy and still have, say, 95% of its claims written off as untrustworthy. To me, the "most trustworthy religion" sounds like "least oppressive dictatorship." Not exactly a compliment, is it? Still, I would love to hear the argument for this claim.

Me : Didn’t I already shove your face in it? Just in case you forgot here it is again …. Scientifically speaking if you cannot trust the New Testament you cannot trust any ancient text. Let me explain. There are more copies and fragments of this ancient document than there are for any other ancient document IN THE WORLD. 5,600 copies to be exact. Second on that list is Homer’s The Illiad with only 643. In fact most ancient documents only have about 10 copies. The next factor that plays a role in the factual credibility of any ancient text is the time between when the original was written and when the first copies show up. The New Testament again ranks NUMBER ONE with a gap of less than a generation which approximately 100 years which historically speaking is less than the blink of an eye. Again Homer’s Iliad comes in second with about a gap of …..wait for it ….. 500 years. The next factor any scholar uses in determining factual credibility of any ancient text is looking at how much each of the texts agree with each other, which is to determine if they all say the same thing. Well guess which ancient text ranks number one in that category also. The New Tesatment of course comes in at 99.6% agreement between the texts. This fact is bolstered by the fore mentioned amount of copies we have in existence of the new testament. So back to the truth of religion, I don’t know about that. But arguing for the truth of Christianity? There you go Mr. Myterious Athiest Blogger and his over hype brother."

Repeating this doesn't make it true. This doesn't address the claim that the Bible is trustworthy--only that we should trust it more than other ancient texts.  The content--I repeat--the content and construction of each religious text needs to be examined in order to support this claim, not the number of copies of a certain text. The poster makes no attempt to examine the origin of the original texts, and explain why those are reliable. A good case can't be made for the trustworthiness of the original Gospels, which contain many contradictions (link above), no secondary sources to support their claims, and come from anonymous authors several decades after the events supposedly took place. We're simply asked to ignore that and take the reliability of the original texts for granted. Without a reliable foundation, copies hold no weight. If the poster responds, he needs to argue for the reliability of the original texts, not reliability of copies as copies, which is all his argument can do at this point. It is completely possible for a text to be copied 50 million times and still be completely untrue. On the other hand, it is completely possible for a religious text to be copied only once and be more trustworthy than the Bible. This argument from copies is nonsensical.

The poster seems to want to argue that it is the most trustworthy ancient text. As mentioned in a previous blog, this is relative--it proves as much as calling someone the least oppressive dictator; it does not mean said dictator is not oppressive. Even if he proves the relative trustworthiness of the text, this just proves that the text is relatively more trustworthy than other texts. It does not come close to giving us a reason to call it trustworthy in its own right, and it certainly does not come close to giving us a reason to believe literally every claim in the text.

"Blogger: Again, let’s get some evidence for this accuracy. Jesus’ existence is still disputed among historians, but that is beside the point. It's dubious, but I'm willing to grant that a man named Jesus existed at the time and went around preaching in ancient Israel. Someone named Jesus merely existing at the time, and doing or saying some of things attributed to him, does not mean that he did or said all of the things attributed to him. The miracle claims in the Bible are not considered historical facts among historians (I guess scholars don't find the religion very trustworthy at all), and they can’t be proven by mere existence of a person. If someone, 500 years from now, wants to claim that I had telepathic powers, producing a photo that proved my existence would not be evidence for their claim. There is more historical evidence for Muhammad, Joseph Smith, and Sathya Sai Baba, and many people (thousands alive today in the case of Sathya Sai Baba) who will vouch for supposed miracles. Why not believe them? Are Joseph Smith's claims true because we have photos of him? Below is a list of other figures who have supposedly performed miracles, most of whom have more evidence for their existence than Jesus. Why does a Christian accept the miracle claims of their religion, and not others?

Me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CycbvARsxWU&list=PL1B7EA7B92476264B&index=12&feature=plpp_video    ….. Click the link and suck on it. Basic point of the video >>> In reality there is much more proof for the existence of jesus than any other famous figure of the day. Secondly sources used are NON BIBLICAL"


Did I not already grant the claim that Jesus existed? I agree that Jesus existed, so why is the poster sticking to this one point, posting a video titled "Did Jesus Exist?" and telling me to "suck it"? My guess is that he has no response for everything else I wrote here. The poster simply ignored my point about Muhammad, Joseph Smith, and Sathya Sai Baba.

As I said in my previous response, mere existence is not evidence that Jesus did everything that the Bible claims he did.

There are no secondary sources that report any miracles. Zero. Unless the poster is willing to concede that Joseph Smith's existence is evidence that Mormonism is true, he should stop using this empty existence argument.



By the way, all those non-Biblical sources are not eyewitness accounts, and they all come from non-eyewitnesses several decades after the supposed death of Jesus. If one actually reads the early non-Biblical sources they mostly attest to the existence of Christians and Christianity, not Jesus, anyway. Actually reading the sources will illuminate the distinction. So, although I'm willing to grant existence, let's not get a big head about this. Because, as I said, it is still a dubious claim.


Still, I have no interest in debating Jesus' existence, just the miracle claims. Show me contemporaneous, non-Biblical accounts of miracles, and then we can talk. Hint: They don't exist.


"Blogger: Let’s get a definition of religion here. This claim is absurd.

I should also take the time to remind the Christian poster of the words of Jesus, who certainly wouldn't appreciate the language used here:

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell

Me: What are you butt hurt? Yea I’m Christian I never said I was Mr. Holy person or whatever. Suck it up he’s an asshole. Instead of saying that why don’t you try to prove he’s not an asshole. Hmmm …. Lemme guess why. One, because he is in fact an asshole …. Two, because you thought it was cool to throw the bible back in my face ….. Yeah nice job there. You have also graduated asshole academy."

The poster refused to give a definition of religion, and back up his claim about evolution being a religion. Can we stop the personal attacks and stick to the arguments?

"Blogger(Paraphrased): Basically just a whole bunch of bullshit about how I think Darwins Origin of Species fully explains evolutionary biology and that I need a deeper understanding blah blah I’m so freaking smart blah blah blah. Also Christians use the bible as fact and we atheist support our views with lots of bull shit.

Me: First of all .....I wasn’t trynna say that so calm your neck. Atleast  80% of what you said was mad unnecessary .  Secondly why not use the bible as evidence? Do I have to shove your face in how trustworthy it is…..AGAIN? …. Silly Atheist. Darwins Origin of Species is the beginning of all evolutionary biology. The base work, so not for its factual worth or infallibility is it the holy text of you atheists .... it is so for the (lack of a better phrase) sentimental value."

It's unfortunate that the poster has to resort to this type of childish approach.

I'll repeat this only because the poster repeats his argument: Saying there are 5,600 copies of a text does not prove it is trustworthy. I can go make 5,600 copies of a story about how I created the universe last Tuesday, and that wouldn't make my story trustworthy. I'm going to need a better argument for why we should trust a set of stories that contradict themselves, were written decades after the events supposedly happened, by non-eyewitnesses. The poster needs to tell me why we should trust the original texts before leaping to copies.

It's unbelievable that anyone would really use this line of reasoning: "this story has been copied a lot of times; therefore, you should believe all of it." Fortunately, I believe this argument is a rationalization for faith, not the actual reason why the poster is a Christian. 

So, a text is religious/holy if it has sentimental value? I guess Jane Eyre is a religious/holy text for me. I guess the journal I kept the first year of college is a religious/holy text for me. I see that "religious/holy text" has been butchered, for rhetorical purposes, to the point of being a meaningless descriptor. It's purposefully misleading to call a text religious or holy for this reason. I will consider this claim empty, dishonest rhetoric.

Why does the poster make claims about "you atheists"? Most atheists haven't read any of Darwin's writings, so it's pretty dishonest to claim a text has sentimental value for those people. Can I just go on record and say that I have read Origin, but it doesn't have any sentimental value for me. I don't even own it. It drags a bit at times, to be honest. 

 

A lot of my other points just went ignored. This is the biggest problem with debating several big issues at once. I wonder if the poster would want to focus on one issue at a time.