Guest posts by Innominate

13

Religion / Re: Responses to a few common arguments

« on: August 04, 2010, 02:35:18 pm »

You know that famous poem, Footsteps in the sand or somesuch? Well I had the same experience as the protagonist in that. I used to think I heard God, but I realise now that I only ever heard him at emotionally charged times, like when a church is in full swing, and even then it was never as clear as the experience you describe. But once I began to have my first doubts, I never heard from him again in any way, shape or form. Other's experience may differ, but that was mine.

14

Religion / Re: The First Cause Argument

« on: August 01, 2010, 08:01:01 am »

My point is that the entire argument is based on causality, which is in turn based on the human arrogance in believing that what they think occurs is how the entire universe and everything that could ever possibly exist functions. Causality is not universally applicable. At least the laws of electromagnetics actually apply to everything we know about.

Consider the underlined statement and how it relates to your entire argument.

There is no reason to suppose that in some cases the cause does not need to proceed the effects. In quantum mechanics we cannot observe what acts on an individual particle to trigger it's behavior. This is not sufficient reason to decide cause does not exist in this case.

We do not have sufficient reason to suppose that causality is a universal and binding rule. Just because it's useful for everyday physics doesn't mean it holds true unfailingly everywhere, even in conditions where most laws of physics break down (like, say, singularities).

Furthermore, although you have claimed several times that you can apply Quantum theory to macro objects, this transition has never been established by modern science. This is, in fact, exactly what the much sought after "Theory of Everything" is looking for.

The theory of everything is to unify the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) in one theory, not to link quantum mechanics to classical mechanics. The only dilemma facing quantum mechanics today is that we haven't yet unified quantum mechanics with general relativity's idea that gravity is deformed space-time.

Quantum mechanics does actually apply to macroscopic objects. It's the entire point of the correspondence principle, and Ehrenfest's theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenfest%27s_theorem) showed that quantum mechanics slides perfectly into classical mechanics as the numbers become large enough. Not only has the transition been established by modern science, it's been established for around 80 years.

As to the cause of God, the reference to citing omnipotence was to link the entity implied in this argument to God, not to presuppose omnipotence. Being able to violate causality is a major part of what this argument implies about the creator of the universe.

But why is this ability peculiar to God? Why cannot the universe create itself?

15

Religion / Re: Responses to a few common arguments

« on: August 01, 2010, 07:40:02 am »

It seems you do not quite understand innominate.
Judges 1:19
The point here wasnt whether the translation was he or they. The point was that they had lost their trust in God again, and so because of their lack of faith (due to the Iron Chariots), God did not allow them to conquer them.

Every translation there uses a phrase meaning "could not", as opposed to "decided not to allow". If the pronoun is "he" and not "they", then the verse is quite explicitly saying that God was unable to conquer the people of the valley because they had chariots of iron. If the pronoun is "they", then it is simply a failure of the people of Judah.

Isaiah 20:2-4
Arguments like these show true hatred for the bible, and are not meant to be intellectual. Right here, as much as I hate to say it, you are sounding like iampostal.

There are 146 verses that use a word relating to circumcision (some of these are even being used as a metaphor for purity), and it was a requirement to get into heaven before Jesus. Heaven was even denied to men who had crushed genitalia, and couldn't offer bread to god. Women were unclean after birth (interestingly only 7 days for a male child but two weeks for a girl) and during and after menstruation (so presumably half the time that they're not pregant; they also make anybody who has sex with them unclean). Men on the other hand were unclean if they had a "running issue out of his flesh" (i.e. a sexually transmitted disease) or ejaculated (making their partner unclean in the process). All these different things have very specific instructions and take up a fair chunk of Leviticus.

There are 218 separate references to sex or genitalia (dealt with over many more verses), including extensive, specific restrictions on what you can or cannot have sex with. By comparison, there are 100 references to Hell; perhaps less if certain phrases like "the outer darkness" are taken not to mean Hell. There are far more references to heaven, over 551 (which is how many verses in the KJV use that word). So if we were to take the occurrence of these themes as indications of God's priorities, we would have to conclude that sex and genitalia are more important than Hell but less so than heaven.

The references to sex are not single verses but verse chunks, so the actual span is greater than that at 608 verses (I used a nifty program to sum up the number of verses on the Skeptic's Annotated Bible page about sex (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/sex/long.htm)). This would put it past the post of heaven, except the treatment would be unfair, since the heaven references (which I can't be bothered to count) were single verses not chunks; heaven still beats sex.

Malachi 2:3
You know what is interesting? Out of the three bibles I have with me right now, all of different types, The first one has an OT that is 1252 pages long, the second has an OT that is 1186 pages long, and the third has an OT that is 1368 pages long. How does 10 references even 20 or 30, that hardly take up an entire sentence, show that God is obsessed with the things you mentioned?seems like it isnt even 1% of what is talked about.

However, I just wanted to quickly point that out, as it relates to your response to the above verse as well. However this seems to be another argument born out or resentment, and not out of intellect, so I am leaving it alone as well.

It was indeed hyperbole. The point I was trying to make was that dung, semen, menstrual fluid and urine make much more of an appearance in the Bible than we would expect from a book written by a god, but pretty much the same amount we would expect from a book written by iron age nomads (later, when there are fewer references to those emissions, happens to coincide with the Israelites settling down and hence not having to worry about dealing with filth in a campsite - the circumstances of the Israelites drove what they wrote, not any god).

Numbers 22:20-22
No the point is that you have to actually look at the entire scripture instead of just one verse to truly understand ANYTHING in the bible.

So how do you decide which verses are kosher and which aren't? When the Bible says "God is Love" nobody raises any objections that verses are being taken out of context or anything. It's only when a verse says "God killed him because he did what God told him to do" that we find that apparently you need to read the entire scripture. Well God killed over 2,391,421 people in the Bible (and that's just the ones where explicit numbers are given; he probably killed more than that just with the flood), drowned the entire planet's population, ordered genocide against the Amalekites, let Satan destroy a man's life and kill his entire family for a bet and destroyed entire cities. So when the Bible says "God is Love", do they mean "God Loves to kill things"?

Hosea 8:4
It seems many bibles consider the proper wording here to be acknowledged and not a lack of truth. When you can't look at the hebrew, and yet see discrepancies in the different versions, a good practice is to compare it to the rest of the bible, and see which translation appears to be more accurate.

Thats all from me for now, I like reading long posts, but I hate sorting through my own long ones.

The word translated as "knew" is יָדַע, transliterated as "yada". It's translated as "acknowledge" 6 times in the KJV, out of 947 appearances in total. נָכַר, "nakar", is the only other Hebrew word ever translated as "acknowledge" in the KJV, translated so 7 times out of 50 appearances. Now it's certainly possible that "acknowledge" is the intended meaning - it would fit with the common Hebrew poetic technique of repetition (from the NIV: "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval." and the only other Bible to translate it differently from knowledge is the World English Bible), and without a more detailed knowledge of how Hebrew words connote different things I'll have to let this one go.

The parable is on the right track, but it misses something in the scale. All religion is guesswork, and the guessing covers a much broader scale than an elephant's different parts; for one thing, not all possible religions have been formulated. The sheer number of possible theologies is staggering, and every religion has a diametric opposite. In other words not only is it possible to be wrong by not guessing correctly, it's possible to be 100% wrong by guessing the opposite of the truth. There are so many different areas in which a religion could differ that the chances of getting even a small fraction of them correct is infinitesimal.

The underlined statement is an assumption, and one that can only be reached by discarding all almost all testimony coming from religious persons, only for the reason that it came from a religious person.

It's not that it came from a religious person. It could come from 200 ft high writing on cliffs that appeared overnight and it wouldn't change the central problem: whether it is true or not is impossible to prove. There is no way to differentiate between genuine and false divine inspiration, so it comes down to guesswork. It's like which interpretation of quantum mechanics you favour: they're all identical in their predictions, so nothing we could do would provide evidence for one that wasn't applicable to all of them. Thus the interpretation you choose is guesswork.

It sounds ridiculous

This is really starting to look more like flinging insults then a serious examination of the argument.

My argument is that the Bible is preoccupied with earthly details, particularly the Old Testament. Rather than holding special knowledge, the Bible is exactly what we would expect if it was written by the people who were alive then, and very little like we would expect a book written by a god to be. God in the Old Testament is war-like, much like the Israelites were. Later on when the Israelites have established themselves and no longer need to fight every tribe in the area, God stops telling them to fight other tribes. Where was the New Testament message of peace and love when the Israelites were fighting to survive? About 2,000 years away, that's where. Only when the authors of the Bible no longer needed to fight did God stop telling them to fight.

God didn't lead the Israelites; the Israelites led God. There's some interesting research which suggests humans endow God with the beliefs we already hold (here (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18216-dear-god-please-confirm-what-i-already-believe.html)), and the Bible fits well with that notion.

Invisible Pink Unicorn

We can also trace hunger back to specific nerve impulses and areas of the brain. That does not mean food does not exist.

If we can simulate the effects of a religious experience by modifying the brain then it means that religious experience is no longer a valid argument for religion. It doesn't prove that religion is false, just as hunger being rooted in the brain doesn't prove food doesn't exist, but it does mean that a genuine religious experience isn't the only explanation.

Can I ask for a source on how you can trigger a UFO sighting or enlightenment by running current through someone's brain? I can't think of anyway someone could run that experiment without severely violating some human rights.

Triggering out of body experiences and "shadow presences" by stimulating the angular gyrus (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/health/psychology/03shad.html?_r=1)
The Neuropsychiatry of Paranormal Experiences, Michael Persinger (http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/13/4/515#SEC5)
The website of the "God Helmet", called the Shakti (http://www.shaktitechnology.com/neurotheology.htm)

UFO sightings are an "attribution error", where a visual hallucination is attributed to an alien craft rather than the brain 'misfiring'. UFO abduction stories are more often confabulation, or the rewriting of a memory to explain things that the brain doesn't accurately remember - everybody does it, because the brain can't hold all memories perfectly accurately. Sometimes it just kind of stores the big parts and then fills in the gaps. Sleep paralysis is sometimes interpreted as a UFO abduction as well; you can't move and the brain is still in a dream state (and so you see weird images), but you feel like you're awake. Some people get the problem all the time, while most never do. It has been researched quite a bit in laboratories.

You're still taking statements of "I saw that for myself" as "I think that happened"

Because ultimately that's what all such statements are. Optical illusions show how easily we can be misled about reality.

Dead Sea Scrolls

It seems you have two different arguments here, and they directly contradict one another.

One states Gospels don't match each other, and the other says they match each other too closely and are therefore plagiarized.

Sections of the gospels, not the gospels as a whole. If three people who concocted a story together are asked about it, they will use extremely similar phrasing, detail and an identical order of events. On the other hand if you ask these same three people, separately, to make up a story about the same thing on the spot then they will disagree on major details. These are the two different types of miracle account in the Bible: some are copied from each other while others are concocted about the same event separately. I don't know why some events are copied while others are concocted, but it's most likely because the authors wanted to inject their own message into some events and not others.

The disciples state that the writers of each Gospel checked with the other disciples to confirm he wasn't misrepresenting the story. This can answer both arguments quite handily, since a) it isn't plagiarism if you cite your source and b) if there were such condemning differences between the narratives as you suppose, why would they have left them in? An event may be missing from one of the Gospels because the author wasn't there, or there are several places where the authors state that there were more signs & wonders performed, but not all of them were recorded in that book.

Even when people check with others the phrasing is bound to differ. The same person writing two accounts of the same event a few months apart will differ more in their summary than the Gospels do, as will the same person telling two different people the same story. The only place the near-verbatim copies could have come from is the actual text itself. The Gospels were not written independently but with full knowledge of the preceding Gospels (except for John's, which does appear to have been written independently, and Mark's, which was the first). There is little evidence to suggest that the Gospels were actually authored by any of the discisples. Mark's gospel was most likely written after 65 AD, and John's after 90 AD.

The reason the differences were left in was probably because the gospel authors didn't intend for them to be read together: Matthew's gospel was most likely intended to be read by Jews, Mark's by Romans and Luke's by Greeks, while John probably didn't have a specific audience in mind but wrote long after the others. Further, they probably disagreed with each other over what was more important.

Also, if an "event may be missing from one of the Gospels because the author wasn't there", why do we have the story of Jesus in the desert and his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane? Which of the authors was there when Jesus was alone in the desert, or alone when praying the night before his death? It's hard to see how those could be sourced from an eye-witness when the text itself says there was none.

16

Death / Re: Deathstalker | Deathstalker

« on: July 30, 2010, 11:40:20 am »

What if both Deathstalker and Dune Scorpion had their unupped stats, but the upped versions had 1 attack? That would be a very worthwhile upgrade, and would make them VERY playable.

This.

I agree with the Deathstalker, but not the Dune Scorpion. If we're going to have a mechanic in the game that forces the player to discard a random card, it should be damned difficult to get out. If all it takes is one card and 3 time quanta to destroy a card in your hand then we've completely ruined stall decks.

17

Religion / Re: The First Cause Argument

« on: July 30, 2010, 11:36:31 am »

My response to the "who made God?" argument is as follows:

If we have established that God can violate causality (cite omnipotence and the rest is easy) then He could then cause Himself to be, since cause no longer needs to proceed effect.

More simply put, If I had a time machine I could travel back to before I was born. I would then exist without ever having been caused to exist.

But we haven't established that God is omnipotent. This argument is about proving that God is necessary, and only logical necessities can be used to prove something is necessary. From the mathematics of modal logic, any postulate contingent on contingent objects is not necessary. In other words, unless you can prove that if God exists he must be able to subvert the laws that describe the universe, his omnipotence is contingent and therefore he is too.

18

Religion / Re: Responses to a few common arguments

« on: July 30, 2010, 07:23:11 am »

Perhaps the problem is not how it is written, but the lack of understanding to Gods true intentions?

Judges 1:19 - And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

http://bible.cc/judges/1-19.htm This Site explains it quite well. Gives several different translations, along with several commentaries as well. Read the commentaries for the logic behind this verse.

I noticed that the different translations give completely different pronouns for the subject thtad drives out the inhabitants of the mountains and not the valley. So I went to the Hebrew to see if I could find which pronoun was used. And, since I have no experience reading Hebrew, I failed completely. I did notice that the Hebrew-English translation Bible (http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0701.htm) I was using used "he" instead of "they", but until I or somebody else can verify which translation (he or they) is correct, this one's going to have to sit on the backburner. If it's he, God is unable to drive out the valley people. If it's they, it's just the people of Judah being wimps.

Isaiah 20:2-4 - At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years [for] a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with [their] buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

Perhaps reading the next 2 verses would bring some enlightenment?
___
5And they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia their expectation, and of Egypt their glory.

 6And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whither we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria: and how shall we escape?
____
So there obviously was a point to this. Whether you think it is silly or not, sometimes a silly way to do something is the better way to do something.

Well as the most powerful being in the universe he could have done anything to change their minds. But the Old Testament is a pretty clear example that Yahweh is obsessed with human genitalia, and so he chose nudity.

Hosea 8:4 - They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew [it] not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off.

I dont really get whats so crazy about this one... please enlighten me on your problem with it.

God isn't evidently as omniscient as he normally is. Maybe it was a bad day?

Malachi 2:3 - Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, [even] the dung of your solemn feasts; and [one] shall take you away with it.

Why dont we once again look at the full context instead of just taking one verse out. 
 2 If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honor my name," says the LORD Almighty, "I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not set your heart to honor me.
 3 "Because of you I will rebuke [a] your descendants [ b ] ; I will spread on your faces the offal from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. 4 And you will know that I have sent you this admonition so that my covenant with Levi may continue," says the LORD Almighty. 5 "My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. 6 True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.

 7 "For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and from his mouth men should seek instruction—because he is the messenger of the LORD Almighty. 8 But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi," says the LORD Almighty. 9 "So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law."
______
Seems like God was telling them to be careful about what they say. I think it makes much more sense when looked in context of the full verses around it. Just because you dont agree with methods, especially those of a different time and culture, doesnt mean anything.

It may make more sense, but it goes to show that God is also obsessed with the human emissions. Semen, menstrual fluid, faeces, urine; God has an unhealthy obsession with all of them. The Old Testament (and at least one verse in the New Testament) reads like a long string of faecal humour, interrupted frequently by boring bouts of history (admittedly this is hyperbole, but still). Try the Bible Poop Quiz (http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0505/biblepoopquiz.html) if you don't believe me.

Numbers 22:20-22 - And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up, [and] go with them; but yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do. And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab. And God's anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of the LORD stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants [were] with him.

Yahoo Answers does a good job of answering this question. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100723064712AAb9gQ3 It is explained quite well there.

The response appears to be that, despite the verse explicitly saying "God's anger was kindled because he went", that God's anger was actually kindled because he was bickering. It's nice to know that when a problem arises we can just reject what the Bible says.

It sounds ridiculous

I think Bluepriest said it quite well. When you took the verses out of context they sounded silly, when he provided the verses around them suddenly they make sense again.

They still sound silly, the silliness is just justified within the text. That doesn't mean it isn't silly, only that the text itself can't see how silly it is. It's almost like the text was written by an old people who were obsessed with excretions and sex.

Historical Contradictions

My point here is that if they are weighed by the same standard as other historical accounts, Biblical accounts of verifiable events tend to hold up quite well, not that there is no possible way to disprove them.

Ah I see. It's true that historically the Bible is pretty much exactly as accurate as every other book written by people in the same period of human history, but I think that's pretty much a condemnation rather than proof that it's divinely inspired.

A literal word-for-word interpretation of the Bible as an exact historical account is a belief only subscribed to by a small subset of Christians (fundamentalists).

But Christians aren't the governing authority on what the Bible says. The Jews, the ones that wrote the Old Testament, would be authorities on the Old Testament if anyone was. The fact is however that the Christians and Jews alive today are not the ones that wrote the Bible or Tanakh, and so they interpret just as much as the atheists and muslims. Whether the zeitgeist has moved beyond literalism is irrelevant to whether literalism is true: do you have evidence to suggest that the people who wrote the books of the Bible believed that they weren't literal?

Jesus taught in parables-when He told the story of the sower planting seeds He was not literally talking about seeds. In the same way most Christians interpret several books in the Bible as stories told to teach the reader something, not as a literal historical account. Chief among these are books such as Genesis, since in the original text these books are written as poetry, and do not resemble something meant as a historical account.

Not being a fundamentalist I can't really argue on their behalf, but they do have their own arguments.

Genesis is indeed written in poetic Hebrew, just like The Iliad and The Odyssey are written in poetic Greek: both are intended to be historical accounts of a nation's history, not simply dismissed because science now disagrees with the creation account. Writing history as poetry or song is an ancient tradition, going back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories (their creation accounts, so directly relevant).

Invisible Pink Unicorn
The main problem with making comparisons between things like the geocentric model of the solar system and God is that the geocentric model is a thought of the form "I believe X is true" whereas religious beliefs are of the form "I have experienced X in my own life".

When it comes to cases of whether or not people could be wrong about something these are very different cases. Examine these two statements:
1) 60% of people surveyed believe that there are UFOs
2) 60% of people surveyed have seen a UFO
The second statement is a much more convincing argument than the first. (don't read into the numbers, I just picked a random one for the example)

And you've incidentally proved my point: that humans are extremely credulous. The people who believe that they have seen a UFO have not actually seen UFOs; we have rational scientific explanations for everything that they saw, and we can actually trigger similar experiences by stimulating the brain with electricity (interestingly, we can give a person untrained in meditation an enlightenment experience by stimulating the section responsible for defining the limits of our body). Despite these explanations, humans will still believe exactly what they want to believe. Human belief is almost entirely irrelevant to truth.

Many different religions, only one can be correct

We really aren't using "official" titles. The main purpose of the titles is so we can keep straight which argument we're talking about. You can title things however

This has been touched on some in Similar Ideas = Copying = All are wrong but the "gambling with salvation" point is certainly a new and interesting take on things.

My initial response is that the "many religions, only one leads to God" view is not the way I see things. My own belief is that different religions are, for the most part, different interpretations (& occasionally misinterpretations) of an underlying universal truth. What is commonly cited here is a parable about the blind men and the elephant.

There are three blind men, who have never encountered, nor heard of an elephant before. One day they come across a man with a tame elephant, who invites them to investigate it.
The first man touches the elephant's trunk and says "ah, an elephant is like a snake"
The next man touches the elephant's leg and says "I would say it's closer to a tree"
The third man touches the elephant's ear and says "It's more like cloth, where are you getting tree from?"

If in my own postmortem adventure I discover that I have been absolutely correct on every detail about God, I will be genuinely shocked. I am a flawed human being, I make no pretense at being anything else.

The parable is on the right track, but it misses something in the scale. All religion is guesswork, and the guessing covers a much broader scale than an elephant's different parts; for one thing, not all possible religions have been formulated. The sheer number of possible theologies is staggering, and every religion has a diametric opposite. In other words not only is it possible to be wrong by not guessing correctly, it's possible to be 100% wrong by guessing the opposite of the truth. There are so many different areas in which a religion could differ that the chances of getting even a small fraction of them correct is infinitesimal.

I consider myself Christian because I genuinely believe that Jesus was God's son, and that he gave himself up in sacrifice to allow humans into heaven. I do not believe that people could reach heaven without God's help (hence, Jesus) but I also do not believe that someone would necessarily be condemned for having the wrong idea. I know where I am is a safe place, but I don't know that there are no other safe places out there.

Some religions claim that they are the only true path, some do not.

See now I like that idea. Full steam ahead for universalism, particularly for the "people with honest doubts don't go to hell" part.

Dead Sea Scrolls

Okay, and now the first thing that I'm posting here for your consideration, rather than as a response.

Basically, we have written accounts of the story of Jesus from people who were alive when it happened. I'm not referring to the Bible on my shelf, which is a copy of a copy of a copy etc., but the original handwritten documents. Historical dating is not so precise as to identify the exact manuscript, but we are relatively certain we have documents from within 100 years of the events.

Not all of these were Christian sources either. Tacitus (a Roman historian) and Josephus (a Jewish historian) both make references to Jesus within the first century after his death.

Yes they do indeed reference Jesus. It would be intellectually dishonest to claim that they didn't; by the standards of history, Jesus was most definitely a historical figure. History does not however support the idea that Jesus wrought miracles. Miracle accounts tend to be left out of the other gospels, contradicted in important details, or directly plagiarised.

Consider Mark 6:30-44 and Mark 8:1-9 (feeding of the five and four thousand, respectively). Compare Mark 6:39-44 and Mark 8:6-9 directly, and see how many words match up exactly. Then see that the disciples are exactly as incredulous before the feeding of the four thousand as they were before the feeding of the five thousand. Their behaviour is not what we would expect from people who actually saw a miracle, but it is exactly how characters were commonly used in Greek dialogue to explain moral lessons. The student asks and the teacher explains, because the student is just a surrogate for the teacher. The miracles of the Bible are parables as much as the rest of them.

Mark 6:35-37 - And when the day was now far spent, his disciples came unto him, and said, This is a desert place, and now the time is far passed: Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat. He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?

Mark 8:3-4 - And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far. And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?

Plagiarism between gospels:

Mark 1:23-28 Versus Luke 4:33-37
Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, "What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!"
In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, "Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!"

"Be quiet!" said Jesus sternly. "Come out of him!" The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.
"Be quiet!" Jesus said sternly. "Come out of him!" Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him.

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, "What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him." News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.
And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out. And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about.

Mark 1:40-44 Versus Luke 5:12-14 Versus Matthew 8:2-4
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are willing, you can make me clean."
While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."
A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."

Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" And immediately the leprosy left him.
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured of his leprosy.

Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: "See that you don't tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them."
Then Jesus ordered him, "Don't tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them."
Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."

I could find more, and will on request, but this post is quite long already. The point is that the gospel authors, when they corroborate each other, do so with what is in places identical phrasing, and almost always an identical order. The rest of the time they disagree on important details, like how many people were present when Jesus' body was discovered to be missing, whether there were angels there, etc. Sometimes amazing miracles don't rate a mention in other gospels (John for example mentions 5 miracles that don't occur in any other gospel, and only has 2 that do). Stranger still, the disciples never learn a damned thing. Despite allegedly witnessing dozens of miracles and even performing some, they are always the incredulous student being taught a lesson, much like Plato was to Socrates in Plato's works.

As evidence for miracles, the gospels are flimsy: everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. The earliest of the gospels was written at least 20 years after Jesus died, and so we would expect the stories transcribed to vary wildly: quotes should be different, things should happen in a different order, and only the most important details should stay the same. Yet we see the opposite of all these things. Quotes are verbatim copies or only ever so slightly different, things happen in the same order all the time, and minor details are consistent while major ones change. These are all the things we would expect from people writing stories for people to learn from, not from historical accounts.

19

Religion / Re: Why don't you believe in God(s)?

« on: July 30, 2010, 03:15:44 am »

The types of atheism and agnostic beliefs have nothing to do with the argument. 

Lets just simplify this to their brute meanings.
Atheism is to claim that there is no god.  Agnostic is to claim that god is unknown/knowable.  If you claim there is no god, then it is to claim known knowledge of god which goes against agnosticism.

As I said before... claiming agnostic theism or agnostic atheism is a bullshit way of putting "I do (not) believe in God but I have no proof of it"  Proof examples would be: Dogma (Religion), intuition and logic.  If you have no proof, then why do you believe in God?  At least have the marbles to say "Intuition, I just know" and "My proof is my dogma".  (dogma is beliefs held authoritatively...)

It sounds as if you believe there is no god but fail to accept that as a dogma and do not entirely believe there is no god.
 
Either god exists (theism), does not exist (atheism) or is unknown/knowable (agnostic).  Pick one.

I did this before for another website, but unfortunately it's subsequently been removed.

Basically, almost every online dictionary that says "Atheism is a positive claim that there is no god" has another definition alongside which says "Atheism is the lack of belief in gods". Either is a perfectly acceptable stance to still be called an atheist.

From an etymological point of view, atheism is a- theism, where the prefix a- indicates the logical complement. That is, everything that is not "theist" is "atheist". Many prominent atheists define atheism to be a lack of belief.

20

Religion / Re: The First Cause Argument

« on: July 30, 2010, 03:02:12 am »

I'm starting to feel like we're just going in circles here, arguing over progressively more and more obscure physics.

My point in explaining that Quantum mechanics cannot track a single particle & what was acting on it was not to say that something else could, but that one cannot support the claim that quantum mechanics does not follow causality, because we cannot tell what is acting on an individual particle.

Not being able to identify the cause of something and there being no cause are completely different things.

I can try to take you point for point if you really want me to, but this really isn't productive and we'll just end up arguing the same thing back and forth. We might as well be just saying  "yes" and "no" back and forth. It'd save us both time.

All I can tell you is that famous scientists & atheist apologists (is that the right term?) such as Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins, when confronted with the first cause argument, did not attempt to argue based on "some things happen without cause" and instead fell back to the relatively weak "who made God" argument.

My point is that the entire argument is based on causality, which is in turn based on the human arrogance in believing that what they think occurs is how the entire universe and everything that could ever possibly exist functions. Causality is not universally applicable. At least the laws of electromagnetics actually apply to everything we know about.

Also, the "Who made God?" argument isn't weak. If it is possible for something like God to appear without being caused, then it is possible for other things as well. If it isn't, could somebody who uses the first cause argument offer a coherent explanation as to how God is able to exist without a cause while other things can't? "Because he's God", "Because that's how we defined him", etc. aren't valid explanations, falling to special pleading and begging the question respectively.

21

Religion / Re: The First Cause Argument

« on: July 29, 2010, 06:41:40 am »

The quotation thing is a little messed up there.

The statements regarding "anti-causing" don't work. You can define any cause in terms of there not being something to prevent it, i.e. the box didn't move because I pushed it, but because someone wasn't pushing on the other side. Radioactive nuclei emit particles when the forces attracting them to the other particles in the nucleus become weaker than the forces pushing them apart.

Extremely unstable nuclei might (such as those formed in nuclear reactors), but normal radioactive decay occurs when a particle "tunnels" through the potential well around the nucleus to the higher potential outside it. The particle doesn't actually pass through the intervening space at all, it simply moves to a new place.

Quantum mechanics is a way of statistically describing processes that we cannot observe without interfering with the system. They do not track all of the forces acting on a given particle at a given time, nor can they track the progress of a single particle.

Quantum mechanics is the fundamental description of how everything behaves. Macro-mechanics is a statistical aggregate of the effects of quantum mechanics. Also, nothing can track the progress of a single particle, because the uncertainty in its position multiplied by the uncertainty in its momentum is always greater than hbar on 2. It is either spread out in space or time.
 

If the only thing required for a universe to appear is nothing actively preventing it then why aren't more universes appearing every instant?

There probably are but, being universes, we can't directly observe them. We have no more reason to believe that gods "just appear" than universes do.

The problem with applying the second law of thermodynamics to quantum physics is that a quantum system is not a closed system. A local decrease in entropy is allowed, so long as entropy increases elsewhere.

The only thing that keeps the second law of thermodynamics in quantum systems is a large enough 4D volume under consideration, because the second law of thermodynamics is a statistical law and not a physical one.

That the Big Bang started as a singularity is irrelevant, since entropy would have to increase before the universe could reach that state.

And as I explained, entropy would still be increasing, because black holes have more entropy than is lost by absorbing their component matter.

Again on the second law of thermodynamics and how it affects the Big Bang, no there couldn't have been time before the Big Bang. When all of the matter in the universe was condensed into a single point this was the absolute minimum entropy possible, and since entropy must increase over time there could not have been a "before the big bang".

You should tell that to Stephen Hawking and the other physicists who have demonstrated that black holes, despite being a singularity, do not have a small entropy at all but a large one.

22

Religion / Re: Responses to a few common arguments

« on: July 29, 2010, 06:36:53 am »

In regards to Innominate's responses to the following:

It Sounds Ridiculous
How is that meant to be a fair treatment of Christianity? You've gone through the Old Testament with the express purpose of finding flaws, after already deciding that they must be there. Then you took the four strangest sounding things you could find, removed them from their original context and misinterpreted them in ways no practicing Christian would ever accept, let alone what the actual Christian teachings are.

If you were reading a book about how to perform triple valve bypass surgery and encountered a paragraph which suggested that wearing a clown hat and shouting "Olé" would improve survival rates, would you take it seriously? If the Bible was actually inspired by a timeless deity and not in fact written by superstitious iron age types like most other surviving holy books, wouldn't you expect all the bizarre stories to, well, not be there? The Bible, as with all holy books, makes perfect sense when viewed as the sole work of the people who wrote it. It's only when you claim that it was not fully authored by humans that these ridiculous stories become an issue.

By the way, the verses for those stories are:
Judges 1:19 - And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

Isaiah 20:2-4 - At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years [for] a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with [their] buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

Hosea 8:4 - They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew [it] not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off.

Malachi 2:3 - Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, [even] the dung of your solemn feasts; and [one] shall take you away with it.

Numbers 22:20-22 - And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up, [and] go with them; but yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do. And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab. And God's anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of the LORD stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants [were] with him.

Historical Contradictions
Firstly, would you throw out your chemistry textbook if you found a typo in the chemical formula for glucose?

No, but I would edit in the correction that the makers of the textbook would inevitably publish.

Second, you have ignored the main point of this argument. Finding a second source that disagrees in details with the Bible does not prove the Biblical account false.

What would then prove the Biblical account false? If something that explicitly proves it is wrong is not enough to prove it is wrong, what would be? Are we actually to accept that the Bible is above all other sources in that no evidence can ever contradict it?

Third the claim of "no evidence" is silly. You might not find the evidence convincing, but claiming there is no evidence at all is unsupportable.

Every piece of evidence thus far proposed has been shot down by secular philosophers. The same canards are still trotted out time and time again despite this. Invalid evidence is not evidence.

Invisible Pink Unicorn
This is a response to a very specific argument, not a blanket statement.

I believe the original argument, as made by Bertrand Russell, was that he could not prove there was not a teapot orbiting Mars, yet this was not convincing evidence in favor of the teapot being there.

What every form of this argument invariably uses as an analogy is something silly, that no one would ever believe. What I have pointed out is that  these are vastly flawed analogies.

And my point is that the only reason you don't think that the idea of god is as ridiculous as an invisible pink unicorn is that many people believe it isn't. W're talking about a being which is invisible, outside the laws of the universe, capable of anything possible to be done, which writes holy books in the exact same style as the authors of that time write normally, talks to a few select people out of an entire universe vastly more impressive than humanity and gives people presents if they've been good and wished hard enough; how is this not every bit as ridiculous as an invisible pink unicorn, or leprechauns, or invisible teapots?

23

Religion / Re: The First Cause Argument

« on: July 28, 2010, 04:54:44 pm »

Really long post, so I'm only going to take it in bite-sized pieces. I'll come back for the rest later.

Is

If we saw a rabbit suddenly appear on an empty table, we would not blandly say, "Hi, rabbit. You came from nowhere, didn't you?" No, we would look for a cause, assuming there has to be one.

seriously part of your argument? The assumptions humans make as a result of millions of years of evolution are not logically sustainable. Virtual particles are uncaused. Nuclear decay is uncaused. All quantum phenomena are uncaused, and every macroscopic phenomenon is no more than an emergent aggregate of many quantum events, so macroscopic phenomena are uncaused as well. Causation is simply a useful approximation; it isn't how the universe actually works. The "Principle of Sufficient Reason" is complete bullshit. Even if we assume that causation was valid, causation only works if time exists: before the universe originated there was no such thing as time and so no possibility for it to be preceded in time, hence the universe must be causeless.

You've mixed up "triggers unpredictably" with "causeless" nuclear decay is caused by the inherent instability of some atomic nuclei, virtual particles can be caused by the interaction of electric charges, vacuum polarization, or any number of other phenomena.

Given this, the rest of your argument falls flat.

Nuclear decay isn't caused at all; it's "anti-caused". It's only when causation fails to act as it should that nuclear decay occurs. If causation worked, relatively stable nuclei would never decay. The particular motion of a particle over an infinite period of time is precisely determined by the potential energy gradient of the space-time around it (at a very large distance, mind). For any finite duration however there are an infinite number of potential energy arrangements that would result in the exact same probability distribution, and every single object in the universe (constrained by the distance divided by the speed of light) contributes to the potential energy field of every other point in the universe. So everything causes everything else. Further, there is no requirement that any quantum event ever actually occur over a finite span of time. Nothing actually gets caused; the odds of something happening are merely increased.

On a quantum level (even on a macroscopic level, actually), there is no causal distinction between "something that could facilitate the event being in place" and "everything that could stop the event being elsewhere". The only 'cause' required to create the universe is that there was nothing to stop it being created.

If it exists by its own essence, then it exists necessarily and eternally, and explains itself.

Why? If something can cause itself to exist - and some things can (virtual particles, for example) - then it does not have to be necessary nor eternal.

As to the whole "impossible for there to be an infinite chain of dependencies thing", I call bullshit. Where in this wall of text did you prove that the universe is finite? For all we know the universe has undergone a series of "big bangs" and "big crunches", stretching back forever. Besides hand-waving "I can't comprehend an infinite universe", what is your proof?

The second law of thermodynamics says you're wrong. An infinite series of Big bangs is a clear violation of the laws of physics.

It is impossible to decrease the total entropy in a closed system, so your "big crunch" couldn't happen without outside help that is somehow immune to the laws of physics.
[/quote]
And the second law of thermodynamics is routinely violated by quantum phenomena, because the second law only applies to macroscopic systems. Once the universe has "crunched", its size is on a quantum scale, and hence it is not bound by thermodynamics. Small differences in state which occur as a result of normal quantum fluctuations on such a small scale are exaggerated by a "bang" event. The big crunch "resets" entropy.

As for how the big crunch could happen, I'd just like to point out that gravity is a force that decreases the entropy of a system. In most cases it is counteracted by other forces, so the second law is not violated. However, gravity forms black holes (which, interestingly, have a higher entropy than their components so as not to violate the second law) and so condenses matter. In a universe with less dark energy than ours (or different values for the constants) a big crunch would be inevitable and not violate any physical laws.

The one thing I forgot to mention actually was the big one: the observable universe is not necessarily the whole universe. Nothing in big bang theory implies that it was the beginning of space and time, only that it was the beginning of space and time as we now know it.

24

Religion / Re: Why don't you believe in God(s)?

« on: July 28, 2010, 04:16:22 pm »

The reason I don't believe in any gods is best summed up by this quote (which is attributed to Epicurus, the Greek philosopher, but may be just a pithy rephrasing of his actual words):

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

There are more subtleties to it than that (and indeed I have many more objections), but that's the gist of it.

Another, more modern question (also not my devising): Why doesn't god heal amputees?
This one only rebutts interventionist deities, but it does so extremely well.