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Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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@mailman
OK, so it was you who made up that non-sense about joining Buddhism to refute Christianity and not him? Well at least now you only soiling your own reputation.
@ Mailman
You really don't read what you send do you? Here is the most salient point in the Bio of Habermas you linked....., Habermas concluded that the resurrection could be known according to probability as a normal historical fact.
My bold, but Habermas found no contemporary evidence or accounts and had to rely on probability from much later accounts....as my earlier point was made...you wouldn't want a judge deciding "you probably did the crime" and banging you up on the testimony of children of the people you had never met.
""Probability" dont meet the expectation after such grandiose claims. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", I repeat, there is NO contemporary evidence for the existence of a Jesus as described in the gospels.
Now, Mailman, stop your fallacious appeals to authority and tell us what YOU have discovered, what YOU believe....
This is definitely progress. Thanks for reading the info I am sending.
Now have you guys watched his video?? I would love to hear your specific thoughts AFTER you have watched it.
He will address your "contemporary evidence" dilemma Old man shouts..
@Mailman
No it doesnt. His "minimal facts" spiel is aplogetics at its very worst. No evidence, no contemporary accounts so lets go on about statistics and other unrelated crap. Lets also avoid the complete lack of contemporary acoounts and use some word salad to try and minimise that fact.
How any one can take this guff seriously I do not know.
" show me the money" I am sure of you were arrested for a crime you would be screaming " injustice" at the top of your lungs if I used the " minimal facts" as prosecution evidence. The classic would be " everyone agrees you are guilty, so, obviously you are". The argument ad populem this guy uses, discredited and no facts, even minimal, to back up his arguments. Rubbish.
Come up with ypur own thoughts Mailman. Your appeals to a failed authority are tiresome.
Gary Habermas, Another wannabe religious apologist using the Minimal Facts Approach. It's all BULLSHIT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksa8uGe21rw
DEBUNKING THE MINIMAL FACTS APPROACH (Matt Dillahaunty)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3yxFVnGAKI
Matt will actually rip apart all of Habermas's arguments All 12. Start at 22/00
I've just had time to watch the Habermas and Flue vid and I am astounded that the most obvious third explanation about Paul's road to Damascus story wasn't raised. Flue concedes Paul probably had an hallucination event, Habermas counters with a DMS3 defence 'you cant have a conversion experience and a visual and an auditory hallucination plus be affected by a Messiah complex all at the one time, because modern psychology wont allow it. And this is a alleged event that took place one afternoon on the road to Damascus 2000 years ago.
I have a simpler explanation. Paul lied. And despite Habermas's objections, Paul claims the conversion and the sensory hallucinations happened to him and his epistles clearly show he had a messiah complex. Paul was just the perfect wedge to separate Jesus from the Jews and to make things all nicely Gentile with whole dicks.
Everybody sing,
Always knew that I'd be an apostle,
Knew that I would make it if I tried,
And when I retire I can write the gospels,
And they all think about me when I die.
mailman why do you think linking an hour long video is appropriate for this? Just wondering. In the meantime while you watch the video I’ll have found about 25 articles of repute disproving everything in it. Find a more concise article or video instead of continuously linking that video.
As in that one movie:
Welcome Chicken. Damn glad to see ya boy.
Nice first post (at leas the first I've seen).
rmfr
I guess not.
"I'm a Christian on the Verge of Losing the Faith"
Well you came to the right place. Welcome to the AR. A place that requires no guilt for perfectly normal human things. =)
119 posts later and Still on the Verge?
Yep. There are demonic forces keeping me from believing atheism now. Haha!
I thought “demonic forces” encouraged us to use our heads and not believe unquestioningly in deities and fairy tales (and to not view the way I just described hem as somehow being “hate speech”)? Isn’t doubting “sinful” and immoral?
Your problem is clear. You are looking for something to believe. There is nothing to believe in atheism. All atheism is about is setting down your religious crutches, the beliefs you have. and walking away from them like a normal healthy human being.
Very true.
Allas! There is good news. I no longer believe. I've completely lacked belief for a record of 2 weeks now. I think it's safe to say it's permanently gone. Next steps, find some real life atheist friends to talk to about this stuff. Also, I really can't wait to start dating again now that I don't have to keep looking for the "good Christian girls" at church events.
It still hold to a philosophical "theism" of sort. I would more categorized it as a kind of Platonism. More like how some mathematicians fetishize numbers, I fetishized truth and virtue ethics. Whatever. I guess I still count as an atheist--I'm an atheist who believes that Truth exists...
Hurrah! Congrats on choosing freethought, brother! Now you can feel free to change your view (in your profile settings) from “Non-atheist/Christianity” to “Atheist/Former Christian”, and join our family. :D
Goatspeed!
P.S. what do you mean by “philosophical theism”? Do you mean “agnostic”? Because if that is so, then it’s possible to be both atheist and agnostic; personally, I’m an Agnostic Antitheistic Atheist; but I prefer “atheist”. If you mean “fetishized truth”, then that’s “theism” just as much as “abstinence” is a sex position.
Will do!
And I like "Agnostic Antitheistic Atheist" as a label myself. XD
And I mean I'm deeply sympathetic to the notion of divine simplicity. It was heavily developed by the pagan philosopher Plotinus. It was always present (vaguely) in early Christian thinkers like Origen. IMO, creation ex nihilo demands it, which explains it's widespread adoption. But divine simplicity does not require creation ex nihilo. But basically my current metaphysical understanding is that there *must* be a universal substance connecting all of reality. Thinking Christians regard that as God. I regard it as a sort of panentheistic God (not pantheistic, notice). But I think I can still say I'm an atheist because what most theists mean by God I think does not exist. Hope that makes sense.
A force binding the universe together is no god. I call it the laws of physics and the forces of gravity and electromagnetism. That’s really all that governs the universe. Nobody knows how they came to be, but I won’t pretend to know by trying desperately to fill in the blanks with “Goddidit, Goddidit, Goddidit”. There are many, many other ideas about how the Big Bang came to be.
No. It's not permanently gone. Sorry to tell you but you have used religion as a crutch for so long, you will catch yourself praying, missing church, thinking absolute bullshit and then wondering why in the hell you keep doing it. It's rare to just "walk away.." I am not saying that it can not be done and iMO it is the only way to do it. But those damn thoughts and feelings that were allowed into your brain to form neuro-pathways, will not go away. Everything now is how you deal with them when they recur.
Haven't been to church in a month. Except when I was with family. Not telling them about this for at least a year probably.
Take all the time you need. I waited almost an entire year after my actual deconversion before finally telling my parents.
I concur with Cog. Even after my faith had disappeared in the late May of 2017 after I thoroughly read the Buybull, it wasn’t until mid-July of that same year that I lost the last vestiges of belief in the supernatural.
Did anything in particular cement your thinking?
@ksgm3 If you’d actually bother to read some of Hello World’s posts, you’ll find that he has lots of reasons for his deconversion.
And @Rohan if you’d read through the whole thread (rather than, it seems, competing with some other members to see who can be most obnoxious) you’d see I’ve engaged with Hello World a few times while he was in his period of indecision and hence my question was about what enabled him to ultimately come down on one side. Hey, I’ve just seen you’re 15?! I’ll let you off.
And if you still have some concerns, then this RationalWiki article is for you:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/FAQ_for_the_Newly_Deconverted
thanks
You’re welcome! It also reflects a lot of my own experiences in my own path to atheism when I deconverted about a year and a half ago. It’s what really made me fall in love with RW.
I remember that site teaching me WLC won arguments by the "Gish Gallow" years ago. It really shook my faith because I thought that guy was the bomb in highschool.
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