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  • WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.mltomemes@lemmy.worldBased muslim child
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    1 day ago

    There is a problem with a lot of the people that practice polygamy in an unethical way

    That is what the person you responded to said. There is a problem with the cultural of polygamy here because it’s done in an unethical way.

    but not polygamy itself.

    That is also what the person you replied to said. They clarified specifically that if both genders are free to practice polygamy in the same way there’s no issue.




  • Every good scientist believed in something supernatural at least once, then they tried to proof it (black holes f.e.).

    Science deals with things that are natural.

    If a black hole were assumed to be supernatural there’d be nothing to prove. The “then they tried to prove it” forces scientists to make theories which are falsifiable (ie in the natural world).

    If there’s no test we can think of to disprove the idea, it’s not a scientific idea.

    Atheism is unscientific. You can’t proof the non existence of god(s),

    Theism is unscientific. You can’t prove the existence of god(s).

    A-theism means absence of theism.

    Atheists aren’t necessarily claiming to be able to prove god doesn’t exist, they’re saying they don’t believe in a particular theism.

    therefore ruling out every possible of something supernatural is dumb.

    Agreed. Gnostic atheism seems dumb to me too.

    That’s why I’m agnostic atheist. I don’t believe in God, but I dont know if I’m right or not.

    There could be a god, and seeing evidence of such I’d change my mind.

    How many dimensions are there again?

    We don’t know.

    Depends what you mean by dimension as well. Spacetime seems to have 4, 3 space and 1 time.

    Spacetime also appears to be an illusion. Whatever the answer is needs to be informed by quantum physical mechanisms we don’t fully understand yet.

    Again, agnostic covers the “I don’t know part”.

    Has every scientist that believes in the string theory lost credibility?

    Basically yeah.

    Checkout this video, Dr. Collier covers a lot of points I was feeling as well.

    https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E

    String theorists lied to everyone and massively overstated the evidence that it was true when it was still a young developing model.

    Now that it’s become a dead-end it’s tough to take back those promises.



  • if I were there would be proof that’s why your example is a false equivalence.

    Not necessarily. This is lemmy, you’re on a completely anonymous account. I wouldn’t expect to have any proof.

    Maybe you just didn’t get caught yet.

    If the Christian God exists, for example, there would be no way of knowing for certain

    I was willing to grant you the philosophical God argument, but if you want to evoke the Christian God you’re now making a whole bunch of positive claims.

    Why don’t we look at the evolutionary record and see whether all of humanity comes from Adam and Eve or if animals evolved from a common ancestor?

    We can look for evidence of a flood, or an exodus and see there is none.

    We can track the history of Yahweh, and how he was syncretized with El and Baal from Caananite faiths, and morphed over centuries from a local Storm/war God to the only God.

    The early Israelites engaged in polytheistic practices that were common across ancient Semitic religion, because the Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and included a variety of deities from it, including El, Asherah, and Baal. Initially a lesser deity among the Cannanite pantheon, Yahweh in later centuries became conflated with El; Yahweh took on El’s place as head of the pantheon of the Israelite religion, El’s consort Asherah, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי‎), came to be applied to Yahweh alone. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively absorbed in conceptions of Yahweh.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

    We can compare the contradictions between the behavior of the Old Testament God and Jesus to conclude like early Christians such as Marcion of Sinope Yahweh and Christianity are incompatible

    Study of the Hebrew Bible, along with received writings circulating in the nascent Church, led Marcion to conclude that many of the teachings of Jesus were incompatible with the actions of Yahweh, characterized as the belligerent god of the Hebrew Bible. Marcion responded by developing a ditheistic system of belief around the year 144.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope

    We can compare the Gospels and see where they copied stories from the Iliad/Odyssey.

    Odyssey Location Mark Location

    Athena descends like a bird 1.319-324 Spirit descends like a dove 2:1-2 Sailors volunteer to follow Athena 2.383-413 Fishermen volunteer to follow Jesus 1:16-20 Nestor’s feast for 4500 men 3.1-68 Jesus’s feast for 5000 men 6:30-44 Menelaus’s wedding feast 4.1-67 Jesus’s feast for 4000 8:1-9 Odysseus enters city behind mules 6.252-261 Jesus enters city on an ass 11:1-11 Alcinous’s prolific figs trees 7.112-121 Jesus curses unprolific fig tree 11:12-14 Blind Demodocus among sailors 8.471-473 Blind man at “House-of-fisherman” 8:22-26 Lotus-eating, forgetful comrades 9.62-107 Forgetful disciples at sea 8:19-21 Polyphemus the cave-dweller 9.105-525 Dangerous demoniac from caves 5:1-20 Aeolus’s bag of winds and gale 10.1-55 Jesus calms winds and sea 4:35-41 Cannibals at the harbor 10.76-136 Hostile Pharisees at the harbor 8:10-13 Following a water carrier to dinner 10.100-116 Following a water carrier to dinner 14:12-16 Circe turns soldiers into swine 10.135-465 Jesus sends demons into swine 5:1-20 Odysseus’s last supper before Hades 10.546-561 Jesus’s last super and Gethsemane 14:32-42 Death of young Elpenor 10.546-560 Flight of naked young man 14:43-52 Blind seer Tiresias 11.90-94 Blind seer Bartimaeus 10:46-52 Death of Agamemnon at a feast 11.409-430 Death of the Baptist at a feast 6:14-29 Burial of Elpenor at dawn 12.1-5 Young man at tomb at dawn 16:1-4 Eurylochus’s vow 12.298-305 Peter’s vow 14:26-31 Eurylochus’s broken vow 12.367-396 Peter’s broken vow 14:66-72 Eumaeus’s Phoenician nurse 15.417-491 Syrophoenician woman 7:24-30 Odysseus’s transfiguration 16.172-301 Jesus’s transfiguration 9:2-13 Suitors plot to kill Telemachus 16.383-385 Vinedressers kill the beloved son 12:1-12 Conspiracy to kill Telemachus 17.182-213 Conspiracy to kill Jesus 14:10-11 Penelope’s hospitality 17.534-547 Generous widow at temple 12:41-42 Irus the beggar 18.1-94 Barabbas the brigand 15:6-15 Telemachus’s amazement at house 19.35-43 Disciples’ amazement at temple 13:1-2 Penelope’s request for a sign 19.102-271 Disciples’ request for a sign 13:3-8 Prophetic oak at Dodona 19.296-307 Prophetic fig tree 13:28-31 Eurycleia washes her master 19.370-575 Woman anoints Jesus 14:3-9 Eurycleia’s recognition of Odysseus 19.474-486 Peter’s recognition of the Messiah 8:27-30 Odysseus slays suitors in his house 22.17-86 Jesus expels merchants from temple 11:15-19 Contested authority over the house 22.221-233 Contested authority over the temple 11:27-33 Odysseus hacks to death evil slave 22.474-477 Bystander slices off a slave’s ear 14:43-5

    https://testimonia.pl/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MacDonald.Mimesis.pdf

    Or also where they contradict each other

    If you spend enough time focusing on the truth of this you will eventually conclude you cannot prove your belief like they cannot prove theirs so neither side has anything demonstrable.

    I don’t think theist Christians would agree with that though. Quoting Tertullian:

    We do not worship your gods, because we know that there are no such beings. This, therefore, is what you should do: you should call on us to demonstrate their non-existence, and thereby prove that they have no claim to adoration; for only if your gods were truly so, would there be any obligation to render divine homage to them. And punishment even were due to Christians, if it were made plain that those to whom they refused all worship were indeed divine. But you say, They are gods. We protest and appeal from yourselves to your knowledge; let that judge us; let that condemn us, if it can deny that all these gods of yours were but men.

    https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm

    When it comes to a philosophical creator god I agree with your statement, this view describes agnostic atheism.


  • The assertion that there is no God cannot be proven as you cannot prove a negative.

    Correct, no one argued that.

    There assertion that there is a divine entity cannot be logically demonstrated in any valid way logically speaking.

    Correct again.

    The validity of either claim cannot be tested and thus have the same overall value and it is a matter of which you choose to accept.

    Do you really mean that?

    If I were to accuse you of something terrible like being a child molester with absolutely zero evidence…

    That’s valid? You can deny it, but your denial is of equal value to my accusation right? So if everyone in this comment section chooses to believe you molester children from now on… do you have a problem with that?

    The reason I’m an atheist is the same reason I don’t believe you’re a child molester yet. I think there is a burden of proof of evidence that would need to be met before the accusation needs to be taken seriously.




  • You clearly don’t know what I mean

    I know exactly what you mean. 100% crystal clear.

    I asked for actual evidence.

    You asked for physical evidence.

    If you have none, you could have said that near the beginning of this conversation rather than whatever you’ve been doing.

    Once I realized you had a radically strict criteria for what types of evidence could be considered “actual evidence” far and beyond what the most serious scholars and historians would apply, I did say that.

    https://lemmy.ml/comment/18918021

    Right here I said we were done and I had nothing more I could give you.

    You also clearly don’t know what I mean since you’ve been attributing random meanings to me that have been wrong every time. I don’t have nefarious purposes, I actually just want the actual evidence you claimed to have

    I gave you the evidence I claimed to have.

    You want evidence I never claimed to have, but which you mistakenly think I did.

    and I don’t put stock in people’s stories, because people are often mistaken for many reasons. For evidence to be taken seriously , it should not rely on subjective accounts.

    Are you sure?

    Earlier you told me we know Australopithecus existed because we found their bones.

    I believe some scientist may have found a bone, but why do you accept its as old as they say it is, why do you accept it belonged to a distinct species called Australopithecus? Where’s the physical evidence of that?

    In between the Australopithecus and the homo sapien there are quite a few missing links that need stories to fill them in.

    Maybe they migrated this way in this period? Maybe the water was lower and there was an ice bridge here? Maybe this was a distinct species and not a direct ancestor?

    These are all stories aren’t they, opinions of archaeologists and paleontologists and biologists?

    Why do you consider finding a weird looking bone evidence of Australopithecus if you don’t follow the subjective accounts of evolutionary scientists and archaeologists when they’re dating these bones and sequencing genetic material and so forth?


  • All right, let’s start again with no more assumptions about what you think I might possibly mean.

    I know exactly what you mean.

    Literally, you said there was evidence of Jesus’s existence.

    Yes, due to the fact I agree with historians that contemporary sources are evidence, I say there is evidence.

    I literally only asked for one example of said evidence.

    And I gave you 8 contemporary sources and listed more.

    The issue is that you disagree with the scientific community this is valid and are demanding physical evidence.

    I’ve told you multiple times no physical evidence exists. It’s an impossible demand, and there’s nothing to show you.

    I am not asking for books or videos

    You asked if I had any other evidence but what i gave you or if we were done here and I said “yes we are done here” because there’s nothing fucking else to give you. Get that through your dumb skull holy shit. How are we this many comments deep into you still not getting there’s no physical evidence and I have never claimed there to be.

    If your default position is to disagree with the overwhelming consensus of scientists, but then instead of learning even the slightest about what they’re saying you choose to argue with randos on social media about it you’re just anti intelligence. You’re choosing to be dumber on purpose. I’m not here for that shit.

    You might as well argue the earth is flat.


  • Jesus Christ, I never asked you to transcribe a video, what are you even on about?

    You didn’t specifically ask me to transcribe the video, but you would realize if I did transcribe the video that it is the exact answer to your question and answers every issue you’ve raised.

    So as you keep pestering me over and over again for “one piece of physical evidence” I’m frustrated by the fact you’re basically just demanding me to transcribe it instead of watching it yourself.

    I asked for ONE thing:

    Give me one piece of evidence to support your claim.

    That’s all.

    I listed like 8 contemporary sources written by people who knew of him in the early 1st century including some people (like Paul) who would have personally met his disciples.

    What I have given you is what historians consider valid evidence. That you have a problem with it is your issue with the field of history, not my lack of evidence.

    It’s simple, and something a child could understand.

    But yet here we are.

    For instance, we know Australopithecus existed because we’ve found bones.

    It’s that simple.

    Dude how many times do i have to repeat myself. You’re not going to find bones. Give up on the bones.

    How is this hard?

    It’s impossible.

    No physical evidence exists of almost any Palestinian at that time.

    Bones are created in very specific conditions, the real Jesus would by all likelihood have been thrown into a mass grave. If I had a 2000 year old bone how would we even prove it was Jesus?

    Historians look at the earliest contemporary sources written about him to judge if he exists, and all modern historians agree that by scrutinizing and comparing these documents a man named Yeshua probably existed, he was probably from Nazareth and he was probably crucified.

    If that’s not good enough for you that’s really not my fault. It’s simply what the evidence is and how history works.


  • Isn’t it ironic to you that you wanted to ask me to read an entire book for your point, but you’re now assuming I want you to watch a gasp half hour video, though I never asked that?

    I already watched the video. I’m saying it’s unrealistic of you to ask me to go back and keep restarting it to transcribe it for you.

    Evidence is not bible stories. Evidence is archaeological artefacts or bones or literally anything physical that is not some guy’s stories. This is not hard. I’m only asking for ONE example.

    The reason you’re asking me to transcribe the video is because I timestamped the exact moment for you where it addressed this as a completely unrealistic demand and that no serious historian would expect to find any or find it a compelling argument against his existence.

    There are no examples, nor should that be a problem for a historians. Which is why I brought up the example of William Shakespeare and Alexander the Great.

    But yeah, I’m the troll because you’d rather spend an hour harassing me about explaining the basics of the scientific discipline of history instead of watching 2 minutes of a 20 minute video.


  • WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.mltoAtheist Memes@lemmy.worldSee also: The Call of Chtulhu
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    14 days ago

    We’re done here. You have the evidence.

    Why are you trying to have a debate with me? I’m not a historian. I showed you what the leading historians have to say.

    They are the ones who have studied all the sources and know the right answer you want. All I can do is go back and cite when I found them addressing your arguments.

    If you are moving the goalposts and starting to demand physical evidence like you need to see Jesus’ shin bone to believe he existed then the problem is that you don’t know how history works. It’s not my fault we don’t have his bones. We don’t have anyone’s bones. I already sent that info to you.

    You don’t doubt William Shakespeare and Alexander the Great existed do you?

    I already timestamped the exact part of the video where he addresses why no physical evidence exists but also why that’s not a problem.

    Just watch the damn thing for 5 minutes.

    You’re really demanding I watch the video 18 times and try to type it out for you?



  • WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.mltoAtheist Memes@lemmy.worldSee also: The Call of Chtulhu
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    14 days ago

    Know that if you choose to argue against facts attested by the overwhelming majority consensus of scholars, academics and historians then you are the one making extraordinary claims.

    If you want to hear him talking on this I suggest skipping to 14:35 since you’re impatient:

    https://youtu.be/hnybQxIgfPw

    Read through page 55-101 of below:

    https://archive.org/details/jesus-apocalyptic-prophet-bart-d.-ehrman/page/55/mode/1up

    Most people in our society probably think that Jesus must have had an enormous effect on the people of his day — not just on his immediate followers. He was, after all, the founder of the most significant religion in the history of Western Civilization.

    Unfortunately, the commonsensical view is not even close to being right—biblical epics on the wide screen (the source of many people’s knowledge about the Bible!) notwithstanding. If we look at the historical record itself—and, I should emphasize, for historians there is nothing else to look at—it appears that whatever his influence on subsequent generations, Jesus’ impact on society in the first century was practically nil, less like a comet striking the planet than a stone tossed into the ocean. This becomes especially clear when we consider what his own contemporaries had to say about him.

    Pagan sources

    Pliny the Younger

    The first reference to Jesus in any surviving pagan account does not come until the year 112 CE. It appears in a letter written by a governor of the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus (northwestern part of modern-day Turkey), a Roman official named Pliny. The letter tells us some interesting things about these followers of Jesus. We learn, for example, that they comprised a range of ages and socioeconomic classes, that they met in the early morning before it was light, that they partook of food together, and—the chief point for our present investigation—that they worshiped “Christ as a god.” The name “Jesus” itself is not given here, but it’s pretty clear whom Pliny had in mind. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give us any information about Jesus—for example, who he was, where he lived, what he said or did, or how he died—only that he was worshiped as divine by his followers.

    Suetonius

    A few years later, the Roman historian Suetonius made a casual comment that some scholars have taken to be a reference to Jesus. Suetonius wrote a set of biographies on the twelve Roman Caesars who had ruled up to his own time, starting with Julius Caesar. There is a lot of valuable historical information in these books, along with a lot of juicy gossip—a gold mine for historians interested in major events of the early Roman Empire. In his Life of Claudius, emperor from 41 to 54 CE, Suetonius mentions riots that had occurred among the Jews in the city of Rome and says that the riots had been instigated by a person named “Chrestus.” Some historians have maintained that this is a misspelling of the name “Christ.” If so, then Suetonius is indicating that some of Jesus’ followers had created havoc in the capital, a view possibly confirmed in the New Testament (see Acts 18:2).

    Tacetus

    Tacitus is probably best known for the Annals, a sixteen-volume history of the Roman Empire covering 14-68 CE. Probably the most famous passage in the Annals (book 15) reports the megalomania of the emperor Nero, who had Rome torched in order to implement some of his own architectural designs for the city. When he was suspected for the fire, Nero sought to place the blame elsewhere and found in the Christians a ready scapegoat. He rounded up members of this despised sect (Tacitus himself says that the Christians were widely held in contempt for their “hatred of the human race”) and made a public display of them, having some rolled in pitch and set aflame to light his public gardens, and others wrapped in animal skins to be torn to shreds by savage dogs. Nero was not known for his timid tactics. In any event, in the context of his discussion of Nero’s excesses against the Christians, Tacitus does manage to say something about where they had acquired their (to him) strange beliefs and so provides us with the first bit of historical information to be found about Jesus in a pagan author: “Christus, from whom their [i.e., the Christians’] name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius” (Annals 15.44). Tacitus goes on to indicate that the “superstition” that emerged in Jesus’ wake first appeared in Judea before spreading to Rome itself.

    Early Jewish Sources

    Josephus

    I’ll take the references in reverse order, since the second is of less historical interest. It occurs in a story about the Jewish high priest Ananus, who abused his power in the year 62 CE by unlawfully putting to death a man named James, whom Josephus identifies as “the brother of Jesus who is called the messiah” (Ant. 20.9,1). From this reference we can learn that there was indeed a man named Jesus (Josephus actually discusses lots of different people with that name—many of them at far greater length than the Jesus we are concerned about), that he had a brother named James (which we already knew from the New Testament; see Mark 6:3 and Gal. 1:19), and that he was thought by some people to be the Jewish messiah. The information is not much, but at least it’s something. I should point out that Josephus himself does not happen to agree with those who called Jesus the messiah. We don’t know how much he knew about the Christians, but it is clear that he remained a non-Christian Jew until his dying day.

    Early Christian sources

    Documents and oral tradition now lost but existent at time the Gospels were written

    All of these written sources I have mentioned are earlier than the surviving Gospels; they all corroborate many of the key things said of Jesus in the Gospels; and most important they are all independent of one another. Let me stress the latter point. We cannot think of the early Christian Gospels as going back to a solitary source that “invented” the idea that there was a man Jesus. The view that Jesus existed is found in multiple independent sources that must have been circulating throughout various regions of the Roman Empire in the decades before the Gospels that survive were produced. Where would the solitary source that “invented” Jesus be? Within a couple of decades of the traditional date of his death, we have numerous accounts of his life found in a broad geographical span. In addition to Mark, we have Q, M (which is possibly made of multiple sources), L (also possibly multiple sources), two or more passion narratives, a signs source, two discourse sources, the kernel (or original) Gospel behind the Gospel of Thomas, and possibly others. And these are just the ones we know about, that we can reasonably infer from the scant literary remains that survive from the early years of the Christian church. No one knows how many there actually were. Luke says there were “many” of them, and he may well have been right. And once again, this is not the end of the story." (page 83)

    Q

    One of the most controversial and talked-about sources that scholars have used for studying the life of the historical Jesus is, oddly enough, a document that does not exist. Most scholars are reasonably sure, though, that at one time it did exist, and that it can, at least theoretically, be reconstructed. The document is called “Q.” What else did it contain? It certainly had some of the most familiar sayings of Jesus. It contained, for example, the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-23) and the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2-4); it included the commands to love your enemies, not to judge others, and not to worry about what to eat and wear (Luke 6:27—42; 12:22—32); and it provided a number of familiar parables (e.g., Luke 12:39-48; 14:15-24). The reality, though, is that we don’t have a full picture of what Q contained, since our only access to it is through the agreements of Matthew and Luke in passages not found in Mark. So, while we can say what probably was in it, we’re hard-pressed to say what was not.

    Letters of Paul

    Matthew, Mark, Luke

    Clement of Rome

    Ignatius of Antioch

    Polycarp of Smyrna

    Dead Sea Scrolls

    Many more…


  • Check out Dr. Bart Ehrman’s book Did Jesus Exist?, he goes over all the evidence.

    Every week I receive maybe two or three emails asking me whether Jesus existed as a human being.   When I started getting these emails, some years ago now, I thought the question was rather peculiar and I did not take it seriously.  Of course Jesus existed.  Everyone knows he existed.  Don’t they?

    But the questions kept coming and soon I began to wonder:  why are there so many people asking?  My wonder only increased when I learned that I myself was being quoted in some circles – misquoted rather – as saying that Jesus never existed.  I decided to look into the matter.  As it turns out, to my surprise, there is an entire literature devoted to the question of whether or not there ever was a real man, Jesus.

    I was surprised because I am trained as a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity, and for thirty years I have written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Gospels, the early Christian movement, the history of the church’s first three hundred years.   Like all New Testament scholars, I have read literally thousands and thousands of books and articles in English and other European languages on Jesus, the New Testament, and early Christianity.  But I was almost completely unaware of this body of skeptical literature, except as a slight image on the very periphery of my vision.   As are most of my colleagues in this field of scholarship.

    Those who do not think Jesus existed are frequently militant in their views and remarkably adept at parrying counter-evidence that to the rest of the civilized world might seem completely compelling and even unanswerable.  But these writers have answers, and the smart ones among them need to be taken seriously, if for no other reason than to show why they cannot be right about their major contention.  The reality is, whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist.  That is what this book will set out to demonstrate.

    I hardly need to stress what I have already intimated, that this is the view of virtually every expert on the planet.   That in itself is not proof, of course.  Expert opinion is, at the end of the day, still opinion.  But why would you not want to know what experts have to say?

    https://ehrmanblog.org/my-book-did-jesus-exist-an-answer-to-the-mythicists/