Let us ALL be humble

[liamconnor]

I wonder whether many of us are being a bit...presumptuous.

It seems a good many arguments are based on highly technical details...details which scholars themselves would regard as "tenuous".

I give an example: A lot of arguments in this forum bring up dates for the biblical documents. For instance, one argument I just read was entirely based on the assumption that the fourth gospel was written around 110 AD; as he/she said, "most scholars date..."

This brought a laugh from me. "Most scholars...". MOST SCHOLARS!

I have read quite a bit; but by no means do I claim mastery of this issue. However, the scholars that I have read (not on wikepedia, but real books by scholars at big universities: E.P. Sanders; Shaye Cohen; Helmut Koester etc. etc.) all admit that the dating of biblical composition is not an exact science. Every single one admits it is GUESSWORK.

And yet such guesswork makes its way online, and from online to us, the public. And we drink it in as if it were...pardon the pun...gospel.

So a question...

How do we check ourselves against mimicking online claims that we haven't researched? How do we exercise a little "self-consciousness" or even humility when making arguments; how do we ask "wait, do I really know that, say, wikipedia, or, "this blog writer" is claiming, is true; should I look into this a little more"?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

Read the actual words scholars use in their peer reviewed work not those of a armchair forum "experts" that take snippets from Wikipedia and run with them (as a general rule of thumb, the less well read the person the more catagoric their statements are on matters of ancient history). Retain one's powers of critical thinking and bear in mind that "most scholars" might be wrong, it has been known to happen.

[oldbadger]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

You mentioned that historical research is not an exact science, after laughing at a proposed date of 'around' a certain time!

Very presumptuous of you, methinks!

[Divine Insight]

So a question...

How do we check ourselves against mimicking online claims that we haven't researched? How do we exercise a little "self-consciousness" or even humility when making arguments; how do we ask "wait, do I really know that, say, wikipedia, or, "this blog writer" is claiming, is true; should I look into this a little more"?

I have never bothered mimicking ideas of others. I have simply studied the actual 66 book canon call the Bible and found it to be self-contradictory, immoral, and utterly absurd.

You speak about questioning the dates the Gospels were written, but that's a totally irrelevant issue. It would matter when they were written they are clearly nothing more than ignorant superstitious rumors about some guy who apparently couldn't even read or write on his own. Of if he could he didn't feel that he any anything to say worthy of writing down.

Not only that, but it makes no sense to claim that Jesus was the Son of Yahweh when it can't even be established that Yahweh is a valid God myth in the first place. The Old Testament is clearly false and filled full of absurd superstitions as well, that prove themselves to be false via their own self-contradictions.

We don't need the Internet, or the opinions of others to see that the Abrahamic myths of Yahweh are clearly false. There is no need to bring scientific knowledge to bear on the Bible either, although it is true that when we do that it only reveals the Bible to be false as well.

Non the less the Old Testament proves itself false, no need to even bother studying the Gospel rumors of Jesus. And yes, that's all they are. They are rumors about a man who neither wrote anything down himself, nor was he recorded in history through any normal channels of historical documentation. All we have about Jesus are the Gospel rumors that make outrageous claims about him. These are clearly not valid historical accounts and no historian worth their salt would ever claim that they are historical documents. At least not to any greater extent than the Islamic Qur'an, or Greek mythology, etc. Sure, they are superstitious rumors that were written down by someone at various points in history, but beyond that they are not a dependable historical record of anything. In fact, they contain extreme self-contradictions thus proving they are false.

Not only that, but they have Jesus prophesying things that never happened, as well as having him making promises that have never been kept to anyone, including the most devout Christian believers.

There is no question that the Bible is nothing more than superstitious fables and rumors.

That's a given.

All that's left is for the people who still believe in these myths to realize that they can't be true. It's a sad statement for humanity in the year 2017 that so many people still argue that there could be something to these myths. These Abrahamic religion, Judaism and Islam included have prove to be most tenacious myths ever created by man. They are so powerful in their use of brainwashing techniques that they have become as difficult to recover from as an addictive drug such as heroin. People are so addicted to the idea of eternal life that they just can't let go of these ancient superstitious religions.

But you don't need the Internet to see that they are clearly false. All you need to do is look at the actual canon of 66 clearly false fables. No internet required, and no science required. The fables expose their own fallacies via their own self-contradictions. The immoral principles they hold up should also expose their fallacy to any truly decent person. How people can so passionately and tenaciously argue for these immoral myths is beyond me.

[Checkpoint]

[Replying to post 4 by Divine Insight]

There is no question that the Bible is nothing more than superstitious fables and rumors.

That's a given.

No, it's an opinion.

One that it seems you "so passionately and tenaciously argue for" on these forums.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 4 by Divine Insight]

There is no question that the Bible is nothing more than superstitious fables and rumors.

That's a given.

No, it's an opinion.

One that it seems you "so passionately and tenaciously argue for" on these forums.

Sorry, but the self-contradictions that occur in the Bible are not an opinion. They are provable self-contradictions in logic.

What is an "opinion" that has no validity at all is the idea that the Biblical myths could be justified.

In fact, just look at Christendom itself. Christendom is proof positive of the truth of which I speak.

Even the most avid Christian apologists and clergy cannot convince each other of their extremely weak apologies for these absurdly illogical self-contradictory fables.

And we can't even discount Judaism and Islam in this either since they are nothing more than just more opinionated versions of these myths.

But even within Christendom itself we see the Christian Theists are each others throats proclaiming all other Christians to have the wrong "opinions" on Christianity, when in fact, all Christian demoninations are nothing more than opinions.

Moreover, if there was any consistent and truthful story to be had in these collections of myths why should it be that Christians disagree with each other on so many critical points of these fables?

Christendom, as a religion, is nothing more than unwarranted and disagreeing opinions.

The fact that Christendom itself has devoted an entire "study" to apologetics proves that even they see where these myths contain extreme problems and self-contradictions that need to be apologized for and tried to explain away. And they can't even come to any coherent consensus on how to achieve that goal. Their apologies are quite often self-contradictory as well.

In addition to this, Christian Clergy often toss their hands in the air proclaiming that even they can't make sense of these fables and they end up relying upon excuses such as:

1. "We must have faith that God had good reasons for these things that appear to be utterly absurd and self-contradictory"

2. "God works in mysterious ways that we simply cannot understand".

3. "God's ways are not our ways, we can't expect to understand them".

4. "God has knowledge that we don't have and therefore there are good reasons for these utterly absurd and self-contradictory directives and actions he took in these ancient Biblical stories"

5. "Perhaps there were good reason in ancient times for these things that appear to us to be extremely immoral today"

And the list just goes on and on. In short, even the Christian apologists and clergy actually recognize the fallacies and self-contradictions of the Bible. They just try to sweep these thing under the carpet by proclaiming that God must have his reasons for behaving in these obviously horrible ways.

So to say that these are just my opinions is absurd. All of Christendom actually agrees with me in their very act of constantly trying to defend the absurdities and self-contradictions in the Biblical fable. And they can't even agree among themselves on a single coherent resolution to these obvious problems.

So Christendom proves its own fallacy and ineptitude.

Think about it. When I sit down with a theist to discuss the Bible the theist has to come up with "apologies" for the absurdities and self-contradictions contained in the Bible basically for ever CHAPTER in the 66 book canon. It's a non-stop apologetic task.

And if I sit down with TWO theists from different Christendom denominations they will be in passionate disagreement with each other one what these apologies should be.

Gather together more than TWO theists from different Christendom demoninations and I don't even need to stick around at all. They will gladly just argue with each other.

And they won't even be able to CONVINCE each other either! They will all go back home clinging to the same denominational opinions and beliefs they had before attending the apologetic meeting.

Do you think that if you put a devout Jehovah's Witness, a devout Catholic, a devout Southern Baptist , and devout Amish, etc, all in a room to discuss Christian apologetics they are going to be able to CONVERT each other. It's highly unlikely. In the end they will all leave the meeting and go back home to continue professing their own opinionated denomination to be the "Correct Interpretation" of the obviously self-contradictory and meaningless Bible.

So no, this is hardly my opinion. This is just the FACT of the incoherent state of these religious myths.

And don't forget, we're only talking about the divisive Christians here, but we really need to include the divisive Jews and divisive Muslims as well. They not only disagree with the opinions of the Christians when it comes to the Biblical God, but they too disagree among themselves.

If anything is clear about the Biblical fables is that they are not clear at all, and even the Biblical theists can't agree with each other over what these ancient myths are talking about.

The proof is in the pudding. My "opinion" on the matter is totally irrelevant. I could have never been born and everything I said in this post would still be TRUE. So to say that this is just my opinion is without merit.

[JehovahsWitness]

Do you think that if you put a devout Jehovah's Witness, a devout Catholic, a devout Southern Baptist , and devout Amish, etc, all in a room to discuss Christian apologetics they are going to be able to CONVERT each other. It's highly unlikely.

Well I can't speak for the other religions but it is a demonstrate let fact that "Catholics, a devout Southern Baptists, devout Amish as well as people from any number of religions have, following their contact with Jehovah's Witnesses seen that JWS do indeed have the truth and changed religions.

Indeed most of our "converts" come from people of other faiths, some of whome were quite devout.


[youtube][/youtube]

I Gave Up on Religion
https://tv.jw.org/#en/video/VODIntExp/d ... 40_1_VIDEO

[oldbadger]

Sorry, but the self-contradictions that occur in the Bible are not an opinion. They are provable self-contradictions in logic.

Sorry, (te-he ) but you are chucking the baby out with the bathwater.

An objective, agenda free approach is to separate the different books, investigate and research to discover what insertions, editions, exaggerations and fibs have been inserted, and then scrutinize to ascertain what truth might lay within that one book.

Your very first sentence showed me that you are not agenda free, so I stopped there.

[Divine Insight]

Sorry, but the self-contradictions that occur in the Bible are not an opinion. They are provable self-contradictions in logic.

Sorry, (te-he ) but you are chucking the baby out with the bathwater.

An objective, agenda free approach is to separate the different books, investigate and research to discover what insertions, editions, exaggerations and fibs have been inserted, and then scrutinize to ascertain what truth might lay within that one book.

Your very first sentence showed me that you are not agenda free, so I stopped there.

The self-contradictions in the Bible are undeniable. In fact, had you read the rest of my post you would see the truth of this in the apologetic arguments offered by Christendom. Even their apologetic arguments reveal that they too recognize the fallacies of these stories even though they refuse to confess to it.

There is no more "agenda" required to recognize the fallacies of Hebrew mythology than there is to recognize the fallacies of Greek mythology. No "agenda" is required. In fact, to continually apologize for these obviously self-contradictory fables endless in spite of the failure to make any compelling process is indeed an "agenda".

Clearly all the disagreeing demonstrations and sects of the Abrahamic religions reveal an extreme "agenda" to support these myths at all cost.

[Divine Insight]

Do you think that if you put a devout Jehovah's Witness, a devout Catholic, a devout Southern Baptist , and devout Amish, etc, all in a room to discuss Christian apologetics they are going to be able to CONVERT each other. It's highly unlikely.

Well I can't speak for the other religions but it is a demonstrate let fact that "Catholics, a devout Southern Baptists, devout Amish as well as people from any number of religions have, following their contact with Jehovah's Witnesses seen that JWS do indeed have the truth and changed religions.

Indeed most of our "converts" come from people of other faiths, some of whome were quite devout.


[youtube][/youtube]

I Gave Up on Religion
https://tv.jw.org/#en/video/VODIntExp/d ... 40_1_VIDEO

Jehovah's Witnesses represent less than 1% of all Christendom. Clearly they aren't convincing very many devout Christians to convert to JW.

What's far more likely is that they are preying on the naive and confused. After all, most "Christians" don't even know what's even in the Bible. All they know is what they have been taught by preachers and evangelists. So it's easy to convert those specific people. All that is required is to have a convincing evangelists.

Don't forget groups like Scientologists convince people to convert to Scientology too. So anytime you start a religious cult you're bound to recruit the vulnerable and naive.

With a 1% conversion rate JW is hardly impressive. I would actually expect a higher percentage than this if even only the naive and vulnerable are being converted. So JW isn't doing very well at all actually. It's not doing any better than what could be expected by pure chance. The Flying Spaghetti Monster evangelists probably have that high of a conversion rate.