Maybe you missed the part where I claimed there are dozens of examples in each category, but that I would mention only representative samples. Maybe you missed the part where I mentioned 30 years as a True believer, and 10 years after that of considering my own fallibility before wanting to speak such.
Dozens?? wow now I am in trouble.
dear MarcBee you make a poor atheist, you spout a mountain of words but little evidence.
I have been debating Atheists for years and I can tell you are a rookie.
Perhaps I should send you a couple of books written by hard core Atheists to get you up to speed.
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**Original Matthew 28:19 Restored**
you make a poor atheist..I have been debating Atheists for years and I can tell you are a rookie.
Ah, so if I were to copy other atheists' reasons for being atheist, then maybe I would not appear such a rookie to you? What prize would that be--to receive a "veteran atheists' badge" from FlamingSword? Fortunately, I'm not even trying to copy others, rather my reasons and experience resulted in my testimony, and not claimed to be necessarily the same as others' reasons. If my reasons seem invalid to you, that's fine-- just like your reasons for believing in the Yahweh god are probably invalid to me. (I say "probably" because so far I haven't heard from you any reasons to believe in your god.)
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you spout a mountain of words but little evidence.
My atheism stems from the rejection of ersatz evidence--especially the claim that the bible is the Infallible, Inerrant, Inspired Holy Word of an omniscient, omnipotent god. For all my "mountain of words," apparently you didn't get that point about how the 3 categories I described influenced me. As for more or better positive evidence , the burden of evidence is upon those who make fantastical claims about an invisible world of powerful beings that have no measurable effect on the observable world.
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Perhaps I should send you a couple of books written by hard core Atheists to get you up to speed
Really? Or maybe you can just send me the names of some
<<good scholar of ancient Jewish biblical practices >>
--who don't have vested interest in the outcome, who can confirm that they are fairly sure that Matthew said "Jeremiah" when it was really "Zechariah" only due to a scroll he had that was labeled such. Of course, it won't change the overall lack of evidence about your god, but I won't use that particular scripture as a valid point of supposed error if it's not a valid point. (See, I'm allowed you change my mind. Are you allowed to change yours?)
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Dozens??
Update-- probably hundreds of errors, the way a disparate collection of ancient human writings would be expected to contain. But none of them acceptable once you believe that the bible is true and inerrant due to the bible claiming the bible is true and inerrant.
As for more or better positive evidence , the burden of evidence is upon those who make fantastical claims about an invisible world of powerful beings that have no measurable effect on the observable world.
Actually the universe has order and laws, the burden of proof is actually on you that such precise engineered laws came by chance.
[As an engineer myself I fully know that complicated systems do not arise on their own, it takes information and energy to make them come into existence] so the ball is in your court, where did the information and energy come to make the universe come into existence?
Update-- probably hundreds of errors, the way a disparate collection of ancient human writings would be expected to contain. But none of them acceptable once you believe that the bible is true and inerrant due to the bible claiming the bible is true and inerrant.
Now you have gone from dozens to hundredths yet you posted not a single one. please have pity upon us brainwashed Christians and at least post a couple of your hundredths of examples, or are you going to respond with another mountain of words without any evidence and then claim now it is thousands of evidence, be careful you might end up with millions of errors in the scriptures.
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**Original Matthew 28:19 Restored**
Now you have gone from dozens to hundredths yet you posted not a single one.
Do you read context carefully? I did post one error, where the overall context was not "things Flamingsword would accept as biblical error," but rather, "Error that helped make me an atheist." I then proposed that you (or any true believer invested or required to believe that the bible is inerrant) would probably not accept ANY of the hundreds of errors that exist. But if now you (apparently) want the body of other examples and arguments (as implied in your creationist challenge,) then that's a different direction--one I am also happy to engage in (at least on weekends.)
BTW, instead of trying to psychoanalyse me, ie., "bitter and angry" or to evaluate me according to how you wish other readers to view me (ie, "a rookie" in the pantheon of atheists,) please, in the future, stick to the arguments. Otherwise, that's called "ad hominem" , and implies you lost, having exhausted real answers. However, the advantage of debating within a theater of sympathetic, already decided believers is that such courtesy becomes lost and forgotten. If you wish to characterize atheists, that's fine, and possibly appropriate, but please don't try to characterize me until you know me. (PS, Your hit rate is low so far, going way back.) And I will likewise try to stick to the arguments and not characterize you until I know you, and even then, hopefully not do. I realize this is especially difficult for the Christian, considering they think they have divine information about every other human who doesn't believe the way they believe. For example, you are supposed to dismiss an atheist as a FOOL, according to your Holy Book, as well as to "not answer a fool according to his folly." Or maybe there's wiggle room for you to continue to speak, since my claim is not precisely that there is no god, but rather two things. 1. There is insufficient evidence for a modern human to believe that any of the gods are real, except to the degree that imagination is real. 2. The Yahweh god is today among the least reasonable of gods to believe in.
For the sake of other readers (both of them) very few modern atheists claim there is 0% chance of a god being real. Rather, we claim a very, very low chance, and therefore not reasonable to believe in.
1. There is insufficient evidence for a modern human to believe that any of the gods are real, except to the degree that imagination is real.
Actually we Christians believe that there is more than enough evidence for modern humans to believe in God.
Ancient humans believed in spontaneous generation
Modern humans know that life only comes from life
Ancient humans believed in wrath of God for natural disasters
Modern humans know that natural disasters come from natural laws
Ancient humans believed the sun and the moon were sacred
Modern humans know that the sun and the moon are not sacred
The way we see it modern humans have even more reasons to believe in God, for our knowledge is far greater and we can appreciate even better the Laws that God put in the universe.
2. The Yahweh god is today among the least reasonable of gods to believe in.
So the Gods that demanded human sacrifices like Moloch and the Aztecs and Mayan Gods are more reasonable?
For the sake of other readers (both of them) very few modern atheists claim there is 0% chance of a god being real. Rather, we claim a very, very low chance, and therefore not reasonable to believe in.
On what did you base these percentages, can I see the Excel spreadsheets or the computer program you used to calculate such percentages?
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**Original Matthew 28:19 Restored**
I am continually reevaluating that--and the ambiguity of "I don't know" is something many or most religious minds cannot accept. I currently suppose that yes, Jesus probably existed, not unlike how the hero Oddyseus probably existed. Both were superheroes set in a historical time and place, and both had noteworthy lives. Both were claimed to have divine lineage, but neither one existed THE WAY REPORTED. And that is the nature of a legend.
1God is not a security guard, that is not his job.
Lay not for yourself treasure in earth where thieves break through and steal.
2.God is not matchmaker either, he only gives you guidance so that you can have a more fulfilling marital and social life.
3. God heals according to his will, yet we all must die of something. I have been sick for years, that has not shaken my faith for one second, if God does not heal me, that is OK, maybe it is my time to go
4. God is not the welfare office, you want money, you work for it. God does not need to provide for you what you can provide for yourself.
5.God rains upon the just and the unjust, because he loves us all
6. The joy of the Lord is my strength, yes I have down days, but the Lord renews me and brings the joy of the spirit.
7. God talks to me all the time for he is my father, I hear him in my heart, I have a personal relationship with him.
Nice Sunday school bullet points, there, and probably similar to what I would have written years ago as a believer. I'm sure Christians will feel good in reading. Interesting to me is that practically all the above can also be claimed by a Muslim, a Jew, a Mormon, or believers of a hundred other "unsaved" versions of wrong belief (meaning unsaved according to evangelical or apostolic view.) Yet those muslims and Mormons believing in an unscriptural god can and do easily experience or imagine just as strongly as you do that they have an authentic, identical relationship with their heavenly father. So, a relationship with your version of your god is unnecessary in order to believe, feel, and "prove" a god is actively doing all those heavenly-father-things for you. The powers of imagination are formidable when cued and informed by millions of other similar believers.
A more relevant issue is the claim Jesus made (promised) in Mark 11:24: Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
Sure, most of us understand the other provisos to be added to that promise, (for example, not asking to heap unto one's lusts.) But instead of approaching god as the security guard, the matchmaker, the welfare office, etc., a careful believer of Mark 11:24 will rather be very justified in using the context Jesus gave his audience to consider--that god is more caring, more parental than our own earthly parents, and therefore such a god would want to be asked for anything or everything--spiritual and natural. Mat 7:11: "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" Yet what ends up happening after much praying without results is that believers instead are required to defend what God DOESN'T do, for example, per your Sunday school points above, "not a matchmaker, not a welfare office, etc." If Jesus' promises were more clearly manifest in real life, then all believers could show what DOES work rather than having to parse and explain and defend the hundred ways that Jesus' promises DON'T come true in real life on earth. I can show occasions within the bible where the Yahweh god WAS a welfare office, WAS a security guard, WAS a matchmaker, etc.
Now, if the god simply doesn't wish to be seen as miraculously providing for his Christian children, no real problem to me, but I'm not the one making the claim in Mark 11:24. And judging from 2000 years of results, as well as observation in my and others' lives, the conclusion is that Jesus told a big fat lie, that is, if he really said it at all. The overall results for Christians who believe god provides, or that god answers according to Mark 11:24 if used in good faith--the results end up indistinguishable from the same things that happen in every non-believer's life. So, the words of Jesus are not trustworthy, or at least are irrelevant, if taken at face value. Of course, there are dozens of ways to pursue meanings and permutations of meanings that are NOT according to face value. And that is precisely the game bible literalist Christians are now forced to play, ie, to maintain belief in spite of anything that really happens in real life--such as, but not limited to, having to explain how millions of people have died with the name of Jesus upon their lips, praying only for another day's food for their hungry children.
Anyhow, this imaginary god does nothing distinguishable from the natural world, except within one's imagination.
I can show occasions within the bible where the Yahweh god WAS a welfare office, WAS a security guard, WAS a matchmaker, etc.
Yes an on occasions he healed lepers or provides for widows, yet it was just like Jesus said, that there were many lepers yet only one outsider leper was cleansed, there were many widows in Israel yet only a widow from another nations received the provision from the prophet Elijah. God does as he wills, not as we will him to do, he is not our genie in a bottle.
Now, if the god simply doesn't wish to be seen as miraculously providing for his Christian children, no real problem to me, but I'm not the one making the claim in Mark 11:24. And judging from 2000 years of results, as well as observation in my and others' lives, the conclusion is that Jesus told a big fat lie, that is, if he really said it at all.
Well I see the same 2000 years and since my judgment is as valid as yours, I do not see Jesus telling a big fat lie, I see Jesus being with his people right to the end.
Anyhow, this imaginary god does nothing distinguishable from the natural world, except within one's imagination.
As a matter of fact my imaginary God does more than you may realize, the most prosperous nations are the Christian nations, so in comparison to other nations like India or China (Both of these nations depend heavily upon the Christian US), it does make a distinguishable difference to the majority of the people if the nation is Christian.
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**Original Matthew 28:19 Restored**
I am continually reevaluating that--and the ambiguity of "I don't know" is something many or most religious minds cannot accept. I currently suppose that yes, Jesus probably existed, not unlike how the hero Oddyseus probably existed. Both were superheroes set in a historical time and place, and both had noteworthy lives. Both were claimed to have divine lineage, but neither one existed THE WAY REPORTED. And that is the nature of a legend.
The brilliant author and fairly intelligent apologist C. S. Lewis famously posited that Jesus had to be 1) a liar, 2) a lunatic, or 3) Lord. But he forgot (maybe I should put quotation marks around that?) one, as pointed out by the former Christian, now agnostic (at least, last I knew), author Bart Ehrman: 4) legend.
Ehrman may not have been the first. It's a pretty obvious omission. So obvious that I'm not really sure why Lewis omitted it. Could it be that he thought it (maybe in Ehrman's alliterative form, or not) but left it out, not wanting to address it, or not wanting his readers to get too carried away thinking about #4?
"Legend", btw, doesn't mean "didn't exist". As you point out, legends tend to grow around characters (some real, some perhaps not). I, too, believe that Jesus most likely existed as a real person, and many of the things written about Him were likely true.
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Hebrews 13:23 Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at liberty
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