Will the real atheist please stand up?

What do they believe? What do you think? Talk about religion as it exists today.

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Solo
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Re: Carrier: Should We Still Be Looking for a Historical Jes

Post by Solo »

John T wrote:
Peter Kirby wrote:
John T wrote:I would never call Carrier an atheist, a pseudo-atheist perhaps but he is not a real atheist.
Your opinion above is of no value.
Then I shall assign value by stating what my opinion is based on.

Gary Habermas has worked with a clinical psychologist for over 20 years trying to understand why skeptics (atheist/agnostics) doubt the empty tomb theory. They found out that about 85% of doubters do so not out of factual reasons but for emotional reasons. They are God haters. They hate God for not answering their prayers the way they wanted, e.g. God did not spare the life of a sick parent. Gary Habermas says that 19% of self-proclaimed atheists fit into that category. You can watch Habermas explain this around the 1:16 minute mark during a question and answer portion. However, I would highly recommend watching the video from beginning to end, especially for those who want to learn what types of evidence even skeptics in academia now accept for proving a historical Jesus.
Gary Habermas is no clinical psychologist and his representing one marginal view from this profession as a factual ground that vouches for the historicity of the empty tomb is about as valuable as the opinion of a geologist who says the fossils of dinosaurs could have been planted by the devil to lead the faithful astray. One cannot have a reasoned argument with those kinds of confessions. They are misguided appeals to the authority of science, where scientific discipline and objectivity is ceded to pathetic attempts to defend dogmas of faith against indisputable facts or cross-dress beliefs as facts where the latter are simply unavailable.

Best,
Jiri
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MrMacSon
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by MrMacSon »

John T wrote:.
Yet, some [so-called] atheists spend a lot of time hating a God they say doesn't exist. How does that make sense?

To me (John T) that kind of hate is a mental disorder and psychotherapy can be of help.

Carrier seems to spend a lot of time hating God and mocking those that believe in God. Purely irrational. If Carrier was a real atheist he would approach it from scientific/intellectual level and not an emotional one.

Outside of DCH, I see very little rational reasoning on this thread but a lot of hate disguised as belittling humor.

Can't we just stick to the facts?

Respectfully,
John T
"hating a God" & "hating God" = misrepresentations.

If you want to "stick to the facts", perhaps you could address facts about evidence ....
MrMacSon wrote:
John T wrote:.
@MrMacSon,
What I was trying to say, and it would be clear to you if you actually watched the debate is that, Craig uses the standard 6 point test that historians use in determining what is the best explanation for given historical facts.
  • 1. It has great explanatory scope.
    2. It has great explanatory power.
    3. It is plausible.
    4. It is not ad-hoc.
    5. It is in accord with accepted beliefs.
    6. It out strips rival theories of 1-5.
Craig stated up front he was not trying to prove to Carrier the existence of God, but to show that using the tools and standards of historians like Carrier that the theory of the empty tomb passes the 6 point test.
These are outside the widely-accepted "Historical Method" - I suggest you internet-search it and read a few different sources.

Wikipedia gives a good overview first line

Please note what I concluded with -
The current absence of contemporary 1st C information* about Jesus makes [irrefutable] proof of his existence virtually impossible.

* ie. primary source information, which is lacking for Jesus/Iesous of Nazareth or Bethlehem - no texts; no archaeology; no artifacts

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DCHindley
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by DCHindley »

Actually, I think the issue at hand is whether Carrier and/or Craig are correctly assessing the hypothesis that Jesus was in fact resurrected from the dead, not whether historical method is being employed properly.

As for hysterical historical method, there has been a long standing practice among critics of all stripes to apply "special" rules of method, similar to but not the same as those used by "secular" historians, to analyze the evidence for early Christian origins. Despite the obvious methodological problem this poses, a great deal of true critical advances have come from the old fashioned "liberal" theologians who may not have believed in a literal resurrection but were all for the assumed psychological benefits that the Christian salvation scheme was giving to mankind. You can sense the goosebumps forming on their skin as they describe the beauty and ethical superiority of the Christian message over all challengers. <brrrrr>

As for hypothesis testing, McCullagh appears to be describing a scientific hypothesis, not a historical hypothesis. Issues regarding the formation of molecules from various elements or other molecules, and under various conditions, is what makes science alive. These ideas can be tested! Today we have produced millions of compounds that could never occur naturally, because we were able to experiment with temperatures, pressures, additives, steps.

You can't do that with historical data. Historical explanations are formed by selective choices of which bits of historical data to utilize, that is, separate the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise. "Shouldn't there be consequences of each explanatory hypothesis which can be checked to confirm the hypothesis?" No, there may be grains of wheat still to be found in that pile of chaff, that was missed in forming the original hypothesis. There may also be pieces of chaff that look like grains of wheat as well. The best you can do is redefine what evidence is actually relevant, and modify the hypotheses accordingly. It is a refining process, not a testing process. Points of evidence by themselves does not prove, or disprove, anything. You can never test the historical hypothesis, ever.

DCH
Last edited by DCHindley on Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by Peter Kirby »

You guys seem determined to make this thread useful, so it's been pulled back to the 'higher' forum.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Carrier: Should We Still Be Looking for a Historical Jes

Post by Leucius Charinus »

John T wrote:I wouldn't be surprised because I never met a real atheist ...
Where have you looked?

And welcome.
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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DCHindley
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by DCHindley »

Years ago, I remember working at a chemical company in college, making Benzoyl Peroxide (used to whiten bread and clear your skin of acne, among other things). We mixed sodium hydroxide (lye) with hydrogen peroxide in large tanks, then carefully dripped Benzyl Chloride into it (so much by weight over a specified time frame so the rate was ideal), and what was produced were crystals of Benzoyl Peroxide and salt water.

Comparing the product from the shifts when I ran the apparatus to that produced by other workers showed considerable differences in size and shape of the particles, all due to very tiny differences in the process by which we mixed the stuff together. The bulk mixing of lye and hydrogen peroxide wasn't anywhere near as critical as the addition of the Benzyl Chrloride. One gal who worked a shift following mine damn near blew up the plant when she really f***ed up. The temperate of the mixing vat was getting way too high.

Normally, when the water is allowed to filtered out in big cloth lined tubs, even when the particulate is still 60% water by weight, Benzoyl Peroxide can burst into flame upon contact with something as benign as a rusty nail. I've seen it happen. So the supervisor decided to flush the mis-reacting stuff down the plant's sewer system with plenty of water. Unfortunately, the mixture reacted with chemical residues already in the sewer system, and I was told the ground shook while manhole covers were popping off and splashing plastic-like fragments everywhere. We didn't see that gal around anymore.

Now suppose someone wants to test the hypothesis that I am describing an actual historical event.

While there was a time I could give the chemical combinations involved by weight in moles and explain the process with reference to electron valences, etc, as long as the actual manufacturing process is still known in the distant future in which my description is being read (in reality, the stuff will ultimately be banned in 100 years because it threatened a tree frog species in Brazil), the process could be verified as relatively accurate. But what if I read it in a book and never made the stuff for real (I really did, I swear)? So, accuracy of detail is no guarantee of actuality.

You could check newspaper accounts, but I do not think they would have publicized such an event voluntarily. Only a few years prior, one of their sheds for drying the Benzoyl Peroxide exploded when someone let the floor dry out and the wheel of a cart caused a few grains to detonate - did I mention that the stuff can be detonated by friction? - and in another case another mixing building had exploded - thank God for "blow-out" walls and a 3 foot thick concrete barrier with an equally thick glass window. But in a few hundred years all the copies of Elyria Ohio newspapers will have turned to dust, and the few samples of newspapers to have survived were of major events like the end of WW2 or the fall of Saigon. Lack of corroborating documentation turns out to prove nothing at all either.

Perhaps the truth of my statements can be contested on the basis that I have an ideological agenda (I lied) to promote some radical tree frog extinction prediction by excoriating the production of the substance I feel will lead to their ruin. How could anyone ever prove my intent? Even if I myself never mentioned it (being unaware at the time of what would happen in 100 years) my mention of the volatility of Benzoyl Peroxide could me construed by some as "proof" that the problem was known decades before the matter of possible extinction of the tree frog became a well known issue. Imagination consequently does not prove or disprove anything either. Pity.

So, it comes down to simply being my anecdotal account of a glitch that once happened in the production of a chemical in a certain place and time (summer 1977). It can be added to accounts of slaughterhouse workers slicing off fingers which get ground into sausage along with the sawdust that was sprinkled on the floor to soak up the blood. All such accounts can be used to advance the hypothesis that things can always be done better, from metering Benzyl Chloride into vats of sodium peroxide particles and water (why didn't we have some more accurate manner to meter the drip into the vat?) or the slaughtering and cutting up of animals, or to the safety of eating sausages made that way.

What does this prove? Nuttin'.

DCH :confusedsmiley:
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Blood
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by Blood »

John T wrote: As Gary Habermas would put it. Since I don't believe in invisible unicorns, I don't hate them because how can I hate something that doesn't exist? Yet, some [so-called] atheists spend a lot of time hating a God they say doesn't exist. How does that make sense?
It's more accurate to say that what (some) atheists "hate" is not the concept of a God, but the senseless exploitation, manipulation, mental and physical abuse, and a thousand other ills that are committed by people compelled to do those things (and often given a free ticket to do so) based on their concept of a God and their religion.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by Diogenes the Cynic »

Gary Habermas has worked with a clinical psychologist for over 20 years trying to understand why skeptics (atheist/agnostics) doubt the empty tomb theory.
Habermas knows damn well why informed people don't buy the empty tomb - it's because there's no evidence for it and because it's historically extremely implausible. It wouldn't actually prove anything anyway. Even in the Gospels, nobody believes in the resurrection because of an empty tomb. There is nothing extraordinary about an empty tomb. King Herod's tomb was found empty. I guess he came back to life and floated up to Heaven.

Why would a psychologist know anything about the subject anyway. I don't even think I believe Habermas actually tried this or that a psychologist would even try t answer the question. How are they supposed to diagnose the motives of an abstract pool of "skeptics and atheists." Habermas is not struggling to understand anything. He's read Crossan and Ehrman. Crossan was the first to really start popularizing the case against the empty tomb, and he's not even an atheist, so what does Habermas do with that?
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DCHindley
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by DCHindley »

Blood wrote:It's more accurate to say that what (some) atheists "hate" is not the concept of a God, but the senseless exploitation, manipulation, mental and physical abuse, and a thousand other ills that are committed by people compelled to do those things (and often given a free ticket to do so) based on their concept of a God and their religion.
Blood, can I ask whether your Avatar is a picture of you, or of Joseph Alvin "Joey" Gladstone (portrayed by Dave Coulier) of the TV series Full House?

Jus' kurios.

DCH (and yes, my Avatar is a picture of me)
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MrMacSon
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Re: Polemic re Carrier Craig etc

Post by MrMacSon »

Peter Kirby wrote:You guys seem determined to make this thread useful, so it's been pulled back to the 'higher' forum.
Heavens! (would that be 1st, 2nd, or 3rd?!)
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