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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&... is one scholar who gives objective evidence and Christian history to prove that there is objective evidence for Jesus life ministry and death and resurrection.
@ FIG
Oh come on..a pastor writing in a newspaper you cite as evidence. The first paragraph is bunkum!
Even for you FIG /billy that is hilarious. Go read the last answer (today) I sent JoC. You might find some solid scholarship and reading in the two links I gave him.
*still giggling at the naivete*
This is the problem, Billy appears to have simply Googled what he wants, then linked one the hits, ignoring the fact it is penned by a conservative evangelical christian, as if his "scholarship" in theology is entirely objective. Doubly telling is the fact that when Billy offers up his usual apologetics it is turgid with logical fallacies and unevidenced assertion, it is almost cliched. Yet he either hasn't bothered to Google common logical fallacies like argumentum ad ignorantiam or argumentum ad populum that he uses endlessly, or he has and is dishonestly ignoring what this means for his arguments. Arguments he inexplicably insists are objective evidence?
Billy for future ref. this is a very concise definition of objective evidence:
"Objective evidence refers to information based on facts that can be proved by means of search like analysis, measurement, and observation. One can examine and evaluate objective evidence."
Sheldon you have no argument against my brand of the Christian faith. Why don`t you read my post and specifically point out where I am incorrect .and then item for item that I notated why don`t you refute me. instead of just saying that I use common logical fallacies like arguments from ignorance and arguments that are popular .please be specific here.
I've been specific Billy, but one more time then. You linked a subjective article from an evangelical christian, it contained no objective evidence for the existence of a deity, he even implies he has no such evidence in the last sentence of the article you linked. Here it is...
"The more interesting question – which goes beyond history and objective fact – is whether Jesus died and lived."
Now you linked that as objective evidence, yet right there your pastor theologian states bluntly that Jesus resurrection "goes beyond history and objective fact" you see?
"Sheldon you have no argument against my brand of the Christian faith. "
You have no objective evidence for your theistic belief, and that right there is argumentum ad ignorantiam, it's a logically fallacious claim, and nothing can be rationally asserted as true if it is based on logical fallacy. If that's not specific enough then it's pointless you being here, it'd be better if you went away and learned what logical fallacies are and what it means for arguments that are based on them.
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"instead of just saying that I use common logical fallacies like arguments from ignorance and arguments that are popular "
Jesus wept Billy are you being deliberately obtuse? I have given you concise definitions of both argumentum ad ignorantiam, and argumentum ad populum. I'll give them one more time, then assume you're simply lying from now on if you ignore them.
argumentum ad ignorantiam (which you have used here again)
Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence") is a fallacy in informal logic.
So please not the last sentence and realise when you made your opening assertion "Sheldon you have no argument against my brand of the Christian faith", that this is the very definition of an argument from ignorance.
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Argumentum ad populum
Is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it.
So when you earlier tried to cite the number of theists who believe the christian deity is real is evidence for its existence is again a logical fallacy, and therefore needs no further refutation as it demonstrably untrue.
Please don't claim again that you are not getting specific answer as this is dishonest and i have re-addressed your first post in the EVIDENCE thread, but again will stop if I get a hint that you're are ignoring the responses or implying I have ignored yours.
You also ignored my other response which was very specific in addressing your claims, it's on the next page of this thread, and here's a link. I also addressed your claims about objective morality, and showed why they are false.
http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/easter-bloody-easter?p...
Well fellow atheist like greg Ludeman and Bart Ehrman say that Jesus existed and one is atheists and the latter is agnostic. So then that weighs heavily on the myth theory. It proves it wrong, incorrect .in fact Greg Luderman says he will go as far as saying like Bart Ehrman that Jesus was crucified .and this coming from both non-believers just look how Christianity began and has grown over two thousand years now. just study how it got started to its fruition by some mere peasants to the established church .it just didn`t originate out of nothing. there was the 12 apostles and women meeting in house churches. Then as time passed on churches were established literal buildings .so there is plenty of archaeological structures in place that prove the Christian foundations. This is objective evidence I cite here.
nope ..still won't buy it..
don't just say.."yes it's evident because he said these and that"
is that a hearsay evidence?
we want concrete proof..not some guy asserted that this is true...
would you believe that i was killed and resurrected last week?
Billy?
faith in God fo..."read my post and specifically point out where I am incorrect...why don`t you refute me...please be specific here."
--------------------------------------------------
Well since you said please, first here's one of your posts:
http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/evidence?page=2#commen...
I'll bullet point your claims and refute them one at a time, as that appears to be what you have asked for, though i did this at the time.
1) The teleological argument this shows that there appears to be a universe that is designed.
>>No it doesn't SHOW this, it argues this, and by simply asserting the premise of the argument, you've again used a logical fallacy called begging the question. Also the appearance of design does not mean something is designed, because design is inferred from evidence and not from complexity. When apologists cite variations of Aquinas's argument from design they ALWAYS use examples of things we already know are designed, because we can demonstrate evidence for this. Now try this find something natural, that occurs only in nature and other than it being complex what evidence can you demonstrate that it is designed?
-------------------------------------------------------
2) the addition of the 1st century sage Jesus Christ. Who through his miracles and life death and resurrection, prove to me that he was God.
>>Again you are asserting your main premise in your argument, this you must know by now is called begging the question, and yes it is another logical fallacy. Hence your argument (such as it is) is irrational and fails. No irrational claim can be objectively shown to be true.
------------------------------------------------------------
3) Our Calendar that we currently use goes back to Jesus Life.
>>Completely false, Pope Gregory XIII introduced his Gregorian calendar in 1582, until then Europe adhered to the Julian calendar, first implemented by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C.
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4) And when you look around you see in art and music and scenery the oceans and then man and women. I don`t think this came from non-design or by naturalistic means.
>>We know the material world and universe exist and we know those things exist, not you're making a claim here that is adding something that you have no evidence for, apart from it being yet another example of the logical fallacy called begging the question, Occam's razor applies:
noun
the principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary. The principle is often invoked to defend reductionism or nominalism.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
5) How can you explain consciousness and the brain leading up to the mind.
>>Lets assume for the sake of argument there is no explanation, what you've done is use Argumentum ad ignorantiam again, also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence") this as we now know is a fallacy in informal logic. However evolution explains our brains, and our consciousness is a product of our brains. Again Occam's razor would apply to any attempts to add things to our explanations that are unnecessary and or unevidenced.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
6) So I accept the top down premise for a Deity; God who is order instead of just disorder and randomness that naturalist espouse.
>>Except your premises as I have meticulously shown here at your behest are entirely fallacious and therefore false. Naturalist don't espouse randomness, that makes no sense, but random occurrences are a simple fact beyond any reasonable doubt, and again the fact that complexity can be produced by random events can be proven with a random coin toss or by randomly rolling some dice and observing the complex patterns that inevitably emerge. We don'y yet have a complete explanation for the origin of the universe, but nothing about the evidence we have indicates anything supernatural is required.
Well you asked me to specifically refute your posts, so there is one from the EVIDENCE thread, that you offered supposedly as objective evidence for a deity. In actual fact it consisted of subjective argument and bare assertions, and a lot of logical fallacies. I'm sorry you dislike hearing that. but this is a simple fact you can easily validate for yourself. To help you here is a link to a page explaining what common logical fallacies are and what they mean for an argument.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/
I hope you will at least do me the courtesy of acknowledging that your posts have been thoroughly addressed with cogent refutations as you requested.
That's a newspaper article citing early claims about Jesus. How is that objective evidence at all, let alone objective evidence for the existence of a deity?
As I have said Billy, it's quite obvious that you don't know what objective evidence means.
Do you believe the claims made in the Koran about Mohammed and Allah? From an historical perspective there is far more evidence to support the existence of Mohammed than Jesus. This doesn't offer any objective reason to believe the supernatural claims made about him.
"Tell me and please list my arguments that I made on posts and threads that you find aren`t objective evidence"
No list is necessary, you've never offered objective evidence for the existence of a deity. In fact you clearly don't know what objective evidence is.
"You cite things like logical fallacy."
No Billy, I cite your repeated use of common logical fallacies, not only do you ignore this you repeat the same fallacies. Like your use of argumentum ad ignorantiam when you insist no one can disprove the existence of your deity. Or your use of argumentum ad populum when you referenced how many Christians believe a deity exists.
"I mentioned objective moral values and as far as I can see you gave no response."
On the contrary I gave several expansive responses which you have ignored. You have no objective morality Billy, since you'd need objective evidence a deity exists, and that it was your version of the deity you've chosen, also objective evidence that you knew what that deity thinks is in fact moral.
Now either you as a human being can assess if it's diktat is moral, or you cannot if humans are incapable of assessing objective morality. If it's the former then that demonstrates you don't need a deity as you can make objective arguments about moral claims, and if it's the latter then you can't know that what you claim a deity wants isn't evil and immoral, and so can't demonstrate it is objectively moral at all.
I have been specific Every time Billy, and you have never once offered anything remotely cogent or salient. As I'm sure will be the case here again.
Here it is objective evidence for early Christianity:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&cad=rja...
How is babby Jesus formed? How Mary get pragnent?
It was a supernatural in making, The Orthodox teaching says it consummated by the spirit of God. She was impregnated by a divine act .joseph according to teaching handed down to us had emotional support but did not inseminate Mary. Jesus was formed in Mary`s womb. just like any other pregnancy .only through the spirit of God.
I believe he was looking for an explanation that would shed some light on how those things were achieved. I may be wrong but I think he was making the point that the christian religion claims these things but cannot explain them. The claim that a deity performed a miracle or created anything has no explanatory powers whatsoever.
We already know how women become pregnant and how they give birth, we have ample evidence to explain this phenomenon. We don't need any supernatural claims, as these are unnecessary and of course as always unevidenced. Nor is the claim unique to Christianity as many earlier religions had myths claiming human women were impregnated by deities.
@faith in god It was a supernatural in making
Yeah. That happened a lot in the ancient world. A princess would find herself pregnant due to an affair, rape, or incest. To avoid the shame or worse that would result, she'd claim to have been visited by Jupiter or Mars or some other god. Look up Rhea Silvia. She was a Vestal Virgin in the city of Albalonga who gave birth to Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. She claimed that Mars was their father. Another virgin, Leda, was impregnated by Jupiter disguised as a swan. One of her twins became Helen of Troy.
I think "immaculate" or "supernatural" conception was an excuse used to cover up the more mundane cause of pregnancy. Mary was a pregnant teenager. Joseph married her anyway, perhaps to gain social status or simply because he wanted a young girl in his bed. All the rest is legend and claptrap.
faith in God fo....
That's too fucking funny. Who came up with that fable, the talking serpent, the talking donkey, or the talking trees?
That one is called a straw man fallacy, where you offer a refutation of an argument no one has actually made. No one has denied that the early christian religion existed, why would they? Since it's entirely irrelevant to the question of whether anyone can demonstrate evidence that a deity exists.
hhttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&... and following ids an independent objective explanations for GOD`S existence:
here is objective and independent account of evidence for the God existence argument: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&...
@ Fig
Apparently driving to LA and thinking is proof of god? Oh billy, please, I laugh so much at your links. If you read this crap all the time no wonder your posts are so weirdly wonderful in their twisted way!
Well you didn`t address his 2 basic arguments did you? aside from the trip comments how about his 2 major arguments. Please address his arguments.
@ Billy
"2 basic arguments did you"
Billy these aren't arguments they are not scientific hypotheses or philosophical arguments they are fallacious assertions. Each of this pastor's (who isn't very bright) points have been comprehensively demolished so many times on this forum I am not going to waste my time on you when you can go back and read them.
Do you not read replies? On this thread Sheldon has already destroyed this clown's 'philosophical argument, the "science " arguments are just not science. Hes going to an argument (like you do) of ad ignorantium. Sheldon has kindly explained that to you.
Do pay attention and stop eating your crayons.
If you have trouble understanding responses to your old old arguments then say so, we will help.
@Faith in God:
His two major arguments are:
A. The Existence of the Universe is Better Explained by The Existence of God.
B. The Existence of Objective Moral Values is Better Explained by the Existence of God.
A. The article relies on the first cause argument. The author claims that the universe has an external cause, and that the cause is god. He offers no evidence for an external first cause, just a claim that it is the "most reasonable" explanation. Then he claims that the first cause is personal because "that is the best answer." There's no evidence, no logic. Just leaps of faith.
B. The author says moral values are determined by god because the moralities of individuals and societies are sometimes wrong. That's ironic. The moralities of religions are invariably wrong. Read some of the many threads on this forum about morality and religion.
faith in God fo...,
Did the universe exist before the 1920s?
>>Try again Billy, the Kalam cosmological argument is bunkum, it has more holes in it than a colander.
https://www.scientificexploration.org/forum/the-kalam-cosmological-argum...
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/kalam.html
>>>What caused God? Either everything MUST have a cause or something can exist without a cause, you can't have it both ways Billy.
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"The Existence of Objective Moral Values is Better Explained by the Existence of God."
"People experience a sense of morality that leads them to hold strongly that certain things are right or wrong for all people in all cultures. For example, it is wrong to torture another person just for fun. It is wrong for me today. It is wrong for a citizen of the Philippines and it was wrong for someone living in 500 BC. Our moral sense provides strong reason to believe in a personal God."
>>>Inquisition, Salem witch trials, Nazis Germany, Serbia's orthodox christian genocide against Muslims, Rwandan catholic clergy implicit in genocide. The trenches of WWI when all sides were theists, the Amalekites the Canaanites, Noah's flood, the destruction of Sodom, and on and on, in other words he's talking complete bollocks.
------------------------------------------------------------
"“There are objective moral values.”
We know there are objective moral values. By this I mean that the content of morality is not determined by the individual,"
>>>If he can't determine the moral content of anything how does he know there are objective morals?
---------------------------------------------------------
"I have briefly presented two arguments for the existence of God. "
>>>Arguments Billy, not objective evidence, and piss poor arguments at that, both of which have been thoroughly refuted on here many times. The first isn't even an argument for a deity, it's an argument for a first cause, he just assumes the rest. The second argument is demonstrably wrong as atheists in comparable circumstances can be shown again and again to be at least as moral as theists. The US has one of the largest prison populations in the world and has a predominantly religious population, and that prison population has a disproportionately higher number of theists in it when compared to the percentage of theists that make up the overall population.
Are you ever going to address the point by point refutation of your post you asked for that I have provided? Or can we assume you were just lying to pretend you hadn't already had these?
Well what he is stating here about moral values is that outside of objective morals coming from GOD man is left up to his own subjective self. the content of moral values does not come from the individual but from without and that he means by God. He cites Nazi Germany here to show that though the culture approved more or less the actions and behaviors of the Nazis it was wrong. And how do we derive that we go outside the culture to a much higher standard .and that is omnipotent God. GOD sets the standards here. some things are just plain wrong no matter who the person or the culture .Also concerning the Kalam argument for god`s existence God is outside space and time so he didn`t have a cause he just always existed. Everything after GOD has a cause God like Thomas Aquinas stated is the first mover of things.
@ FIG
Morality:
"The next day an evil spirit from God came forcefully on Saul. He was prophesying in his house, while David was playing the lyre, as he usually did. Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it, saying to himself, “I’ll pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice."
NOTE : "Evil spirit from God".....and you expect us to believe your god is moral? He sends evil spirits to make sure someone attempts murder on an innocent person?
I could fill pages and pages with examples of your immoral, specious, nasty god billy, all from your good book. But I will wait your explanation of this evil spirit first.
No links to 'thinking' pastors, please.
tell me where in the bible is this story. I know its the history books of the old testament .Can it be chronicles, Samuel or kings? Saul was a king who preceded King David. Saul was jealous of David because Saul killed his thousand while king David killed his tens of thousands. I don`t feel the evil or bad spirit came from GOD here. It was a thought and then a carried out action on Sauls part .God will allow evil up to a point like in the case of Job, but as you read the rest of the story saul didn`t kill David. Davis went on to become king anyway, regardless of sauls antics. correction noted Saul did receive an evil spirit but that was to show gods powerful work in his life, just like I cited concerning the book of Job. God will allow evil but only for the greater good .He has a plan in mind .also you have to keep in mind that saul consulted in a medium so he was getting wrong advice and opening himself up to evil spirits.
@FIG
You don't know your bible?
tsk tsk. Its there all right. You can google the verse by putting in the first line.
You are missing the point billy " GOD SENT an EVIL spirit to MAKE Saul try and kill David...how is that moral?
Forget the gobbledy gook in your first reply. Just explain how that is moral and 'good' .
( Edited for emphasis)
It is in the book of Samuel It was moral just like god allowed satin to tempt and bring bad tidings on job. god for his higher good plan will allow it up to a point then he will intervene like he did in the story of JOB.As I already stated there was a reason for Saul`s attempt on David`s life. God almighty had a plan for David. eventually Saul died by falling on his sword .and David became King of the people.
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