Just something I was debating with a friend of mine online, what got brought up on when discussing the old Ken Ham vs Bill Nye creationist vs science debate.
As an atheist, obviously I don't believe in all the crap theist talk about, the ones who like ken ham take the stories in bible to seriously, he intends to build a replica of the arch to prove.. urm.. whatever cock stroking he wants to prove since in his minds it'll prove he's not crazy?
But regardless of nutcases like him, something my friend brought up that I've often wondered myself in the scale of things, something that if a christian were to discover to be true they would use it to prove the existence of everything the bible says. I'm talking about the biblical stories we know from the bible, and if they do have any historical reference.
Was there a man who convinced people to follow him claiming to be the son of god, and who used magic tricks to convince them further of it? Was there a boat built on mount ararat? Was there seven events that took place in egypt? I've often wonder how many of the bible stories are based on real life events that people in those times took to literally as magical, in a time where science didn't exist.
Whats your thought on this, are the stories in the bible based all on just fairy tales made up by cult leaders, or were some of them based on things that happened in those times that interpreted as magical, but something modern science could explain away easily?
If someone pedals bullshit, it's always helpful to lace it with a few known facts to make it seem more credible. The Bible makes references to known persons like kings and documented places that did exist. I'd hesitate to pin point exactly where the facts end and the bullshit begins. But it doesn't make much difference. There is enough pure bullshit in the Bible to disqualify it as a useful historical document, even if it appears to get a few things right. To determine what historical facts the Bible likely gets right absolutely requires the existence of outside documentation. I would never accept the Bible as an accurate stand alone source about anything.
Hee, oh don't get me wrong I'd never look at the bible for any form of historical evidence. But it would be interesting to determine how far people go to believe something to be magical when its something you can explain away with science and facts. Take for example the Dynamo walking on water trick he did:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEc_jeGBVxs
don't get me wrong I consider the guy a pretentious asshole, but imagine if he did what he does here 2000 years ago, you can imagine people would see someone like this as a messiah and believe any shit he tells them after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dycpIPTFJ04
The themes water is so crappy and murky, having a plexiglass stand in the water wouldn't show. Now this is what a magician does today, but imagine 2000 years ago, a magician does something similar, and pays follows to make a spectacle out from it.
But I'm getting ahead here, the point is, its curious to wonder how much of the bible stories are based on events witnessed by people fooled to believing what they are seeing, and followers hyping it up to create even more followers from it.
All I'm saying is, the moment something huge happens and we can't deny it, that's the moment religion will start having less of an effect on us. Like in Robotech when a space fortress crash landed violently and very obviously on Earth, leaving us stunned and no longer in denial of aliens existing.
However, I don't think many religions extend themselves to losing followers, I'm pretty sure at least a couple of them advocate death for such people
when you can convince children that Samson was somehow a victim instead of a jealous rage-filled murderer, you have won the battle.
How about adults that are convinced there was a woman made by a man's rib, talking serpents, bushes, donkeys, and an immaculate birth just because it is in a religious context. :wall: :lol: :doh: Solitary
Quote from: Solitary on September 07, 2014, 03:22:26 PM
How about adults that are convinced there was a woman made by a man's rib, talking serpents, bushes, donkeys, and an immaculate birth just because it is in a religious context. :wall: :lol: :doh: Solitary
Yep. Religious beliefs are really stupid.
Quote from: Solitary on September 07, 2014, 03:22:26 PM
How about adults that are convinced there was a woman made by a man's rib, talking serpents, bushes, donkeys, and an immaculate birth just because it is in a religious context. :wall: :lol: :doh: Solitary
well that is just on the level of those stories people were told by those who made the religion, just like the alien thing with Scientology.
I just wonder if there were guys back 2000 or more years ago who performed some tricks and made a following from it, and threw together some stories to grab their attention even further. "I can turn water into wine and cure people (something anyone can do today with medical knowledge and misdirection) but thats NOTHING compared to what god can do, let me tell you how"
Its one of these things where if you could go back in time and find there the point that christianity was created by people, what was it that sparked it off, was it just stories made up, or was it from someone performing 'miracles' to people and them buying what he said.
Quote from: Munch on September 07, 2014, 03:48:38 PM
I just wonder if there were guys back 2000 or more years ago who performed some tricks and made a following from it, and threw together some stories to grab their attention even further. "I can turn water into wine and cure people (something anyone can do today with medical knowledge and misdirection) but thats NOTHING compared to what god can do, let me tell you how"
Its one of these things where if you could go back in time and find there the point that christianity was created by people, what was it that sparked it off, was it just stories made up, or was it from someone performing 'miracles' to people and them buying what he said.
I have no doubt that some religious leaders were not above using slight of hand when they could get away with it. Even some of the rubbish the modern day Catholic miracle squads endorse as certified magic could be the result of premeditated pranks designed by hoaxers bent on slipping a curve ball past the committee. Your average cult leader is a liar. And every religion starts with a cult leader. It's all bullshit.
www.miraclesceptic.com/
QuoteEven prayer fails when studied scientifically .
People will say "some studies showed sick patients were helped when other prayed for them". However, the reality is that this effect only happened in those studies when the patient was told somebody was praying for them, and they were not near death. As you might guess, when they thought nobody was praying for them, even though somebody was, they did not get better - which argues for a psychological comforting effect rather than divine intervention. And, even more interestingly, when the person was very close to death, the news that somebody was praying for them MADE THEM WORSE! The theory is that they figured their chances were so bad, as evidenced by the prayers of strangers, that they stressed out and/or gave up, and got worse.
So a real scientific (=double blind) study with lots of people was performed. It showed prayer made no difference when the patient had no knowledge of the others praying for them. So the religious communities said that not enough people were involved. So a bigger study was done. Same results, but for some reason this information never comes up in sermons.
Most miracles seem to be people mistaking the "unlikely", with the "impossible". Other miracles have mundane explanations (like the vials of saints' blood that turn to liquid, which observers say seem to be contaminated with non-blood materials that probably melt just above room temperature).
If you define a miracle as "impossible", rather than just "unlikely", then there have been no miracles proven as true by scientific means.
Even prayer fails when studied scientifically (see link). I wish this was not the case, but it is.
People will say "some studies showed sick patients were helped when other prayed for them". However, the reality is that this effect only happened in those studies when the patient was told somebody was praying for them, and they were not near death. As you might guess, when they thought nobody was praying for them, even though somebody was, they did not get better - which argues for a psychological comforting effect rather than divine intervention. And, even more interestingly, when the person was very close to death, the news that somebody was praying for them MADE THEM WORSE! The theory is that they figured their chances were so bad, as evidenced by the prayers of strangers, that they stressed out and/or gave up, and got worse.
So a real scientific (=double blind) study with lots of people was performed. It showed prayer made no difference when the patient had no knowledge of the others praying for them. So the religious communities said that not enough people were involved. So a bigger study was done. Same results, but for some reason this information never comes up in sermons.
Most miracles seem to be people mistaking the "unlikely", with the "impossible". Other miracles have mundane explanations (like the vials of saints' blood that turn to liquid, which observers say seem to be contaminated with non-blood materials that probably melt just above room temperature).
If you define a miracle as "impossible", rather than just "unlikely", then there have been no miracles proven as true by scientific means.
Why We
Cannot Believe
in Miracles ....
Stories about God raising Jesus from the dead and instantly healing the sick and statues coming to life to talk to us are miracle stories. A miracle is something that is not explainable naturally. So a miracle is an exception then to the way we see nature work. If dead people do not rise, then Jesus rising would be a miracle. Only a magical cause can be behind it. The Church says we should believe miracle tales when told by very trustworthy people. The Church says, "If we refuse to believe trustworthy miracle tales we must ask ourselves if we should believe any testimony to anything!" That is ultimately the only argument for belief in miracles there is.
There are things we cannot be expected to believe without hard evidence regardless of how good the testimony is. If miracles and magic don't fall into that category then nothing does. If we cannot be expected to believe in them, people must not promote belief in them. It demeans us.
Religion simply does not deal with those truths. It simply settles for saying, "Unbelievers or sceptics are simply relying on the assumption that miracles are not believable when they should be looking at the historical facts and the evidence." Religion attacks the messenger not the message ... belief in miracles is therefore hostile and nasty.
Rene Descartes said you must doubt everything you can until you can prove or support it to your satisfaction. It is reasonable to assume things are true until you meet sufficient evidence that they are not or might not be only because doubting everything is bad for you. But surely this would not apply to the magical or the supernatural. Descartes' thinking has value in the sense that it shows there must be something that is to be considered false until it can be proven true. That something can only be miracles and the supernatural and God.
Science is accused of assuming nature is uniform in order to prove it. But what can you expect? We have to assume that. Yet religion accuses us of being biased and unfair if we assume nature does not allow for the supernatural. The religionists assume it does so they are more biased and unfair than us for their assumption is bigger. Also it is unnecessary. The assumption that nature acts like it follows rules that it does not break is necessary.
A miracle believer cannot know enough about an event or anything to be sure that it is a miracle. Their belief is mere arrogance. Their real God is their belief not God. You need evidence that miracles are possible. It is too serious of a matter to just assume that they are. It would be like assuming that the world will turn into custard in five minutes time. And you cannot have evidence at all for you do not know all the causes of an event. Miracles are an extreme violation of the rule, "The bigger the assertion the better the evidence there should be to back it up." Evidence is based on the assumption that there is no supernatural at work so evidence by default and by definition cannot be used in support of a miracle claim. All you end up with is evidence for something strange.
People feel uncomfortable and ashamed when miracle beliefs become what seems too much. But if there is a God who has supernatural powers, he can give powers to witches and make dragons and unicorns so that we could be living in a fairyland universe tomorrow. Mere belief in the supernatural is going too far. What people term going too far is merely a symptom of already having gone too far.
Belief in miracles and magic leads to exploitation. Challenge it. Those who care about truth will welcome the challenge. Do you want to be exploited and see people being exploited?
Solitary
Fungus, your topic could take years to cover well. There are hundreds of books out there dealing with all aspects of this issue.
You said--But regardless of nutcases like him, something my friend brought up that I've often wondered myself in the scale of things, something that if a christian were to discover to be true they would use it to prove the existence of everything the bible says. I'm talking about the biblical stories we know from the bible, and if they do have any historical reference.
i would suggest that most of the bible is based upon a history, at least, of sorts. What I mean is that the old testament could be viewed as a survival manual for a nomadic peoples several thousand years ago. I'm sure there was a huge flood--probably in many places. There is evidence that the OT flood story is based upon earlier stories for great floods. There is no evidence that Moses existed--but I would imagine that the Moses stories were cobbled together from prior stories. From the time humans developed speech, we have been asking 'where did we come from'--many stories have developed from that need to know. The OT was simply one of the first times those stories were written down. For good and ill, we humans have an imagination. So something that happened in the physical world could be given spiritual elements. So, the Flood story could contain actual physical elements, but they have been expanded upon and enlarged so that the story is clearly a myth, not history. Most of the Bible is like that.
Think of the bible as a collection of essays. It has never been a single document authored by one author. Each 'book' of the bible was penned by one author--most of which are unknown. So the bible is simply a collection of essays put under one cover. One book rarely has a real connection to any other book. The only exception would be the books written by Paul--he did have some continuing threads in his writings.
If you really wanted to do an objective study of the bible, you will soon realize that there are no 'fairy tales' involved. Myth and mythology, yes,--but that does not mean it is based on the history christians want us to think it is.
Question: The Bible was written when, and yet it talks about things that happen with just three humans alive---Adam, Eve, and let's not forget Lilith. It's so obviously a mythical tale. How could anyone know what happened before the Bible was written, that no longer exists, how convenient. Oh I know: the Arch Angel Gabriel told them. Give me a break! :wall: :rotflmao: Solitary
Yep, correct, Solitary. The bible is myth--plain and simple. And it is not even myth that agrees with itself. Read Gen. 1 and 2. Gen. 1 has god creating man and woman at the same time. Gen. 2 is the Adam and Eve story. Which is it?
I have, and been accused at this original forum as being a religious scholar by priest and clergy. I'm not, but I can hold my own. Solitary
Solitary you seem to be a man after my own heart. As a retired history teacher, I love research. And when researching the Bible one should read it. After reading it, I really don't understand how anybody can give it any credence at all. The mistakes and internal conflict legion.
Have you read Will Durant's History Of The World? I don't understand how he can think Jesus actually existed after he goes through all the former religions, when it is so obvious that the Judeo-Muslim-Christian religions are mere repeating of former religions thousands of years before them, and the fact nothing is written about Jesus until another religion came to Rome at the same time it was written down. I think he had to know, but his books wouldn't have gotten published. Christianity has such control over everything even now. You should have fun when the theists come around.
Quote from: Solitary on September 07, 2014, 07:14:36 PM
www.miraclesceptic.com/
The Church says we should believe miracle tales when told by very trustworthy people. The Church says, "If we refuse to believe trustworthy miracle tales we must ask ourselves if we should believe any testimony to anything!"
Well, that's really convenient, isn't it?
Very trustworthy people can be fooled into believing things that are not true, and then they repeat those things while being perfectly sincere about it. And sometimes, people are not as trustworthy as we think they are, and might be lying for their own benefit. So, no, we shouldn't believe just any old thing people tell us without having really good evidence to back it up. Really, it boils down to the religious person accepting THEIR religion while rejecting everyone else's simply because they were raised in a particular culture. There are many trustworthy, honest Hindus who sincerely believe that Ganesha is real, yet Christians do not believe their testimonies about the miracles performed by this deity.
Quote from: ApostateLois on September 08, 2014, 11:25:40 AM
Very trustworthy people can be fooled into believing things that are not true, and then they repeat those things while being perfectly sincere about it. And sometimes, people are not as trustworthy as we think they are, and might be lying for their own benefit. So, no, we shouldn't believe just any old thing people tell us without having really good evidence to back it up.
Yep. That's where the bullshit stops. Authority and anecdote have always been a poor substitutes for fact finding.