And much of the Bible is historical fact... all the kings and places existed, the Canaanites existed, etc.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

Logical fallacy #1 in the article: appeal to authority.

This is also a setup for circular reasoning (ie: "why do you assume Jesus exists in the first place?" "Because the bible says so." "And what makes the bible such a reliable source?" "It's God's word." "Isn't God = Jesus?" "Yes.").

Holy Fucking Shit! The fallacies found here are TREMENDOUS!

Where to start:

1. This argument begs the question: it is automatically assuming that Jesus was real (I could have applied this to the last one as well).

2. More question begging occurs within the argument as well. This...

...assumes that EVERYONE who believes Jesus exists believes he falls into the first category of the trilemma.

I personally believe that it is possible that he did exist (though we have no evidence outside of the bible. I believe, however, that it is possible that there was someone named Yehoshua who once existed and had this story based off of his life), as do many atheists, but the only people contending he was a great moral teacher and that alone are not studied. I believe that he either fell into category 2 or 3 or part way into both OR that the biblical account of Jesus is partially or completely false and that he never actually claimed to be the son of God which many other people's theories assume.

3. Many people have contended that the trilemma Lewis presents is a false trilemma for various reasons including that he bases it off of absolutes, ie: Jesus was a moral teacher but assuming that he was absolutely deluded because of his belief that he was God's son is wrong. Many people are great at one thing but terrible at another. Blaise Pascal, for example, was a great mathematician, however, Pascal's Wager, that argues for belief in God, is probably the worst theological argument in the history of mankind. Therefore, Jesus could very well have thought that he was the son of God and was convinced of it, and yet and still have been clear minded enough to teach people about world peace and other morally correct teachings. Therefore, Jesus may not have been absolutely deluded if he existed, and he probably wasn't and this is a sufficient refutation of this premise.

Proof?

And let me guess, proof of this can be found in the bible, which is the word of God, because God says it is his word in the bible, right?

Again, more evidence that is only found in the bible which is God's word because God said so.... in the bible.

All this proves is that the disciples were just as delusional and illogical as the average evangelical fundie OR that the bible is a crock of shit.

And btw, bacon, through us helping him see the errors of Christianity, is now an agnostic.

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Before going any further, what evidence is this based on? Where can this evidence be found?

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Added (30/Oct/09, 6:03 Pm)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3_2csYyWSw

Knock yourself out... I'm no historian, but the OT is mostly regarded by them as actual history, regardless of the author's beliefs.

Added (30/Oct/09, 6:10 Pm)
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Please tell me you believe Jesus existed.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

Although the main source of the author of that article's claims (British Museum archaelogist Jonathan N Tubb) seems to quite possibly be reliable (I did a short research on him and found that he was educated at some credible universities and involved in some merit-worthy finds), the article itself, in many places and in general, lacks proper verification and the specific section in question has no sources. It isn't marked for cleanup, however, and the reason it got away with that is because the links listed for the biblically mentioned characters connect to unrelated subjects that, for one reason or another, have the same name. For example, on of them links to a modern city in Lebanon and a US battleship, both of which are likely named after the biblical character, another links to a page that doesn't exist, and two of them link to their proper pages, but this is what I found while inspecting them:

-Sihon's page is a stub that refers to the biblical character of Sihon and cites his passages in the bible and nothing more.

-Og's page contains this short passage:

"Og, the giant of the Amorites, is equally considered a folk legend, around whom gathered many Jewish legends: according to some traditions he lived to be 3,000 years old and clung to Noah's ark during the Deluge.[1] In Islamic lore he is referred to as ‘Uj ibn Anaq (‘Ûj ibn ‘Anâq), evidently one of the giants mentioned in the Qur'an (jababirat or jabbirun). Og is mentioned in Jewish folklore as being alive from the time of Noah up until the time of his death in battle with the Jews. It is also written in the Midrash[2] that he had a special compartment in Noah's Ark just for him. Aggadah suggest an alternative to this; That he sat upon the top of the ark, riding out the flood for the duration of the storm from this location."

And none of these pages have cleanup notices on them. They are all properly referenced.

I am not denying that at least some of the characters and places in the bible are fictional, and I actually think there are some factually true portions in the bible, but the same could be said about the many fictional stories about ancient figures such as Julius Caesar. They are based on actual people but fictionalized for dramatic effect, moral teachings, or some other reason. Take, for example, the movie "Remember The Titans". It was based on a real football team that really won the Virginia State Championship in 1971 with references to players and coaches who were really involved in the story, however, a large preponderance of things that were claimed to have occurred in the movie were false and they outweighed the truths by quite a bit. For this reason, even if your reference was not easily refutable, it wouldn't prove anything except that the bible, much like a lot of world renowned fictional stories, was "based on a true story" or in this case "stories".

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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Luckily you didn't fall for the trap

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erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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My hands are tied at the moment...

Added (30/Oct/09, 7:33 Pm)
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that doesn't answer my question the whole argument is about testing they formulated in another way but it's still about testing the question isn't still unanswered why god knowingly that we will fail let the devil intervene and fuck it up why try to test and show how good is good and how evil is so evil when you know that the person is not fit to understand it it's not up to it ? why he didn't undo everything and recreate us and make our will stronger ?? come on man

this has no sense ?? so the works of Bakunin for example are not finished and somebody else starts them and tries to finishing them what's special about it ?? of course the one that tries to finish Bakunin's work will be a collectivist a capitalist won't touch a collectivist work as a non theist won't touch a theist work so of course they are pointing to God its fucking logic man

the bible is not historically accurate we can study Biblical archeology and see how the dates don't coincide especially when it comes to people

He didn't exist the historicity of Jesus doesn't exist there no secular sources recalling him archeology can't consider his existence because there are no historical sources to prove his existence he doesn't even exist in Pontius Pilate's official annals there's no mention of Jesus in the whole Roman Empire

No, because I would be perpetuating circular logic. In order to assume he exists in that case I would have to make that assumption on the basis that he exists. That doesn't make any sense.

No, that is not the case at all. His logic is terrible and easily refutable. Mind you that this was the man who was basically responsible for the entire field of probabilities within mathematics, but when it came to his wager, he tried using probabilities and left out many crucial factors. For example, he left out the fact that if you are a Christian and live your entire life dedicated to God and come to find out in the end that there is no God when you die, you probably did not get a chance to do some of the things you may have wanted to do because the fictional character of God said not to, whereas an Atheist would have likely done more of the things that they wanted to do. Also, the wager doesn't take into account the heavy scientific evidence leaning towards the nonexistence of God which also significantly changes the probability. Lastly, the wager takes none of the other religions into account including many of which claim that blasphemy (which includes worshipping false Gods) is far worse a crime than non-belief and it WILL be punished by spending eternity in hell, whereas non-believers still have a chance to make it to heaven. And as I stated before, logically, most religions are on the same level when it comes to truth and only when it comes to morals are there some serious fluctuations in how "good or bad" each religion is, and Christianity is not at the top (or bottom) of either list. This final refutation is the nail in the coffin for Pascal's Wager making it one of the worst well known logical arguments of all time.

I agree. I would say that by the amount of times and the seriousness of Jesus' claims to be the son of God and actually a human incarnation of God as well he must have been seriously deluded, but this doesn't change the possibility of him being a great moral leader. Think about this -- the society of that time was very violent and immoral and much of it was due to the OT and it's teachings. Jesus came along and claimed he was the messiah and either he was lying or deluded, but either way, he created a new form of religion based on the Jewish religion that seriously reformed the way that the people of that society thought and acted and the violence and crime decreased rapidly. No matter how deluded he was or how much lying he did, that is a great moral teacher in my eyes.

So what if there were many authors? For all we know, Attila The Hun, Alexander The Great, and Ghengis Khan wrote portions of the bible and King James made sure that it was translated to his liking (what is scary is that this last part is actually probably true). I'll give you an analogy -- what if my great-great-great-great-great grand father began writing a book and he handed it on to his son or daughter and they added on to it and it kept getting added on to and I finished it and we claimed that prophets had written it and they were inspired by the flying spaghetti monster's words to write it. Would that make it more valid than a book that was written by a single author or even one written by a slightly smaller number of authors than ours was and over a shorter period of time? No, absolutely not. In fact many if not most of the most reliable books have one author but a lot of verifiable sources that make it superior to a book with a lot of authors and no sources.

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erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Greco-Roman_sources

you don't think the first christians would have just randomly worshiped some guy they had never heard of do you?

No historians of the time mention Jesus. Suetonius (65-135) does not. Pliny the Younger only mentions Christians (Paulists) with no comment of Jesus himself. Tacitus mentions a Jesus, but it is likely that after a century of Christian preaching Tacitus was just reacting to these rumours, or probably talking about one of the many other Messiah's of the time. Josephus, a methodical, accurate and dedicated historian of the time mentions John the Baptist, Herod, Pilate and many aspects of Jewish life but does not mention Jesus. (The Testimonium Flavianum has been shown to be a third century Christian fraud). He once mentions a Jesus, but gives no information other than that he is a brother of a James. Jesus was not an unusual name, either. Justus, another Jewish historian who lived in Tiberias (near Kapernaum, a place Jesus frequented) did not mention Jesus nor any of his miracles. It is only in the evidence of later writers, writing about earlier times, that we find a Jesus. What is more surprising (Jesus could simply have been unknown to local historians) is that academics note that the gospels themselves do not allude to first-hand historical sources, either!

“The four Gospels that eventually made it into the New Testament, for example, are all anonymous, written in the third person about Jesus and his companions. None of them contains a first-person narrative ("One day, when Jesus and I went into Capernaum..."), or claims to be written by an eyewitness or companion of an eyewitness. Why then do we call them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Because sometime in the second century, when proto-orthodox Christians recognized the need for apostolic authorities, they attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of apostles (Mark, the secretary of Peter; and Luke, the travelling companion of Paul). Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications, and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.”

Take the Gospel of John for example:

“The name John was common [...]. Even though the Gospel and Epistles of John do not claim to be written by someone of that name, the book of Revelations does (see Rev. 1:9). But the author does not claim to be John the son of Zebedee, one of Jesus' apostles. In fact, in one scene "John" has a vision of the throne of God surrounded by twenty-four elders who worship him forever (Rev. 4:4, 9-10). These twenty-four elders are usually taken to refer to the twelve patriarchs of Israel and the twelve apostles. But the author gives no indication that he is seeing himself. Probably, then, this was not the apostle. And so, the book is anonymous, later accepted by Christians as canonical because they believed the author was, in fact, Jesus' earthly disciple.”

Btw, what do you think was the intent of the authors of the Bible? To answer unanswered questions or for brainwashing/evil intentions? I mean, why would they create 10 rules for themselves and command people not to commit adultery? If they were that evil in brainwashing everyone, why would they impose these laws on themselves?

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain