Debunking Scientism - Tricks New Atheists Play (Part 6)

HitchSlap · Sep 19, 2018

Hawkins said:
10 out of the twelve chose to martyr themselves for what have been witnessed.

Is this simply oral church history, or is there objective historical records for this?

Hawkins said:
Do you think that they chose to die for unicorn claims?

People choose to die for all kinds of reasons. There's really nothing unique about martyrdom. I mean if all it took was for someone to be willing die for a cause to make the cause true... then 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 demonstrated that Islam is true and seventy two virgins await.

Nihilist Virus · Sep 19, 2018

Hawkins said:
10 out of the twelve chose to martyr themselves for what have been witnessed. Do you think that they chose to die for unicorn claims?

Correction: that number is 0.

The fact that you wrote 10 instead of 11 is telling to me. Why would you exclude John? Didn't he still *choose* to die, even if the oil didn't burn him? It seems that you're just looking at who "actually" died and then slapped "chose" on there.

Secular history holds that Peter was executed. Where was he given the choice? Seems like you pulled that out of thin air. Polycarp was given the choice... much later, under a different ruler, under different circumstances. Oh, and he wasn't a witness to anything as he was born after Jesus died. The rest of the disciples were executed? Says who? Catholic tradition? Books that were denied canonization due to being heretical? Do any of these sources actually say the disciples were given a choice in the matter? Because that's a key component, don't you think?

HitchSlap · Sep 19, 2018

Hawkins said:
No evidence for any of your meals you ever ate in the past either. So You didn't eat anything? Mind you, you have 3 meals a day, there are 365 days a year then multiples your age. Come back to tell us how many meals you ever had then try to evidence them.

Your line of reasoning is simply a joke! That's however the typical trick of your kind.

How many days can one survive without food? If you've ever taken a wilderness survival course, then you're aware of the rule of 3. Is it really your claim that I've lived over four decades on this planet, but haven't eaten one meal?

Nihilist Virus · Sep 19, 2018

HitchSlap said:
Is this simply oral church history, or is there objective historical records for this?

People choose to die for all kinds of reasons. There's really nothing unique about martyrdom. I mean if all it took was for someone to willing die for a cause to make the cause true... then 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001 demonstrated that Islam is true and seventy two virgins await.

Their "point" is that the disciples claim to have seen the resurrection, so, unlike the hijackers, they were in a position to know with absolute certainty whether they believed in a lie. And they wouldn't then go on to die for it.

The problem is that no source I know of suggests that any of these witnesses were given the choice to recant and go free. This idea that they refused amnesty is touted casually but no source exists to my knowledge. Certainly no reliable source. In fact every source that mentions the martyrdom of any of the twelve, aside from the case of Peter and James, has been rejected by protestants. So they're just cherry picking from a source they reject.

Another problem is that they lump Paul in with the disciples as if he saw the resurrected Jesus. They go to great lengths to say that hallucinations cannot be shared when trying to show the disciples really saw Jesus rise from the dead, then ignore the blatant signs of hallucination in Paul's case (the others who were with him experienced something but Acts goes out of its way to say that they experienced different things). The inclusion of Paul shows that their argument is aimless and inconsistent.

HitchSlap · Sep 19, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
Their "point" is that the disciples claim to have seen the resurrection, so, unlike the hijackers, they were in a position to know with absolute certainty whether they believed in a lie. And they wouldn't then go on to die for it.

The problem is that no source I know of suggests that any of these witnesses were given the choice to recant and go free. This idea that they refused amnesty is touted casually but no source exists to my knowledge. Certainly no reliable source. In fact every source that mentions the martyrdom of any of the twelve, aside from the case of Peter and James, has been rejected by protestants. So they're just cherry picking from a source they reject.

Another problem is that they lump Paul in with the disciples as if he saw the resurrected Jesus. They go to great lengths to say that hallucinations cannot be shared when trying to show the disciples really saw Jesus rise from the dead, then ignore the blatant signs of hallucination in Paul's case (the others who were with him experienced something but Acts goes out of its way to say that they experienced different things). The inclusion of Paul shows that their argument is aimless and inconsistent.

I agree with you.

There's a paucity of evidence at best to support the claims of apostle martyrdom. However, most Christians are unaware of this, and are usually just repeating what they've been told from the pulpit / interwebs, and I was hoping to illicit this poster to dig deeper.

Nihilist Virus · Sep 19, 2018

HitchSlap said:
I agree with you.

There's a paucity of evidence at best to support the claims of apostle martyrdom. However, most Christians are unaware of this, and are usually just repeating what they've been told from the pulpit / interwebs, and I was hoping to illicit this poster to dig deeper.

One top of this, Christians fail to understand that martyrdom means nothing to the "Why die for a lie?" case if no actual choice is available. How do we know Peter's trial didn't go something like this:

"We know you're the leader of the church. Deny this and you'll be tortured. Admit to it and you'll be killed instantly."

And when Peter "confesses" his faith, he's trumpeted as a martyr who refused to recant and go free. Because, after all, he confessed his faith and then they killed him.

What it looks like, historically speaking, is that Nero blamed a fire on the Christians and that Peter was the scapegoat as he was among the leadership. Renouncing Christ wouldn't have unburned the city, so I don't see why that would be relevant to whether he's executed.

2PhiloVoid · Sep 19, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
I don't know much about you. That much is true. But your little mini-bio under your avatar says you're from the US, so there's no way you'll have me believe that you felt no influence from Christianity.

So your decision to investigate religion and settle on Christianity had nothing to do with the fact that you live in probably the most Christian country on earth?

You sound like a person who insists that advertisements have no effect and that your sudden craving for a Snickers bar was a decision that you made on your "own, out of the blue, existentially."

Companies spend a ton of money just to be allowed to talk to you for thirty seconds. Clearly that has an effect on at least some of the population. Clearly the effect is significant enough so that spending the money is profitable. But somehow you're exempt, right?

For you to "just so happen" to settle on the religion that is dominant in your country for reasons that are not based on popular opinion is going to be a hard sell. Even if I could know for absolute certain that you sincerely believe what you're telling me, that doesn't make it true. Religion has been weaponizing psychology for centuries. We both know that. Atheism is weaponizing reason, and it will win in the end provided that standards of education continue to rise.

The details of your account as you would give them... OK. Let's ask 100 people who bought a Snickers bar to provide their own account, as they would give it, as to why they bought the Snickers bar. How many would say that they did so because of advertising? How many would say that advertising played even a small role? Going just by their testimonies, it would be clear that the Snickers company is wasting money by advertising. Yet you and I both know the exact opposite is true.

So yeah... the Snickers company doesn't know much of anything about these 100 people, but that didn't stop their advertisements from working. That didn't stop them from being totally predictable to the Snickers company.

You're a Christian. In America. And if you grew up in Saudi Arabia you'd be a Muslim. I can say this with very high confidence, well over 90%.

... while I'm not precluding the possibility that your statements carry actual meaning (being that I'm not a nihilist about language), and since you are speaking to me, one who is degreed in social science and education (as well as having majored in high school in the Commercial/Graphic Arts), you're going to have to do better than posit that I am a Christian 'simply' because of ... marketing/advertising? I mean, I don't think the cognitive draw of Christianity operates in exactly the same emotional or cognitive way that, say, 'sex' does ... because in my experience robust Christianity tends to repel rather than to attract.

To simply tell me that since I live in the U.S., I'm a Christian because I have had no other choice is at least partly fallacious ... I mean, you didn't even survey me about my life experiences involving my own family and interaction with religion, or as to how any interaction I might have had as a child or teenager with religion could have been mediated by other social forces, whether those were ideological, familial, and/or psychological. So, while I do understand what you're getting at with your 'advertisting analogy,' and I don't think it's necessarily false, it isn't fool proof.

[yes, I had to edit what I said here just a tweak......]

HitchSlap · Sep 19, 2018

2PhiloVoid said:
... while I'm not actually precluding the possibility that your statements carry actual meaning (being that I'm not a nihilist about language), and since you are speaking to me, one who is degreed in social science and education (as well as having majored in high school in the Commercial/Graphic Arts), you're going to have to do better than posit that I am a Christian 'simply' because of ... marketing/advertising? I mean, I don't think the cognitive draw of Christianity operates in exactly the same emotional or cognitive way that, say, 'sex' does ... because in my experience robust Christianity tends to repel rather than to attract.

To simply tell me that since I live in the U.S., I'm a Christian because I have had no other choice is at least partly fallacious ... I mean, you didn't even survey me about my life experiences involving my own family and interaction with religion, or as to how any interaction I might have had as a child or teenager with various social forces could have been mediated by those forces, whether they were ideological, familial, and/or psychological. So, while I do understand what you're getting at with your 'advertisting analogy,' and I don't think it's necessarily false, it isn't fool proof.

Well, you're not Sikh. So there's that.

Oncedeceived · Sep 19, 2018

Silmarien said:
Eh, I clash with Uber enough over ID to not think he's intentionally goading with any of these threads. And even if he were, there are better ways to respond to that than by doubling down on the rejection of rational thought. I am not a fan of Craig, but I am pretty mystified by how some atheists seem to check their brains at the door whenever he comes up.

And I do not care for the "atheism does not need justification" spiel as a rhetorical ploy. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but if you are going to enter the public sphere and talk to people who disagree with you, I expect you to have more to bring to the conversation than this sort of narcissistic obsession with your own lack of belief. I try to give you guys some slack, because I know you've come out of sectors of the Christian world that are positively toxic, but at some point you do have to learn how to move past that and have a healthier relationship with the religious world.

I wish there was a clap icon....

devolved · Sep 20, 2018

Silmarien said:
And I do not care for the "atheism does not need justification" spiel as a rhetorical ploy. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but if you are going to enter the public sphere and talk to people who disagree with you, I expect you to have more to bring to the conversation than this sort of narcissistic obsession with your own lack of belief. I try to give you guys some slack, because I know you've come out of sectors of the Christian world that are positively toxic, but at some point you do have to learn how to move past that and have a healthier relationship with the religious world.

HitchSlap said:
I justify my lack of belief in god/s because you've failed to proffer evidence of your god/s. What would you like for me to consider?

God is a foundational assumption, or an axiom. Naturally, if one examines that assumption, then evidence for it would be ordered reality itself with conscious beings in it, etc, etc... among some.

You are free to believe and take on any other prime assumptions and axioms... but you would likewise circularly invoke evidence to "support" these.

In the scope of axioms, the evidence is irrelevant. What's relevant is philosophical coherence of a concept that either holds up in your mind or not given what you observe in reality (your view of evidence).

Evidence is only relevant in a scope of our axiomatic agreement. If we disagree, then what good would evidence do?

HitchSlap · Sep 20, 2018

devolved said:
God is a foundational assumption, or an axiom.

Much in the way Allah is an axiom?

Nihilist Virus · Sep 20, 2018

HitchSlap said:
Much in the way Allah is an axiom?

They have two choices:

1. Go ahead and assume your God exists along with all of the fanciful theology that comes with him, and then use these assumptions to make predictions about the natural world.

2. Assume only things that are considered to be common notions or otherwise universally accepted, and then use these facts to show that God exists.

Not only have theists failed to do either, not only have they not even tried to do either, they don't even seem to be aware that this is how the whole thing about making claims is supposed to work.

Theists tend to combine the first part of (1) with the second part of (2) while atheists tend to combine the first part of (2) with the second part of (1).

devolved · Sep 21, 2018

HitchSlap said:
Much in the way Allah is an axiom?

Yes, just like Allah, or a quark. It makes no difference what the concept is when it comes to axiomatic chain of imagined relationships in reality.

HitchSlap · Sep 21, 2018

devolved said:
Yes, just like Allah, or a quark. It makes no difference what the concept is when it comes to axiomatic chain of imagined relationships in reality.

If you can conceive of it, then it must be so.

devolved · Sep 21, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
They have two choices:

1. Go ahead and assume your God exists along with all of the fanciful theology that comes with him, and then use these assumptions to make predictions about the natural world.

2. Assume only things that are considered to be common notions or otherwise universally accepted, and then use these facts to show that God exists.

It seems to be very limiting set of choices when it comes to the concept of God.

Nihilist Virus said:
Not only have theists failed to do either, not only have they not even tried to do either, they don't even seem to be aware that this is how the whole thing about making claims is supposed to work.

Lol. It's like a soccer player walking over to a basketball game and screaming... "You guys are doing it all wrong! You are not allowed to use your hands!".

Who decides the rules for how "claims supposed to work"? All we care about as humans are pragmatic coherence of certain concepts. That pragmatic coherence can exist in all spheres of our function, be it psychological, sociological, individual, and scientific, etc.

For example, it doesn't seem to bother you that there's a particle named "quark" that's derived through a chain of assumptions that are a mile long. You simply accept an authority claims and you include it into your box of "physical objects" that constitutes the "boundaries of real".

For some people those boundaries are wider for reasons you may find difficult to understand with assumptions that you frame.

Nihilist Virus said:
Theists tend to combine the first part of (1) with the second part of (2) while atheists tend to combine the first part of (2) with the second part of (1).

The "natural world" is an assumption you frame that's better be re-labeled as "commonly known assumptions", which is the same as part #2. Hence, why would that be surprising to you that theistic perception of "commonly known world" falls beyond the boundaries of one's immediate experience of reality?

2PhiloVoid · Sep 21, 2018

HitchSlap said:
If you can conceive of it, then it must be so.

...or if you can't conceive of it, then it must not be so, ay?

devolved · Sep 21, 2018

HitchSlap said:
If you can conceive of it, then it must be so.

Not must... it may be so, if it is coherent in the framework of one's perception of reality. All we care about is differentiating "I" from the world outside of that "I", and then labeling entities and processes.

What you think of as "personified God" is merely the same labeling of entity and process outside of "I". What you seem to care about is some consistently-immediate causal relationship demonstration of this process... while this process is all-encompassing.

It's like asking for evidence that Universe exist. It's a nonsensical demand. We assume that the Universe exist, because that's what we label that abstract concept of "everything". It is a concept that's necessary for our coherent perception of reality, hence in some ways... yes... it must exist as a concept.... without any consequential reason for it existing as a reality of that concept.

Nihilist Virus · Sep 21, 2018

devolved said:
It seems to be very limiting set of choices when it comes to the concept of God.

Lol. It's like a soccer player walking over to a basketball game and screaming... "You guys are doing it all wrong! You are not allowed to use your hands!".

Who decides the rules for how "claims supposed to work"? All we care about as humans are pragmatic coherence of certain concepts. That pragmatic coherence can exist in all spheres of our function, be it psychological, sociological, individual, and scientific, etc.

For example, it doesn't seem to bother you that there's a particle named "quark" that's derived through a chain of assumptions that are a mile long. You simply accept an authority claims and you include it into your box of "physical objects" that constitutes the "boundaries of real".

For some people those boundaries are wider for reasons you may find difficult to understand with assumptions that you frame.

The "natural world" is an assumption you frame that's better be re-labeled as "commonly known assumptions", which is the same as part #2. Hence, why would that be surprising to you that theistic perception of "commonly known world" falls beyond the boundaries of one's immediate experience of reality?

You've stated a whole lot of nothing. The quark would not be said to exist unless either the assumption of its existence makes accurate predictions or else it is observed (directly or indirectly). These are the only games in town, like it or not.

HitchSlap · Sep 21, 2018

devolved said:
Not must... it may be so, if it is coherent in the framework of one's perception of reality. All we care about is differentiating "I" from the world outside of that "I", and then labeling entities and processes.

I really don't understand what you're trying to convey, here.

devolved said:
What you think of as "personified God" is merely the same labeling of entity and process outside of "I". What you seem to care about is some consistently-immediate causal relationship demonstration of this process... while this process is all-encompassing.

Still don't understand.

devolved said:
It's like asking for evidence that Universe exist.

Right, either there is, or isn't.

devolved said:
It's a nonsensical demand.

So, it could be a firmament, and not a universe?

devolved said:
We assume that the Universe exist, because that's what we label that abstract concept of "everything".

We assume it exists, because we've been able to observe it. Before this, we assumed it was a firmament.

devolved said:
It is a concept that's necessary for our coherent perception of reality, hence in some ways... yes... it must exist as a concept.... without any consequential reason for it existing as a reality of that concept.

Sounds like an argument from incredulity. For over 200k years, humans had no clue of our origins, so god/s and myths became that placeholder to quench our curiosity and desire to make sense of the world around us.

devolved · Sep 21, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
You've stated a whole lot of nothing.

Out of nothing? I may be god then if I could do that?

Nihilist Virus said:
The quark would not be said to exist unless either the assumption of its existence makes accurate predictions or else it is observed (directly or indirectly).

There are categories of concepts. God and Universe would be in the fundamental category. Quarks and North Korea would be in derivative.

Nihilist Virus said:
These are the only games in town, like it or not.

Maybe for your worldview. But I find it very limiting personally.

Debunking Scientism - Tricks New Atheists Play (Part 6)

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