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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Sunny Jackson

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Sunny Jackson

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shared by Sunny Jackson on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • contrived
  • circumstantial evidence
  • all members of that religion would speak with one voice regarding ethical and theological issues
  • ...97 more annotations...
  • some piece of knowledge that the people of the time couldn't possibly have known but that is now known to be true
  • still explicable as the result of purely human forces
  • To convince me, a miracle would have to be genuine, verifiable, and represent a real and inexplicable divergence from the ordinary.
  • If a given religion's sacred text consistently promotes peace, compassion and nonviolence
  • Anything that can be explained by peer pressure, the power of suggestion or the placebo effect does not count.
  • Did God intend to communicate his message clearly but failed to do so?
  • if that religion's history reflects that fact
  • I'll be happy to believe in God if he tells me to in person, as long as he does it in such a way that I could be sure that it was not a hallucination
  • interesting theological problems
  • subjective experience
  • self-fulfilling
  • impressive
  • a dramatic, statistically significant increase in recovery rate
  • True inerrancy
  • Almost every religion claims their scripture is perfect, but none that I know of have actually met this exacting standard
  • almost every religion that has ever had the power to do so has persecuted those who believed differently, and I do not think it likely that a morally good deity would allow his chosen faith's good name to be smeared by evil and fallible humans
  • It seems reasonable to expect that, if there existed a god that was interested in revealing itself to humanity and desired that we follow its commands, that god would write down whatever instructions it had to give us in a way that was only amenable to one interpretation.
  • for no apparent reason
  • tended to explode in flames
  • interesting
  • even minor but objectively verifiable miracles would do
  • Favorable coincidences or kind or courageous acts performed by human beings also do not meet this standard.
  • the temporal lobes, especially the left lobe, are somehow involved in religious experience
  • compelling
  • this could still be the result of human influence
  • detailed, specific and unambiguous
  • result could be repeated and confirmed
  • multiple reliable witnesses
  • I invite all theists to respond by preparing a list of things that they would accept as proof that atheism is true.
  • glowing auras of h*** light
  • Why doesn't this happen any more today?
  • conclusive
  • proposed those ideas long ago
  • a double-blind study
  • verified by independent evidence
  • indisputable proof
  • circumstantial, not conclusive, evidence
  • a h*** text entirely without error or self-contradiction
  • extra-biblical evidence
  • I'm not interested in the testimonials of people who converted to a religion, not even if they used to be atheists.
  • to protect them from harm
  • independent of any claim
  • faith healing, or people being "slain in the Spirit" and toppling over, owes more to showmanship and the placebo effect used on eager-to-please individuals that have been worked up into highly excitable, suggestible states
  • possible to disprove
  • there must be independent verification that the piece of knowledge was written in texts that existed well before it was actually discovered by science
  • Everyone has moments of weakness in which emotion overrides logic.
  • Biblical miracles are people raising their hands and telling something impossible to happen, and it happens.
  • something so counter-intuitive that the odds against guessing at it correctly would be staggering
  • the lone success among a thousand failures
  • members of all faiths claim to have had convincing subjective experiences of the truth of that faith
  • something surprising, unlikely or unique
  • if faith healers could restore severed limbs...
  • explain what logic and evidence persuaded them
  • If you attempt to prove God's existence to me by listing the evidence for a young earth, more likely than not you'll be disappointed. (Though I'm always happy to debate the merits of evolution.)
  • “There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse" (Rowe, 1979, p. 336).
  • travel to every planet in the universe individually
  • what arguments and tactics are likely to be ineffective at convincing an atheist to change their mind
  • religious hallucinations associated with epilepsy
  • "An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally as bad or worse" (Rowe, 1979, p. 336).
  • In order to leap the chasm from deism to theism; from deism to Christianity - you need to establish that Yahweh was not merely the natural evolution of Canaanite polytheism, and more importantly, rationalize how an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good God, is compatible with pointless animal suffering.
  • case histories with hallucinations of a religious nature
  • Family religion was focused on the god of the settlement
  • "God by definition is all-powerful, all knowing and all good. If God is all-powerful, He can prevent evil. If God is all knowing and can prevent evil, He knows how to prevent it. If God is all good, He would want to prevent evil. But since there is evil God cannot exist” (Martin & Bernard, 2003, p. 316).
  • there is a profound chasm between (1) deism and (2) theism
  • The Christian God does not exist.
  • The Bible is not the Word of God.
  • The Bible is not 100% factually accurate.
  • This god was the patron of the leading family and, by extension, of the local clan and the settlement
  • the magnetic configurations, not the subjects’ exotic beliefs or suggestibility, were responsible for the experimental facilitation of sensing a presence
  • Convergence involved the coalescence of various deities and/or some of their features into the figure of Yahweh
  • The Cosmological argument, the Kalām cosmological argument, the Teleological or Design argument, and the Ontological argument - merely take you to the deists' side of the chasm.
  • Features belonging to deities such as El, Asherah, and Baal were absorbed into the Yahwistic religion of Israel.
  • religion was predominantly a matter of the family
  • speaks in tongues (glossolalia)
  • Jesus was not God.
  • “The text itself of each Gospel is anonymous and its title represents what later tradition had to say about the identity of the author … the first Gospel was put together by an unknown Christian who utilized the Gospel of Mark, the Matthean collection, and other special sources.” (Metzger, 2003, p. 114)
  • Allegiance to the clan god was concomitant with membership of the clan
  • Epicurus (341 - 270 BCE) Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
  • "Many of the books of the New Testament are pseudonymous – written not by the apostles but by later writers claiming to be apostles" (Ehrman, 2009, pp. 5-6).
  • God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.
  • Ecclesiastes 9:5 – "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten."
  • Religious experience can be replicated using magnetic fields
  • at least one of the gospel authors is making content up
  • “The text itself, like all the gospels, is anonymous.” (Price, 2006, p. 493)
  • At least one of the gospels is incorrect
  • seizures can also be “focal”; that is, they can remain confined largely to a single small part of the brain
  • even if both phrases were said together, he could only die immediately after one of them
  • 80% of normal people will feel a sensed presence within the room if you stimulate a person’s temporal lobes with magnetic fields
  • at least one gospel is making content up
  • they cannot both be true
  • “To refer to the author as Matthew is only a convention.” (Miller, 1995, p. 56)
  • “Like all the gospels, our so-called Matthew was originally anonymous.” (Price, 2006, p. 114)
  • if they happen to be in the limbic system, then the most striking symptoms are emotional.
  • God changed his mind
  • put to death men and women, children and infants
  • “The text itself of each Gospel is anonymous and its title represents what later tradition had to say about the identity of the author.” (Metzger, 2003, p. 114)
  • there do exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse” (Rowe, 1979, p. 337).
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