I’ve been crossing swords with a particularly tenacious Christian, “scientific christian” (you already know where things are going with that screen name) and the discussion has gone far and wide, though mostly staying around the idea of having evidence supports one’s claims. My apologies for anyone who commented in that thread and has thus been caught in the post storm. WordPress really needs to work on allowing people to disengage from comment threads.
Thanks to SC, I’ve discovered some pretty amusing claims in the bible (and that some Christians are unrepentant liars but I already knew that). SC is quite sure that the “exodus” happened and there was an “empty tomb” amongst other things. He’s also just as sure that the bible is wrong when it claims that there was hundreds of thousands of Israelites coming out of Egypt after the supposed exodus. He’s a great example of a Christian cherry-picking things when reality shows that their claims aren’t true. Suddenly, the bible and its multitude of supposedly deity-inspired translators are wrong, and obscure websites are correct when they claim only a few thousands left, because, you see, there is no evidence for 600,000 men plus the women, children and animals.
But to the fun stuff!
In the story of the exodus related in Numbers, we have the following: Numbers 11 “Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea. It scattered them up to two cubits deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. 32 All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they spread them out all around the camp. 33 But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the Lord burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague.” (this story is also in Exodus 16. FYI, this is from the NASB bible)
So we have an area of approximately 706 square miles (15 miles is about what a person can walk in a day) covered 6 feet deep in quail. And per the bible, every man gathered a little shy of 2 tons of the quail. This would be, if my calculations are correct, 960,000 tons of quail.
And this isn’t the all the quail. That was just what was collected. As a cubic footage, we have approximately 1.180811 cubic feet of quail, or 118,080,000,000 cubic feet of quail. If one assumes the average quail as 9” x 5” x 5” this means that there are 15,350,400,000 individual quails and if each weighs about 6 oz (large for quail but we can afford to give a bit), we get about 2,878,200 tons of quail. Even if one assumes that the quails weren’t even, and assume 3 feet deep, we still get 1,439,100 tons of quail.
The middens would be full of quail bones and human poo, amongst other things.
Now on to the poo!
In Exodus, the Israelites are told to bury their feces because their god might notice in them, Deuteronomy 23: “12 “You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there, 13 and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, you shall dig with it and shall turn to cover up your excrement. 14 Since the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; and He must not see anything indecent among you or He will turn away from you.” Doesn’t speak very well for its omniscience, eh?
Humans poop about 125 grams a day. With 600,000 men, we get 37 tons of poo a day and that isn’t even counting the women, children and animals, grass eaters that poop a *lot*.
The “exodus” should have quite a bit of evidence for it, 40 years worth of garbage. It has none and Christians like SC, are reduced to claiming that just a few thousand left Egypt, while simultaneously stuck with the claims of the rest of the OT where Israel could field armies in the hundreds of thousands.
(admittedly, I suck at math. Feel free to check my calculations and correct me.)
Club Schadenfreude 
I absolutely agree about the poo. Even if they dug privies, we should find them. And campfires. And piles of bones. And broken pots. And all the other junk that people leave behind.
As an example for comparison, my town was the site of a winter encampment during the Civil War. There were about 30-40,000 men stationed here only during the cold months, only for a few years, 150 years ago. It’s an environment with lots of rain and weathering and soil disturbance. And do we find evidence of them? Yes, all over the freaking place! We still have trenches here and there. Before a school was built a few years ago they let a group with metal detectors on the site, and they turned up a lot of random metal bits related to soldiers and horse tackle. There aren’t any living trees dating to that time or earlier because they cut them all down for buildings and firewood. At a local festival a county archaeologist excavated a random single square foot in the historic area and turned up a civil war coat button.
Now imagine two MILLION people living for forty years, in a desert without all the farming and weathering. The evidence for an occupation like that ought to be overwhelming. But there’s nothing.
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All those bones were disintegrated that’s why you can’t find them.
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I have also engaged this moron on the Exodus and for your benefit, in case you needed confirmation, he claimed there was physical evidence – Chariot Wheels on the floor of the Red Sea.
So, 1. he was completely unaware this was a rank hoax by the late Ron Wyatt
and 2. he was also not aware that Red Seed was a mistranslation. (Reed Sea of course)
On both counts, he said I was wrong until he checked, and then when faced with the logistics of the numbers of people, he appeared to go on a frantic internet search to come back with apologetic misdirect regarding the Hebrew word eleph .
I had never consider the ”poop issue” before. One would naturally expect with all this natural fertilizer the desert would have been one long oasis, like a paper trail stretching from Egypt to Canaan!
i can honestly say I have never read such a shitty religious post as this.
😉
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Ooooh, is he the “chariot wheels” guy? LOL!
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Not the original one we came across a year or so ago. This one is not American, but Syrian, perhaps?
But another little Sunbeam for Jesus for sure.
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Yes, SC claims to be Syrian. He also calls anyone who disagrees with him a terrorist, and then when the absurdity of that is pointed out, he then lies and says he hasn’t. Pity for him this is a recorded medium.
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Quite disconcerting that even though that twit Wyatt died some time ago, this nonsense still gets trotted out.
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Of course it does. These people are desperate for evidence.
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One might expect in the pursuit of some sort of legitimacy, Normal Christians (sic) would rubbish such claims at every opportunity.
This does not seem to be the case.
We even have Unklee making a case for Colorstorm over at Nate’s spot!
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No, I think it’s because that was much different, and I think this has already been addressed.
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I think this article was written by an atheist as well. Both of these people would have equal intelligence, as for you you’re “intelligence” is a joke.
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Again, I do, Vic. You have nothing to support your claims. I am enjoying your ineptness.
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as for you you’re “intelligence” is a joke.
It’s “your,” not “you’re”
You’re = you are.
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That’s what you think. And you’re bitch thinking I “am”.
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I’ve dropped the chariot wheel thing for over a year now. Why are you still ranting about this when I’ve corrected you some 100 times on 100 different things, Arkenaten? Does it please you that you got two points in return and were overall unable to respond to my post on the evidence of the exodus, which says not a word about chariot wheels?
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It’s always good to know that TrueChristians drop things when they get just too ridiculous to support. Hmmm, what will you drop next and what nonsense will you run to, claiming that this new thing is the real and only truth. The chariot wheel nonsense is no different from your other false claims, SC. No evidence and then you being a coward and running away from the evidence that does show your claims to be untrue.
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Over a year?.
I don’t think it was a year since I made mention of it on your blog?
Maybe I commented longer ago than I thought?
Please provide date and time when I first pointed this out to you?
100 corrections?
Cor blimey!
I would be very interested in simply reading, one.
And please provide references etc. Thanks.
Off you go … knock yourself out.
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“I don’t think it was a year since I made mention of it on your blog?”
Whenever it was, the wheel thing can be found nowhere on my exodus post (which came several months ago) and was never there.
“I would be very interested in simply reading, one.”
LOL. You were corrected on Paul’s mentioning of the tomb. Read our conversations and you will see thousands more. Here is another correction:
“The more developed the country, the more secular, (less religious ) it tends to be. (sooner or later) ”
You go on to invoke some SJW nonsense that “oppression” is the cause of religion, LOL. The only reason highly developed countries are less religious is because people living easy lives have much less commitment in any serious life decisions. Consequently, people living in developed countries are less religious, have less babies, have lower marriage rates, etc.
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SC, you’ve evidently claimed the nonsense of the chariot wheels and when it was shown it was nonsense, then you abandoned that and went for something else with just as much evidence: none.
What are “serious life decisions”? I would also ask you this: is it better to have fewer children because you don’t have to make your own workforce and replace those that die of easily cured diseases? Or is it better to have children without thought and burden those who have survived with having more mouths to feed and thus fewer resources to apply to everyone?
Is marriage the way to go to have families?
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The only reason highly developed countries are less religious is because people living easy lives have much less commitment in any serious life decisions.
Actually, I think the correlation you’re looking for (or trying to avoid) is where there is greater levels of education there is less presence of religion.
Superstitions thrive on ignorance.
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Education? Even the most highly educated people in third world countries (in which do have very good educations in some parts of the country) are very religious. Please note to me exactly what ‘education’ that a first worlder gets that allows him to shove off religion than a Russian. In reality, there is absolutely not a scratch of such ‘education’, and the idea that religion thrives on ignorance is nothing more than an atheistic memo that has no basis in reality to anyone looking at fact, not emotions.
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https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201402/why-are-educated-people-more-likely-be-atheists
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“Why are educated people more likely be atheists?”
Answer: Education is directly correlated to wealth, and the more wealth someone has as previously explained causes less and less commitment with things such as marriage, babies, religiosity, etc.
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No. Superstition thrives on ignorance. Remove the ignorance and superstition is (to a large part) erased.
Even the brightest among us anthropomorphise the world we see around us. Finding agency in nature is hardwired. It is natural, and there are (or at least, were) benefits to this talent. Critical thinking is not easy, and it’s not cheap. If it was cheap and easy, it wouldn’t have taken us 150,000-200,000 years to arrive at the scientific method.
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“No. Superstition thrives on ignorance. Remove the ignorance and superstition is (to a large part) erased.”
Emotional assertions do not qualify as arguments. Your atheistic memes only exist to give you confidence in your ridiculous conclusions and make you feel like atheism isn’t a total sham.
I live in Canada, and I’ve received many honors in my education. Please tell me exactly what part of my education was supposed to make me conclude that religion is false. Was it when I was told about the history of aboriginals in my country, or that John A Macdonald was our first prime minister? Or perhaps it was when I learned about convex and concave mirrors that should’ve shown me that religion is a sham? Again, please go ahead and note to me what part of my education that a tribal Indian did not get that should make me overthrow my religion whilst he maintains his own in his own pool of ignorance.
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Are you a Creationist?
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No, I’m not a creationist.
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Exactly, thus demonstrating my point.
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Ah, so again we have a Christian who uses his magic decoder ring to decide what parts he finds true and what parts he doesn’t. So, if you aren’t a creationist, SC, tell us what the point of Jesus Christ was if the genesis myth is exactly that, a myth? If there was no first adam, what is the purpose of a second?
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Oh really, so evidence of these “honors”.
“Again, please go ahead and note to me what part of my education that a tribal Indian did not get that should make me overthrow my religion whilst he maintains his own in his own pool of ignorance.”
As opposed to your own?
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“Oh really, so evidence of these “honors”. ”
LOL. Do you want to have a trip to my city Mississauga and go to previous teachers yourself? That’s one of the weirdest requests I’ve gotten in a while.
“As opposed to your own?”
Correct. What did I learn in high school that a tribal Indian doesn’t know that allowed me to shave off religion. What part of my education was I supposed to shove off the superstitions, exactly? Was it my global warming assignments? LOL.
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And again, SC makes claims on how great he is and of course has no evidence to support this. You have repeatedly claimed that your religion and more specifically, your version of your religion is the only truth. In that there is no evidence for your nonsense, and there is evidence that entirely different things happened than what your myths claim, why do you cling to such nonsense? And the parts of your education that would have indicated that your myths are wrong are biology, physics, history, etc. You’ve already claimed that the bible is wrong in many aspects, and one would guess that this is because the claims in your bible are ridiculous.
As for global warming, reality trumps your ignorance.
I can see why Ark thinks you are the rather pathetic individual, VGP. You do have problems in writing coherent sentences
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I rest my case.
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Ah, so that’s it. 🙂 Again, SC, is marriage the way to go?
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Your Exodus post was on October 26.
It was me that pointed ut about the Chariot Wheels hoax to you.
It was even raised by another commenter.
I also informed you of the erroneous mention of the Red Sea, it beeing the Sea of Reeds.
You’ll have to refresh my memory on this one as it seems you are once more babbling.
This is a fact, and studies have demonstrated this to be so. If you are blind to this then it is not my responsibility to correct your ignorance.
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Ah, thank you Ark. It’s always pleasant to see one more documented false claim by SC.
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“I also informed you of the erroneous mention of the Red Sea, it beeing the Sea of Reeds.”
This is a basic mistake anyone could have made. Seriously, it doesn’t even have anything to do with the exodus. It’s just a simple mistake that someone makes that can be kindly corrected by a commenter. I do this all the time for others where I point out the mistake, they thank me and fix it.
“This is a fact, and studies have demonstrated this to be so. If you are blind to this then it is not my responsibility to correct your ignorance.”
I have already explained that wealth is what causes a lack of religiosity, which in turn causes secularism. It is wealth and a lack of commitment that is responsible for a lack of religiosity.
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It doesn’t have anything to do with the Exodus!
RFLMFAO!
Your entire worldview is based upon the erroneous belief in events and characters such as Adam and Eve, Abraham and Moses.
When you converted to being an evangelical christian where did you learn your theology? From the back of a Cheerios Packet?
For the gods’ sake, I learned this the very first time I picked up a book and started to read the back story behind the nonsense of the Exodus; and you will find it in the average encyclopedia.
If you don’t know your basics then how dare you tout this nonsense as ”God Breathed” or in any way divinely-inspired.
Your rambling blog posts have no genuine credibility and ergo, neither do you.
Ditch all your arrogant, ignorant hubris, learn some humility and do a bit of genuine study.
And there are numerous sociological studies conducted by experts in their respective fields that flatly denounce such crap.
For example: The Catholic Church is generally considered one of the the single wealthiest private (non government) owners of property on the planet.
And this fact alone pisses on your bonfire.
Anything else you’d like to share from your vast catalogue of knowledge?
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“When you converted to being an evangelical christian where did you learn your theology? ”
Evangelical? I don’t consider myself Evangelical. I researched theology from multiple sources, not one (including the Bible, of course).
You go on to assert the existence of non-existent sociological studies that “flatly denounce such crap”, which is hilarious and false. The Catholic Church’s enormous wealth is irrelevant, because no one on planet Earth said that “every wealthy person is not religious”, that’s nonsense. The pointed out fact is that less wealthy people are more likely to be more religious on average. Which is a fact. A lack of wealth correlates to more engagement with hardcore life commitments such as religion, babies and marriage — whereas they all start going down as wealth increases and commitment decreases.
You have been shown to be false on virtually everything. The exodus happened and there is evidence to back that up, as my post has shown. I’m looking to expand that post sometime soon, as I’ve accumulated a wealth more of information (but it’s already my longest or second longest post, so that’s going to be fun). The entirety of your responses just fall down to asserting the veracity of your position and presupposing the inaccuracy of the Bible, even when sufficient evidence exists. This is merely embarrassing on your part. By the way, minimalism is dead. LOL. If youi want me to continue to “share from my vast catalogue of knowledge”, follow the future posts on my blog.
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You’re an idiot … but a funny idiot!
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Let’s see what you’ve said, SC.
“Answer: Education is directly correlated to wealth, and the more wealth someone has as previously explained causes less and less commitment with things such as marriage, babies, religiosity, etc.”
and
“I have already explained that wealth is what causes a lack of religiosity, which in turn causes secularism. It is wealth and a lack of commitment that is responsible for a lack of religiosity.”
Again, SC, you make claims and then when someone gives examples on how your claims are nonsense, then you try to lie about what you’ve said. You make ignorant generalizations and then when caught, you lie. You are the one on earth who made the claim that wealth causes a lack of religiosity. No exceptions, just your ignorance. So, by your claims, the Roman Catholic Church should very very unreligious, and that of course is false.
You have yet to show any evidence for the biblical exodus. There is no evidence to support that a million people wandered around an area half the size of PA for 4 decades. You have tried to claim that the bible is wrong, in an attempt to invent reasons why no evidence for this event is found. As most Christian hypocrites, you claim that the parts of the bible you like are true but the parts you don’t like are somehow wrong, mistranslated, and of course they are translated by the same people. You cherry pick and then get indignant when someone notices. Still we get the claims of all of this wonderful “wealth more of information” but surprise, you don’t show any of it again. For all of your claims that other people are wrong, you do go out of your way to avoid showing this. All we get are baseless claims by a coward, who tries so very hard to make believe anyone is embarrassed by their comments just because he says so.
The inaccuracy of the bible is not presupposed. People have assumed it was true and then tried to find the evidence. And when there was no evidence, then it became noticeable that the myths in the bible are no more true than the myths of any other culture. Where is that empty tomb, SC? Where is this evidence for this in the apocrypha as you’ve claimed? Why should anyone believe in the bible’s claims when you don’t when it’s convenient?
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Clubs, you have given up all hopes on defeating me in an argument. Indeed, you have decided to stop debating me on an intellectual basis, and drag this conversation down to a mud slinging shouting session. You constantly say I lie — of course, never happened. You said I claimed the Bible is wrong in numerous places, and of course that is a bare lie. Indeed, apparently me trying to tell you what the Bible really says is me saying the Bible is wrong. Anyways, apart from all your lies, and apart from the fact that I debunked the education-religiosity thing and have explicitly shown that it is due to wealth and commitment, you invoke perhaps the most laughable fallacy: Why isn’t the Catholic Church unreligious? The Church is an organization, no single member of the Church owns the wealth of the organization. I have already shown it is a fact that the higher ones standard of living goes up, the lower their commitment to religiosity, marriage, having children, and other life planners, whereas this on average goes up with less wealth.
You again ask: “Where is that empty tomb?”
This signifies your defeat. Your mud-slinging tactics involve ignoring all explanations for any of your questions and then repeating them. Completely laughable. Considering I’ve debunked you on quite literally everything, I just have one clarification to make: Creationism is believing in a 6,000 year old Earth. That’s not me, but of course Adam was the first human. LOL. Anyways, unless you provide a detailed rebuttal for any of my previous arguments on the empty tomb, or any of the ten trillion things I’ve defended, as well as a rebuttal to my post on the Exodus, the conversation will have ended and I will ignore your further petty responses. It would not matter how many times I explain all the historical data we have on the tomb, and that we wouldn’t know we had the tomb even if we found it, you’ll ask the same question. It wouldn’t matter how many times I tell you what a Biblical text really means, you’ll just consider that all other interpretations of the Bible other than your intentionally skewed interpretations are the equivalence to claiming the Bible is wrong. This is a funny joke. Conversing with you is a waste of time, you are not interesting in any intellectual discussion, you continuously assert a supposed lack of evidence for the Bible when I have even shown that the earthquake crucifixion has been confirmed and that Thalles reports on a darkness over the land, and that 75% of at least 1,200 scholars over 1,400 publications consider the empty tomb historical fact. It would not matter how many times I explain to you that the Israelite’s did not literally settle the entire land mass of the Sinai rather they just moved throughout specific parts of it in an amazingly temporary amount of time, you will continue invoking the same garbage. You clearly are incapable of listening, you ignore all references once you are entirely debunked on them after reading them (such as Joshua’s long day, for example). Indeed, you’ve been thoroughly defeated and in response have resorted to mud-slinging to save your petty ego. Unless you can produce a full, detailed rebuttal to any of my detailed arguments, your further whining about having no evidence for something I’ve stocked with references by now will be laughably dismissed and ignored.
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And here we have SC declaring he won again. Poor thing, I guess that is what he has to do since no one else would. And it’s always funny to see him try a dramatic exit and repeatedly fail. I’ll be back to address the usual false claims he has made.
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As stated previously, ol’ SC has to repeatedly declare he has won. It seems that no one has noticed this, just like people didn’t notice the claimed essential events of his religion. He also has to declare how bad he’s going to ignore everyone as if this is a worthwhile threat, and then slithers back to make false claims yet again.
Alas, SC, I’ve countered your claims quite handily on an intellectual basis, and no one has noticed this “mud-slinging shouting session” that you claim. It’s nice to again see you try to rewrite history and forget that this is a recording medium.
I’ve shown you’ve lied repeatedly, and it’s that recording medium that has been useful in doing that since I can show your exact words. You have claimed that the FFRF are “terrorists”, and you have yet to show evidence for this histrionic claim.
Here is the evidence that you have lied in your comments on my blog. This has been cited before, but I have no problem in citing it again.
“And wow, SC, nice lie that I said that you couldn’t use Tacitus’ testimony because of his religious views. Please do show where I said anything like that. You said this “Tacitus’ religion is not my own” when asked why you accept what he wrote about your religion and not accept the claims Tacitus makes about Emperor Vespasian doing miracles.
“Again, you try to create a strawman, when you lie and claim that I say something is false for the only reason that not all sources record every event.”
And I have no problem in again showing exactly where you’ve lied about the FFRF and what you have said about them. Always good to see you trebling down on nonsense. It is as if you don’t think anyone will notice. For someone who claims to worship a god that says that lies and liars are anathema to it, including those who think that they are lying for this god’s benefit, it seems you don’t follow your bible very well at all. I am curious, do you pray every time you are found in a lie, asking forgiveness again and again and again for lies you choose to tell again and again and again?
““Let’s see about this claim of yours about what I said: ““SC, you have claimed that people who don’t agree with you are terrorists. You have claimed that you would do violence to them.” (the people being the Freedom from Religion Foundation)– my words and then your response:
“Two lies.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10391
Happily, I have exactly what you’ve said before:
“I’m also very sad to hear you read from the Freedom from Religion foundation, a terrorist organization that sues children schools because they allow the kids, if they want to, to gather up for a Bible class after the day is over. Freedom from Religion foundation is something I’d happily destroy with a bat.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10283
“Definitely terrorists that should have their organization destroyed — these people sue any organization that so much as conceives of having groups devoted to their own religion or anything religious whatsoever.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10314 On Christmas Day no less!
“By the way, the FFRF are in fact terrorists — their terrorist organization should be shut down and destroyed. They sue schools for having after-school Bible clubs where anyone is free to participate, they sue hotels for leaving a Bible in their drawers, etc, etc, etc.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10336
And here is where poor ol’ SC now tries to walk back his histrionics: “I obviously didn’t mean they bomb people — but I call them terrorists because their insane people who constantly persecute institutions for even THINKING about allowing Christian to practice their faith. Complete garbage.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10349 “
Then we have where you claimed that 19 citations of Habermas’ work was evidence that those people agreed with him, and that was not the case at all; at least a third of them cited it to criticize it. We also have where you have said that the website you cited when referring to the sun stopping in the sky with the myth of Joshua didn’t contain geocentric nonsense, and that was not the truth. Also, as I indicated, I addressed the specific myths mentioned on that website, which you falsely claimed I did not address. It’s rather hard for me to have not read it and to be able to directly reference to it.
You’ve been repeatedly asked to show where I’ve lied when you have made that claim and surprise, you ignore every request. Cutting and pasting is easy, so one must wonder why you haven’t supported your claims yet.
You have said that the bible is wrong when you have repeatedly claimed that the numbers of Israelites claimed in the bible were incorrect to excuse the utter lack of evidence for the Exodus. You, and the fellow James whose website you’ve cited repeatedly, claim that there were far fewer than the bible says, trying to claim that the translation was wrong. However, you try to claim that other parts of the bible, translated by the very same people, are correct. This is classic cherry picking by Christians who realize that reality doesn’t support their nonsense and desperately need evidence to believe what they do. It is the effort of TrueChristians trying to claim that they and they alone know what the Bible “really” means, and funny how you each have no more evidence to support that than the other: none. Other Christians say you are wrong, SC. Why do they say that? Please do show how they are wrong and why. This is why there is no reason to believe any of you.
You have yet to debunk anything, SC. You made the claim that wealth decreases religiosity: “I have already explained that wealth is what causes a lack of religiosity, which in turn causes secularism. It is wealth and a lack of commitment that is responsible for a lack of religiosity.” and it was pointed out to you that one of wealthiest organizations on earth is the Roman Catholic Church. You then tried to move the goalposts by citing education and you tried to claim that you didn’t really mean what you wrote, that wealth causes lack of religiosity, with no caveats or exceptions offered. You often do this, SC, make a claim and then when its shown to be wrong, then try to lie and claim you didn’t say what you did.
I find it wonderful that now you say “Why isn’t the Catholic Church unreligious?” Oh my. It’s great that you now try to claim a church and a religion isn’t religious. The RCC uses its wealth as a unit for reasons defined in its beliefs so you fail again. Where are the data that shows your claims of causation, SC? For instance, where is a higher standard of living causing fewer marriages? Now, let’s guide you through thinking about this. You need to establish causation, not just correlation. The hypothesis would be: wealth causes fewer marriages, from your original claim and not what you tried to change it to. Then you would ask the question why would this be. One answer could be that more wealth may lead to more education which may lead to people coming to the conclusion that the social rules of ancient cultures have little application to this modern world. But this would end up supporting that wealth isn’t the causation, but education is.
We also have the problem for your claim, in that the social group most likely to have divorces in the US is evangelical Christians. http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/marital-status/divorcedseparated/ We also have that people who completed a high school or more education are more likely to marry: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm
“Men and women who did not complete high school were less likely to marry than were men and women with more education. Men who earned a bachelor’s degree were more likely to marry than men with less education.”
“The chance of a marriage ending in divorce was lower for people with more education, with over half of marriages of those who did not complete high school having ended in divorce compared with approximately 30 percent of marriages of college graduates.”
I am curious if you are for marriage or against it. You have avoided that question studiously. And it seems you are wrong in your claims again. Why is it that you don’t do the smallest bit of research and find this stuff for yourself, SC? Your actions seem to support the conclusion that your beliefs rest on willful ignorance.
No, asking again where the empty tomb is certainly doesn’t signify defeat. The fact that you, and no Christian, can’t show this most important place in your religion demonstrates that there is little reason to believe in the claims of Christians who do not agree on basic things. Christians do not agree when these essential events of the bible happened, or that they even happened at all. The gospels do not agree on what happened when. What did the thieves do? What did the apostles do after the cruxifiction?
You are partially correct but you apparently are ignorant about creationism or are trying to omit information intentionally. Creationism contains a lot of different opinions of Christians on when the universe, earth, and life was create and how. There are young earth creationists, who indeed do claim a 6,000 year old earth and the creation of animals, including man, and plants exactly as they are today, in a literal 24 hour day, 7 day week, period. They also believe that humans started from a man, and either a rib-woman or a woman who was created simultaneously with Adam (there are two creation stories in Genesis and they contradict each other). There are young earth creationists who claim other periods of time, 10,000 years, a million, etc.
Then there are creationists, often called “old earth creationists” who claim that those days mentioned in Genesis aren’t really 24 hours days at all but are metaphors meaning far longer periods of time, and again they differ on how long that would be. They also differ in if they accept evolutionary theory. Some claim that their god directed evolution but it is accurate in the fossil record. Some claim that “microevolution” occurs but not “macroevolution” (a false dichotomy; the processes are the same). Then we have you, who want to claim that there was an Adam in some manner. It’s no surprise that you hide what you believe.
I’ve already provided detailed rebuttals for all of your arguments. Alas, SC, they don’t just vanish because you close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and hum really loud. I do thank you for yet one more intentional false claim made by you, another lie. It’s a mystery why you would choose to do that, again, assuming you do believe in the bible, which says that its god hates lies and liars.
You haven’t yet explained or shown any of the supposed historical data we have. YOu have offered what you claim as evidence and those items have been addressed, but I’ll give a quick overview of why they fail and the question about them you have not addressed: Why should we believe that Tacitus supports the claims of the empty tomb, when he doesn’t mention it at all? And why shouldn’t we believe him when he claims that Emperor Vespasian performed like JC? Why should we believe that Josephus supports the claims of miracles when that mention is known as a forgery and not written Josephus at all? Why should we believe that the Merenptah stele supports the claims of the exodus when it mentions nothing about that at all? Why should we believe that the Amarna tablets support the claims of the exodus when they don’t mention it at all? Your supposed evidence is based on the claim that a mention of a god means that god exists, which would make most, if not all, religions in the world just as valid as your version of Christianity. Your claim that since a culture is mentioned, then all myths about that culture have to be true. This would, again, make most myths, if not all, as true as those you believe in.
Oh, please do ignore away, SC. You’ve claimed that, hmmm, at least three times now? Your lack of attention makes no one concerned. Ah, and one more false claim about me not accepting evidence if you “even found the tomb”. Again, SC, evidence that shows your interpretation of the bible is the only right one against the thousands of others that are out there by just as faithful Christians as you.
Nice to see more false claims. There is no evidence of 1200 scholars supporting Habermas. Habermas has said he does not know (?) but it may be 1200-1350 and will not support his claims by his own words in the emails he kindly sent to me. He claims to have 400 pages of citations but again, this document would be about 4 MB (actually more around 3.6 but I’ll round up to show how ludicrous these claims are), something easily dealt with in sending.
I never said that the Israelites settled the entire land mass of the Sinai, so there we have you restating the strawman you invented to avoid addressing my actual argument. Per the bible, they moved around the Sinai for forty years, not what you claim “an amazing temporary amount of time”(thank you again for disagreeing with the bible). You have claimed that there were myths around the world that confirm the claim of the sun stopping for Joshua, but have yet to tell what date that was and what date the myths were talking about and explain why the details in those other myths are completely at odds with the details in yours. You claim that those others got the details wrong, but there is no reason to think your myth is true or the details there are any more correct than those in other myths. Your cherry picking and excuses are amusing, SC. How about if we go back to the flood you claimed had evidence. We certainly have evidence for the Med flooding the Black Sea basin, but where is the evidence for the detailed events in the bible? No worldwide flood on any date that theists offer (and which they don’t agree on.), no evidence of anyone noticing or the geological remains of a massive worldwide flood. The same with Adam and Eve, the exodus, the tower of babel, the battles of hundreds of thousands, the fabulous palaces of David and Solomon or either fellow, miracles, cruxifiction, empty tomb, or JC appearing to hundreds after.
Dismiss and ignore whatever you want, SC. It certainly doesn’t vanish, no matter how hard you pray. But I’ll save you a seat in hell if that does turn out to be true, since you’ve earned yourself a space there if your bible is to be believed. Is it? I wonder if there will be space for an honest atheist, with Christians like you filling it to the rafters
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Club, after virtually all of your claims have been demolished, I thought of ignoring you — but I now realize your comments are too great a source of entertainment. I’m not going to respond to all your strawmans at once, such as the idea that I claimed the Merneptah and Amarna sources mention the exodus — I did not say they do, I obviously just said they were discussed in my post and any claim otherwise to what I said is an obvious lie. Anyways, one can only comprehend of their relevance if they actually read the evidence, something you’re not very capable of. You also lie about me saying I use Tacitus for the miracle claims of Christianity, considering Tacitus doesn’t mention Christian miracles, I use him to affirm the historicity of Christian facts (crucifixion, Jesus founding of Christianity, etc). This is too funny, your strawmans fly all over the place and so it is simply impossible for me to address them all. Habermas himself who has went through all the papers estimates 1250-1350 different scholars, and you say there is no evidence for it! LOL!! But even if he was off by TWO HUNDRED, you’d still have 1050. Of course, there is absolutely no reason to consider Habermas off by such a massive number, and so we probably have 1,300 different scholars here.
Take a look at this statement of yours, which is exactly why your nonsense is so funny:
“Why should we believe that Josephus supports the claims of miracles when that mention is known as a forgery and not written Josephus at all?”
This is exactly how I differentiate between someone who gets the absolute completeness of their sources from internet drivel and someone who gets their sources from academia. The reality is, scholars are in consensus that Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.3 is NOT a forgery, rather scholars consider this a partial interpolation. In other words, Josephus does support the claim of Jesus being crucified, claimed by others to be the Messiah, and claimed to have risen from the dead, because it’s only partially interpolated, not fully interpolated let alone forged. Let me tell you what real academia thinks. Louis H. Feldman’s Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1984) surveyed and found of 52 scholars on the subject of the authenticity of XVIII.3.3, and in a result 39 scholars considered the passage to be partially authentic, which would be three fourths. Even more recently, Peter Kirby has done his own survey and came to the following conclusion: ” “In my own reading of thirteen books since 1980 that touch upon the passage, ten out of thirteen argue the (Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.4 passage) to be partly genuine, while the other three maintain it to be entirely spurious. Coincidentally, the same three books also argue that Jesus did not exist.”
You know what that means, those other three books also were not academic books, because the view that Jesus didn’t exist is fringe conspiracy garbage. How come you didn’t know this, club? It is precisely because all your information derives from internet drivel rather than academia.
What’s interesting is how much you have in common with mythicists, club. You think the Josephus passage is a forgery, you originally thought that Tacitus derived his source from Christians themselves until I showed the nonsense in this claim… Are you a mythicist yourself, club? I remember reading one of your links in response to Gary Habermas on the Resurrection, and I found that the author of that article himself was a mythicist. Are you hiding something, club?
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And here SC is here again, unable to ignore and dismiss anything as he repeatedly claims he is going to do. Poor thing.
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Read my last post, you have become my piece of entertainment. I’m still debating whether or not to post a full extensive debunking of your claims or not on my blog, or perhaps a second blog I might create for the purpose of posting refutations.
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and again here we have SC disagreeing with himself after claiming that he is going to ignore me so very very much and having claimed that he has debunked my points before. Why would someone have to debunk something that they have already supposedly debunked?
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debunking you on comments == 1 person knows
debunking you on my blog == tens of people know
Duh.
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oh, a whole ten people.
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And here we go again. No, SC, you claimed you were going to ignore me and dismiss me, and for some reason you haven’t. Perhaps you’ve realized that your attempts to bully me failed, and now you have to recant all of your claims of how impressive your ignoring and dismissing would be. Your constant attempts to revise history are very helpful in demonstrating how some Christians are not to be believed in anything that they claim.
Again, it seems you have no idea what a strawman argument is. Please do demonstrate these strawmen I’ve supposedly used. I do expect quotes from me. You see, SC, if you can’t quote me, there is no reason to believe your claims and again we see you trying to throw shit at a wall in an attempt to hope that some of it sticks.
You have claimed that the Merenptah stele and the Amarna tablets support the story of the Exodus. In response to my pointing out that they not connected to the exodus, you insist that they are. Here is what you’ve claimed: “As I’ve explained, the relevance of the Merneptah Stele to the exodus is explained in the link, an inability to read the argument for how it connects to the exodus is a failure on your part of course, not my own.” And “I’ve already told you to of the artifacts that are discussed in the exodus link, being the Merneptah Stele and Amarna Tablets — you responded by saying you had no idea how they connect to the exodus, even though the explanation is RIGHT THERE on the link. I’ve already shown there is no excuse here.”
Here we see that your claim that “I obviously just said they were discussed in my post and any claim otherwise to what I said is an obvious lie.” is false. You do your best to misrepresent what I have said and what you have, but that’s okay, you serve as an example of deceit. You have claimed that the tablets and the stele support your nonsense. And again, your claims depend on the argument that if a culture is mentioned, then that culture’s myths must be true. If this is the case, then the myth of all cultures are as valid as your myths, SC. If you wish to debate that point, then do so. Why should anyone believe your myths over others when your arguments depend on the claim that a mention of a culture should be taken as evidence that the myths are true?
You have claimed that Tacitus supports the historicity of the empty tomb claim, so yes, SC, you do use try your best to use Tacitus to support the miracle claims of Christianity, the resurrection being one of those miracles. William Lane Craig uses Tacitus too to argue that the myth is true. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/reply-to-evan-fales-on-the-empty-tomb-of-jesus He argues that if there was a cruxifiction then there has to be a tomb and, for the myth to be true, it must be empty. This house of cards is built on the claim that Tacitus was reporting a fact. The problem is that Tacitus reports that Christians believe that there was a cruxifiction, nothing further. This is what I have said all along. You are quite correct, Tacitus doesn’t mention miracles at all, but you use his reports to support the claim of a miracle and that is what I have said repeatedly. We also have Habermas using the same argument, that a mention of Christiansn believing in a cruxifiction means that the resurrection must be true: http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/historicaljesus/historicaljesus.htm Knowing that you got some of your arguments from these two, there is no reason to think you did not intend on using Tacitus just like them, and your complaints now are because you realize that the argument is faulty and don’t want to be associated with it.
Habermas has offered no evidence at all for his claims, despite my directly asking. He has made the claim that there were 1250 -1300, no evidence that this is correct, though it very well may be. But there is no way to confirm it. What we see is a few dozen, at best, scholars mentioned in the original paper Habermas wrote. You seem to think that as long as someone you support makes a claim, then it should be taken as the truth. This is pretty silly. I’m going to guess that if I say I have 10,000 scholars who confirm that there is no evidence for a resurrection, you would insist that I produce them, correct? If this is the case, then why do you think anyone should take your word for something with no evidence?
Again, why should we believe that Josephus supports the claims of miracles when that mention is known as a forgery and not written by Josephus at all, SC? Scholars consider it a forgery. It seems you hope no one knows what “partial interpolation” means. Let’s see what is actually said about this: “An interpolation, in relation to literature and especially ancient manuscripts, is an entry or passage in a text that was not written by the original author.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpolation_(manuscripts)
Hmmm, so the writing wasn’t original, and Christians have claimed it was written by Josephus. If you wish to question the term forgery, I’ll be happy to retract it and indicate that the passage in Josephus was not written by him and thus Josephus, who is considered reliable in other matters, cannot be considered the source and thus the material has no reason to be accepted as something that Josephus was reporting as a fact. So, we again have a source that says that Christians believed in the story of Jesus Christ, and nothing more. If belief by believers is to be taken as evidence that gods exist, then many many gods are just as “real” as yours. Still no evidence for miracles, still no evidence for the supposed god you believe in, still no empty tomb. One can read what “real academia” thinks about the interpolation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus There certainly are quite a few scholars who think that the bit in Josephus is *partially* authentic, just not the parts about the miracles, which you have claimed as evidence for your nonsense, including the miracle of the empty tomb.
Again, which Jesus do you worship, SC? The possible historical one that was a rabbi who thought he was a messiah and got murdered by Rome? Or the one that did miracles and had an empty tomb by magic? Those scholars that you love to mention are for a historical rabbi, not for the divine being. How many of those who support a “partial” authenticity, support that any of the miracles happened, SC? The idea that Jesus Christ didn’t exist isn’t fringe at all. Indeed, it’s the majority opinion. The idea that some guy named Joshua may have existed and then died is what many scholars think is a possiblity or even a probability. The divine being? Not so much.
What I find to be likely is that there was a sequence of stories that were gathered together to make one semi-coherent myth. Several real people may be at the basis of those stories, but the character that emerged was legend, much like claims about Heracles. Rather than “lord, liar or lunatic”, there is simply a legend. You have yet to show where Tacitus got his information yet, SC. You seem to forget you said you had no idea, so your claim of showing nonsense is a lie: “Where did Tacitus get the source for ANY of his information he wrote?” And you proceed to make assumptions with no evidence at all. Nice try but your own words show you to be making false claims.
What do you think I’m hiding, SC?
Where is this “mudslinging”, SC?
Where’s that charity that was supposedly feeding children in Africa that was supposedly attacked?
Where have I lied, SC?
Where’s the evidence that the bible flood happened as the bible claimed or is it wrong, SC?
What date did the sun stop?
Still waiting for you to show your causation about wealth causing some degrading in religiosity, marriage, etc. Here are the facts again: We also have the problem for your claim, in that the social group most likely to have divorces in the US is evangelical Christians. http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/marital-status/divorcedseparated/ We also have that people who completed a high school or more education are more likely to marry: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm “Men and women who did not complete high school were less likely to marry than were men and women with more education. Men who earned a bachelor’s degree were more likely to marry than men with less education.”
“The chance of a marriage ending in divorce was lower for people with more education, with over half of marriages of those who did not complete high school having ended in divorce compared with approximately 30 percent of marriages of college graduates.”
It seems you can’t handle being wrong, rather like the US’s new president and have to depend on your own “alternative facts”. How lovely. Oh and it does seem that you are indeed a creationist, just as ignorant as the description you gave. It’s always great to see you try to lie here when you said “No, I’m not a creationist.” and then find evidence on your very own blog https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/a-whales-evolutionary-tale/ and here: https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2017/01/20/multicelluar-life-signed-god/ “Indeed, it seems to me that only God is the true creator of all life on Earth, both unicellular and multicellular.” that shows you lied intentionally.
Tsk. “Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who act faithfully are his delight”
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
“ Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” 8 Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!”
The bible occasionally has some good points.
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“No, SC, you claimed you were going to ignore me and dismiss me, and for some reason you haven’t.”
I changed my mind. LOL. The memo should’ve been clear, I am content with responding to you and dismantling your position.
“You have claimed that the Merenptah stele and the Amarna tablets support the story of the Exodus.”
In order for you to even comprehend how they do, you must resist making a strawman argument and read the post.
“The problem is that Tacitus reports that Christians believe that there was a cruxifiction, nothing further. ”
No. This is a lie (or perhaps a statement of ignorance). Tacitus notes that Jesus existed, was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and was the founder of the Christian religion. Did you even read Annals 15.44? You go on to again spew absolute rubbish when you claim that Tacitus was simply “reporting what Christians believe”, which is again either a deliberate lie or simply a figment of your imagination that you made up on the spot in your ignorance of what Tacitus writes of. Tacitus was quickly writing of the history of what Christians are doing in Rome and the founder of the Christian religion.
“You are quite correct, Tacitus doesn’t mention miracles at all, but you use his reports to support the claim of a miracle and that is what I have said repeatedly.”
For the quintillionth time, I do NOT USE TACITUS to support miracles. There’s nothing miraculous about Jesus being crucified. There’s nothing miraculous about Jesus founding Christianity. I do not say “Tacitus, therefore the resurrection”. Neither does Craig, Craig simply cites Tacitus to establish the crucifixion of Jesus, which is the first part to proving Jesus rose from the dead (because you have to show he was crucified first, otherwise there was no sacrifice). The same thing about Habermas, as well. I do not get my information from Habermas, however Craig was certainly a large part of my source information when I first introduced myself to the academia of early Christianity and its history. Club, how did you make such obvious errors about Tacitus? Why didn’t you even read Tacitus’ writing before making such berserk comments? Why did you presume your knowledge on Tacitus surpassed Habermas, who has a PhD in this field, and Craig, who has a Masters in this field with a summa cum laude?
You then challenge my facts on Josephus by citing a Wikipedia article, which quite literally says the following in the second paragraph: ” The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus, which was then subject to Christian expansion/alteration.” — LOL. The Wikipedia article CLEARLY has just proven my point in showing that the scholarly consensus is that it is partially authentic. So you basically answered yourself.
And of course, that’s not forgetting the fact that Josephus speaks of Jesus twice, not once. Jewish Antiquities XVIII.3.3 is considered a partial interpolation, whereas Jewish Antiquities XX.9.1 is considered fully authentic, and mentions Jesus was believed to be the Messiah and had a brother named James, so this second Josephus passage on Jesus which is considered fully authentic in academia confirms the following;
1. Jesus existed
2. Jesus was believed to be the Messiah
3. Jesus had a brother named James
James was one of the most important figures in the early Church and is called a “pillar” of the Church by Paul, alongside John and Peter.
“How many of those who support a “partial” authenticity, support that any of the miracles happened, SC?”
How on planet Earth should I know? Unlike Habermas, I haven’t surveyed over a thousand scholarly papers. I’m just telling you the position of academia. If you want to refute academia, go ahead and give your argument bud.
” You have yet to show where Tacitus got his information yet, SC. ”
Can you show the sources Herodotus, Thucydides, Africanus, Suetonius, or countless other early authors? The answer is no, and that’s because it’s impossible to know for almost all of them. LOL. The funny thing is about Tacitus, Tacitus is the only ancient historian I know about who actually literally makes a disclaimer for his readers whenever he uses a source that is potentially hearsay/unreliable. There is another fact about Tacitus that gives us information about where he could have gotten his source from, and it is reliable.
“What date did the sun stop? ”
LOL. This objection is as bad as asking “where’s the empty tomb?”. LOL.
As for creationism, you yourself noted in just your last comment that creationism is the view that the world is 6,000 years old. This is not my view, of course. Why did you note the whale and multicellular life one but not note of my article on the 6 days where I argue for an interpretation of long periods of time rather than 6-day creationism? Picking and choosing is dishonest.
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so, after you insisted repeatedly that you were going to ignore me and dismiss me, you changed your mind. Mmm-hmmm.
I wonder, how long it will take for you to change your mind again or do any of these so fabulous and wonderful rebuttals that you now promise? I’ve been waiting about a month now and still nothing but more and more false statements made by SC. Do be sure to link back here so you can show exactly what you rebutting.
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Why didn’t you respond to my previous comment? I showed your countless lies/misstatements on Tacitus and Josephus. Club, are you a mythicist, and why do you think legend is more probable than Lord considering the evidence?
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shucks, does someone need attention? Too bad. I’ll respond when I get around to it. Now go play with yourself and write these wonderful rebuttals of my points on your blog. I’m waiting with such expectation.
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Since SC was so desperate for a reply, who am I do say no? 🙂
And here we go again. Poor SC has changed his mind and now he’s invented a reason why he can’t ignore me or dismiss as he promised. Isn’t that convenient!
Well, since you haven’t dismantled my position yet, I suppose you do need to start. I am enjoying seeing you invalidate your own posts, SC. Supposedly you have offered such wonderful rebuttals already but now you say you are going to do so. Which is it? And when will we see those awesome posts on your own blog showing just how wrong I am?
Again, you seem to have no idea what a strawman is. You have claimed that Tacitus is evidence for the existence of your god/Jesus Christ; my addressing this claim is no strawman, which is posing an argument the opponent did not state and attacking that instead of attacking what they have claimed. Tacitus reports this “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.” As you have acknowledged, no one has any idea where Tacitus got his information. Tacitus says that these people were called Christians by the “populace”. This would indicate that the story of these people is known by the average person. There is no need for any official records at all. Since I quoted Annals 15.44, and have repeatedly, your question if I have read it is rather silly. Again, it seems that you do wish to have your very own alternative facts, and try to lie about the actions of others.
Again, SC, please do support your claims that somehow Tacitus has to have extraspecial sources for his information. Where are these sources? Why does the populace know such things about these Christians that Tacitus refers to what they know? You have nothing to support that Tacitus was “quickly writing” anything at all, and this baseless claim appears to be an attempt on your part to excuse why Tacitus doesn’t mention any of the essential events about your supposed messiah: no earthquake, no darkening of the sky, no walking dead.
Again, how does the mention of a culture support that its myths must be true, SC? This is your claim and it is not a strawman at all. I have pointed out that you cannot support your own argument and have not offered a strawman argument of my own. Of course, you could cut and paste where I supposedly have. Unsurprisingly, you have not done this and still rely on trying to make false claims about me. Thank you for the further bearing of false witness.
Why shouldn’t we both accept that the gods of the ancient Egyptians exist just like your god supposed does, since there are certainly many mentions of Egypt and the believers in historical documents? The Merenptah stele and Amarna tablets mention Israel, and that is all. Nothing about the plagues. Nothing about having Israelites as slaves in Egypt for generations. Nothing that says that the Egyptian army was destroyed. And surprise, no date of when the exodus happened, SC. When was that? And why do you claim that your bible is wrong when it says that hundreds of thousands of men, plus women, children and domesticated animals left Egypt? Why do you insist that those numbers are wrong but insist that the numbers given in other plaes by the same translators are right? It seems because that no one has found the expected archaeological artifacts of hundreds of thousands of people would leave behind during 40 years on a trail described in the bible. Please do tell us how mentions of a culture support that the myths of that culture must be true. I’m waiting. It shouldn’t be hard at all but strangely enough, you refuse to do so.
No one cares what you say, SC, if you cannot support your claims with facts. You have used Tacitus to support the claims that your supposed messiah existed, and thus all of the supposed magical events.
Unsurpriingly again, you try a common TrueChristian excuse that if you didn’t say some exact words, then you shouldn’t be held accountable for what you have claimed. Just because you didn’t say the exact words “Tacitus therefore the resurrection” doesn’t mean you didn’t use the argument. Again, Craig also does this as does Habermas, as I indicated by providing the relevant links.
Oh, so “I do not get my information from Habermas”. Then why did you cite him as evidence, SC?
“As we’ve seen, Habermas has published his findings on New Testament scholarship trends (that is completely uncontested by critics and deniers) that clearly shows an amazing majority of historians affirm the historical veracity of the empty tomb.”
Amazing that you are quite so silly to think that no one would remember what you have said in this lovely recording medium. Oh and it is nice to see that you again cite Habermas as someone you get information from “Why did you presume your knowledge on Tacitus surpassed Habermas, who has a PhD in this field, and Craig, who has a Masters in this field with a summa cum laude?” Hmmm, very odd claims from someone who says he doesn’t get his information from Habermas.
Yep, I certainly did cite the wiki on Josephus and it says that the parts of the testimoniam flavianum are not authentic and those parts are the ones about the miracles. I know that the TF is partially authentic. You have claimed that Josephus is a extrabiblical claim and that he supports that Jesus Christ existed and did miracles. This is not the case by your own citation of that wiki article. Again, Josephus writes that there are Christians and they believed in their myths. Nothing more. The non-authentic parts are what claim that this character is magical and thus, Josephus is not the supporting document for Jesus Christ, son of God as you claim. Let’s see what you claimed before you decided to revise history in light of me showing you Josephus was rather silly.
““Josephus and Thallus are both extra-Biblical sources that confirm Biblical events.”
“Why the hell would a Jewish author mention Christian miracles (cough, not counting Josephus)? They wouldn’t, LOL. Out of all the miracle-workers in the first century, there’s only a single first century historian of Israel that had any interest in these miracle workers. A single one. If that’s not bad enough for you however, this single one was Josephus, and Josephus does indeed record these claims. So the only first century non-Christian historian in all of Israel who was interested in the miracle workers of the past is also the same one that mentions Jesus and His miracles.”
“However, Josephus clearly notes that some people have believed Jesus to have done miracles and rise from the dead, Thallus tries to explain away the darkness, etc.”
“And he was Josephus. And Josephus mentions Jesus and the supposed miracles he was believed to have done. Case closed.”
Such a pity. Yes, Josephus does mention jesus twice and in neither case, mentions what you have claimed repeatedly about miracles. No miracles at all, just a man reporting on what believers believe, about James and Jesus who was called the Christ. Josephus also mentions another Jesus in the same book. No evidence for the essential events in the bible. You may also want to read more about James, the brother of Christ, in that this opens up a whole other can of worms when it comes to what Josephus is saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James,_brother_of_Jesus You will see there that there isn’t much agreed on about James, including how he died, with Josephus disagreeing with early Christians.
Of course you claim “how on earth should you know” which scholars support the partial authenticity and which support any of the miracles happened. You see, SC, you want me to accept your claims of authenticity by appealing to authority but when that authority may not be supporting you, you suddenly claim ignorance. No, SC, you haven’t surveyed anyone, and just depend on the baseless claims of others to support your belief. Habermas has offered no evidence he has surveyed thousands either. And just like how you tried to claim that since Habermas’s paper was cited 19 times and I should accept that academia was completely supportive of it, that was shown to be a false claim when at least a third of those citations were because the author thought Habermas was wrong. You have established that there is no reason to trust your claims by your repeated falsehoods.
Nope, I can’t show the sources of Herodotus, etc, SC, but we aren’t talking about them and you haven’t yet tried to use them as evidence for your magical god/man. But since you mentioned Suetonius, he’s another one of those historians whom TrueChristians try to use as evidence for the magical messiah. Suetonius, like many others, mentions Christians, not Christ, and again we are back to your silly attempt to claim that a mention of a believers, or a culture, must mean that the myths of those people simply must be true. I’m guessing your claim that Tacitus makes mention of a disclaimer is in that part that is known to be an interpolation, words added by someone else after the author. Nothing to show that Tacitus is the one who adds any disclaimer, unless you are speaking about another part of his works.
Again, we see that you cannot show when the date was that the sun stopped and thus cannot show that any other myth is referring to that time period. And again, where is that empty tomb, SC? Again, SC, it doesn’t matter if you say a question is bad; it doesn’t make it so. You’ve said a lot of silly things that aren’t so.
Ah, one more outright lie. No, SC, I didn’t myself not that creationism is the view that the world is 6,000 years old. I noted that was one of the many variants of creationism. I’ll post what I said again to underline how you tried to lie: “Creationism contains a lot of different opinions of Christians on when the universe, earth, and life was create and how. There are young earth creationists, who indeed do claim a 6,000 year old earth and the creation of animals, including man, and plants exactly as they are today, in a literal 24 hour day, 7 day week, period. They also believe that humans started from a man, and either a rib-woman or a woman who was created simultaneously with Adam (there are two creation stories in Genesis and they contradict each other). There are young earth creationists who claim other periods of time, 10,000 years, a million, etc.
Then there are creationists, often called “old earth creationists” who claim that those days mentioned in Genesis aren’t really 24 hours days at all but are metaphors meaning far longer periods of time, and again they differ on how long that would be. They also differ in if they accept evolutionary theory. Some claim that their god directed evolution but it is accurate in the fossil record. Some claim that “microevolution” occurs but not “macroevolution” (a false dichotomy; the processes are the same). Then we have you, who want to claim that there was an Adam in some manner. It’s no surprise that you hide what you believe.”
I didn’t post the link to your creationist article about how the bible, and those translators you trust in all other times, is wrong about the amount of time for creation and you think it should be more than 7 days because I didn’t find it when I searched your site on “evolution” to see just what nonsense you claimed. But I’m more than happy to put it up now and show that you are a creationist, an old-earth one like I have described above, one who claims that evolutionary theory is incorrect. https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/was-the-earth-created-in-6-days/ Thanks for the information. It’s grand to see your claim “No, I’m not a creationist.” Being so thoroughly shown false. This demonstrates amply that Christians do not agree on their creation myth and cannot convince each other because they don’t have any evidence to support their claims. I do like how the one website you cite http://www.reasons.org/articles/how-long-was-creation-day-six make the argument that their god has to take time like a human to do things. So much for this god being omnipotent. It’s also great to see that they avoiding mentioning that this god had all of the animals parade in front of Adam because this god couldn’t figure out that they wouldn’t be a good mate for a human being; it wasn’t just naming. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+2&version=NIV
More creationism websites showing how there isn’t much agreement at all:
https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/old-earth/
http://www.oldearth.org/old.htm
http://www.discovery.org
https://www.icr.org/article/4535/
and of course the wafflers: https://www.gotquestions.org/old-earth-creationism.html Alas, they want to have their cake and eat it too.
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“And here we go again. Poor SC has changed his mind and now he’s invented a reason why he can’t ignore me or dismiss as he promised. Isn’t that convenient!”
BAAHAHAHAH
LOL. HOw long have you been on that? It’s simply too funny to see how triggered you get over someone changing their mind. This reminds me when you literally last your mind when I said “I’m going to knock you out”, LOL.
“As you have acknowledged, no one has any idea where Tacitus got his information. ”
Irrelevant nonsense, the same can be said for basically all of the most reliable sources we have in ancient history — we almost never know where the source originates from. Anyways, what we do know is that Tacitus is the greatest historian of the entire ancient world and that Tacitus would literally tell us when his information is deriving from hearsay.
You go on to point that official records are not needed to know that Christians exist — are you crazy? No duh, buddy, LOL. No one said that Tacitus required official records to know about the mere existence of Christians, that would imply that they were an extremely tiny group of no relevance at the time, but the Bible clearly records that Christianity had been gaining followers at an astonishing rate. Before we continue, let’s go over the relevance of Tacitus, because you’re simply a liar if you claim I quote Tacitus to confirm that Christianity was a large group at the time — as I repeatedly stated, Tacitus is relevant for confirming the following:
1. Jesus existed (duh)
2. Jesus was crucified
3. This happened under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius
4. Jesus founded Christianity
It’s important that these are all I’m saying Tacitus confirms, because you repeatedly lied in your previous comments and your most recent comment when you say this:
“Again, how does the mention of a culture support that its myths must be true, SC?”
Considering I never said Tacitus proves the Resurrection, this question is irrelevant garbage.
“Tacitus doesn’t mention any of the essential events about your supposed messiah: no earthquake, no darkening of the sky, no walking dead. ”
Why would he? A simple rule in Logic 101 is that arguments from silence are almost always failures.
“The Merenptah stele and Amarna tablets mention Israel, and that is all.”
The Amarna Tablets don’t mention Israel. Do you get your information from Wikipedia?
Anyways, your fantasies and compulsive lies immediately fail. You continue running away from my post on the exodus like a little baby, unable to look at the facts. You brought up my post on the fantasy of whale evolution and evolution of multicellularity, so I know you’ve gone not only through my posts on my blog, but you’ve went through all of them, as the whale evolution is the very last one. In other words, you’ve undoubtedly scrolled past and read the title of my Exodus post, and your solution was to…. Click, not on the post that I repeatedly tell you to click on, but a COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT ONE! LOL! How far will you evade the facts?
You go on to ask me when the exodus happened. Hilariously, this is actually answered in my Exodus page that I keep directing you towards. ROTFL.
Also — since when is “when did X happen?” a good argument against X? See:
“So you think dinosaurs exist, eh?”
“Duh”
“So what year did they come into existence?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“LOL DINOSAURS DIDN’T EXIST LOLOLOLOLOOLOLOOLOLOLOLOlOL”
Funnily enough, if this exact question was directed towards evolution (i.e., when was the exact year that birds evolved?) with the supposition that it must be false if no exact year can be given, evolution would fall apart.
In other words, almost everything would fall apart in history if an exact year was required to establish something . So this question is not only abysmally bad, it’s flat out incoherent.
“And why do you claim that your bible is wrong-”
Strawman Fallacy, ROTFL
“Why do you insist that those numbers are wrong but insist that the numbers given in other plaes by the same translators are right? ”
You don’t know the reasons, EVEN AFTER YOU READ THROUGH THE EXACT BLOG THAT GAVE ALL THE REASONS? LOL. This must be a memory loss thing for you, better relax buddy. You even commented on points 9 and 10 in specific, which is very funny. Do you want the link again to the reasons or?
” Please do tell us how mentions of a culture support that the myths of that culture must be true.”
Strawman Fallacy, ROTFL
“Just because you didn’t say the exact words “Tacitus therefore the resurrection” doesn’t mean you didn’t use the argument.”
You’re quite literally insane, because Tacitus mentions NOTHING about the resurrection in general, and I didn’t use Tacitus at all. The confirmation of the Bible that Tacitus is relevant for is mentioned above in 4 points.
“Again, Craig also does this as does Habermas, as I indicated by providing the relevant links. ”
You misrepresented the links, troll.
“Then why did you cite him as evidence, SC? ”
You claimed that historians do not take the empty tomb seriously. I showed you that the empty tomb is supported by the STRONG majority of historians. It’s basic fact. I do not get my info — as in my arguments — from Habermas. I guess you could say that I get this empty tomb fact from Habermas, that’s fair enough. Anyways, why are you driveling about points that are irrelevant? Who cares if my info comes from Habermas or Craig? What’s relevant is not the source, but the info itself. Is the info legit? Speaking about info, I’ve already proven that education and wealth correlate to commitment which affects religiosity, marriage, and fertility rates. This is a proven fact, and the Catholic Church of course helps prove I’m right, because Catholics living in wealthier countries are less religious than the Catholics in more poor countries.
“Yep, I certainly did cite the wiki on Josephus and it says that the parts of the testimoniam flavianum are not authentic and those parts are the ones about the miracles.”
Actually, that’s a complete lie. That’s absolutely not what the Wiki link says, read it again. But unlike you, I’m not insane enough to get my information from Wikipedia.
” You have claimed that Josephus is a extrabiblical claim and that he supports that Jesus Christ existed and did miracles.”
FALSE AGAIN LOL. I specifically said that Josephus says that people came to the belief that Jesus had risen from the dead. Josephus does NOT SAY that Jesus actually rose from the dead — and if he did, then scholars believe that this is an exaggeration from the original. Let me see if I can simplify this. Actually, I think I know the best conceivable way to simplify this.
Because you know very little about ancient history, especially regarding ancient historians like Josephus and Tacitus, and especially little about the Testimonium Flavium, let me tell you a fact. First, you know what the TF says, right? If you don’t remember what it exactly says, I recommend an immediate re-reading of the passage.
Several decades ago, a 10th century AD manuscript from an Arab writer was found, that quotes the TF. However, this Arab writer goes the TF in the following manner:
“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to him after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly; he was called the Messiah concerning whom the prophets had recounted wonders”
THIS is a 10th century quotation of the TF that contains NO text that has any signs of interpolation. The TF is considered to be interpolated because it says that Jesus WAS the Christ and DID rise from the dead, and Josephus would not have written and believed this because he was specifically the type of Jew condemned in the Bible (a Pharisee or something). However, this 10th century quotation contains no interpolated information, meaning that the text of Josephus that this 10th century Arab writer was perhaps a surviving copy that did not have any interpolation in it. In other words, what you read above might be the authentic reading. Not only that, but one of the Josephus manuscripts corroborates this quotation because it shares the phrase “he was called the Christ” rather than “he was the Christ”, meaning we can be PRETTY SURE that Josephus 1) reports about a man named Jesus 2) had disciples 3) was crucified 4) by Pilate 5) was claimed to have risen from the dead. Not only that, but Josephus also talks about Jesus in Jewish Antiquities XX.9.1, and all scholars agree that XX.9.1 is authentic in its entirety.
“Again, Josephus writes that there are Christians and they believed in their myths. Nothing more.”
This is a complete lie, complete garbage on your part, and not true in its conception. Josephus says absolutely nothing about Christians, the evidence clearly shows that Josephus confirms that there was a supposes Messiah named Jesus who had disciples that got crucified and that the disciples had come to the belief He had risen from the dead.
Your lies are just enormous. Really, no historian in the conceivable existence of this world (except for the jokers like Robert Price and Richard Carrier). Anyways, considering you try to lie about Josephus and Tacitus to try to make their accounts non-confirmation of many Christian facts, I must ask AGAIN, ARE YOU A MYTHICIST?
It is a simple fact that Josephus and Tacitus together confirm these historical facts about Christianity:
1. Jesus existed (duh, obviously)
2. Jesus had disciples
3. Jesus was crucified
4. He was crucified by Pontius Pilate in the time of Tiberius
5. The believers of Jesus had reported seeing Him rise from the dead
6. Jesus founded Christianity
7. Jesus was believed by many to be the Messiah
NEITHER are merely reporting on what Christians say, considering their sources are completely non-Christian in the first place of course. All your BS about Josephus and Tacitus is really annoying.
“Such a pity. Yes, Josephus does mention jesus twice and in neither case, mentions what you have claimed repeatedly about miracles.”
Josephus mentions the claim of the resurrection of course, so this is false on your part. I wont call it a lie on this time because it seems to me that you may not be lying, you just really know that little about Josephus.
“No, SC, you haven’t surveyed anyone, and just depend on the baseless claims of others to support your belief.”
What the heck are you talking about? You troll, I haven’t surveyed a single person, but Peter Kirby and Louis H. Feldmann (who are historians in the field) BOTH have, and BOTH have found that not only do the overwhelming majority of historians think that the Josephus passage is partially authentic (there is NO EVIDENCE of a full forgery, especially considering the fact that its known the TF is full of Josephan language which really destroys the claim of a fully forgery).
Your BS about Josephus is so incredible that I’m going to devote my very next blog post to Josephus’ testimony on Jesus, which I will write tomorrow. I was going to do it eventually but indeed it must be taken care of when there are people as psychotic as you are on the issue of Josephus.
As I read all your BS on Josephus and Tacitus, I ask myself, “where the heck does this guy get his information from? is he incredibly stupid or just making it all up as he goes?”. Seriously. Considering you’re not done BS’ing, you go on to say this:
“make the argument that their god has to take time like a human to do things. ”
Another complete lie, I’m very well aware of reasons.org and the facts they espouse, and the position of Reasons is that God decided to do things as He pleased, not in any time He wanted to. Considering your lies about Reasons are so obvious, it’s amazing how you thought you would get away with them.
The amount of lies in your posts really infuriates me. How can someone be so ignorant? So condescending? A couple days ago, I clicked on your blog and found that virtually all your posts are based on espousing as much hatred as possible, whether it’s towards Kellyane Konway (or however you spell that), supposed “wannabe theocrats”, etc, etc, etc. Your blog is indeed one of the reasons why our world has so much hatred, because that’s precisely the subject of almost all your posts. So I realize to myself — no wonder you are such an angry person, full of attacks on everything you see and meet.
One last point: You also, surprised me of course, lied about Habermas. Habermas has already confirmed between 1250-1350 scholars represent the 1,400 papers, and so as repeatedly pointed out, even if he was wrong, it’s almost certainly not by any amount. I’d say, at the utmost scale by any degree of honesty, that there were at least 1,150 academics represented. You lied about 6/19 saying Habermas is wrong about the survey, 6/19 did NOT say the survey was wrong, it seems that at best 6/19 try to argue against the resurrection and just mention the fact that the majority of historians accept the historicity of the empty tomb. By the way, the survey has 22 citations now.
NOTE: As I promised earlier, and I will remind you of now, my very next post full of fact and reality will be devoted towards the Josephus text. So after I write that, you will propagate your objections to my arguments, if you have any, considering they will all be likely crushed beforehand.
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And we’re here again. Out of all of this nonsense by SC, I think this is the best “The Amarna Tablets don’t mention Israel. Do you get your information from Wikipedia?”
And here is where past SC is showing that now SC is a liar. “This is why you continuously fail, you do not read my sources and then question me on things that are already answered in them, such as the relevance of the Merneptah Stele and Amarna Tablets to the exodus, the population of Israelite’s, etc, etc, etc.” So, it certainly seems that someone, I wonder who, thinks that there is a relationship between the Israelites and the tablets, and shucks if wikipedia says what it is, that Canaan, aka Palestine, aka the land of the Israelites, and the city of Jerusalem, is mentioned in those tablets. A number of other Christians agree with SC, or at least what he said before he changed his mind, an example here: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/jerusalem-in-the-amarna-letters.aspx
I am quite glad to see you change your mind, SC. For someone who rants three times on how much he is going to ignore me and dismiss me, it is most curious that now you cannot control yourself. Ah, yes, when you threatened violence against me when you didn’t get your way, that was always nice to see a TrueChristian do. And then you proceeded to lie repeatedly about the FFRF being terrorists. Thanks for bringing that up again.
As usual, you’re retreated to claims of irrelevance, and thus I know that you have nothing to support your claims. You attempted to claim that Tacitus supported your claims of a magical god/man and his empty tomb. It is no surprise that now you wish to declare the source of the information irrelevant, since the information doesn’t support you. Oh my, and now more histrionic and exaggerated claims about how Tacitus is the greatest historian of the ancient world. I do love how you try your best to invent authorities to appeal to, and have to claim that they are the best and greatest. You do seem to have the same issues that Trump does with his sad exaggerations of how great he is. Unsuprisingly, for claiming that Tacitus puts in disclaimers, you haven’t been able to show where this is. One more baseless claim that SC has made and then fails to support. Tsk.
Alas, SC, it took this long for you to admit that official records aren’t needed to know that Christians exist. What you have been trying so hard to do is claim that the fact that Christians existed means that the myths they believed in have to be true. You claimed that the only way that Tacitus knew about the myths of the Christian was because he was a priest of a group that kept an eye on other religions. We can see exactly what you claimed “Ugh… Where did Tacitus get the source for ANY of his information he wrote? This objection is crazy. Tacitus obviously didn’t get his information from Christians, as he is very aggressive towards Christianity in his descriptions. Anyways, Tacitus was a member of the Quindecimviri sacris faciundis, which was a body of priests in charge of supervising foreign religions in Rome, meaning it is very very reasonable to believe Tacitus had access to a body knowledge from this membership on Christianity. I know of no historian who positvely thinks Tacitus received his information from Christians out of all people. Bart Ehrman says “Tacitus’s report confirms what we know from other sources, that Jesus was executed by order of the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, sometime during Tiberius’s reign.”
So we can see right here where someone, you, did say that official records were needed. Why do you choose to lie about such things that are so easily demonstrated, SC? The bible doesn’t make a claim of gaining followers at an “astonishing” rate. We have Paul railing that how dare other Christians not agree with him and claims he can curse those people, demonstrating that there isn’t some grand flocking to his banner. Yes, SC, you can try to revise history again by claiming you supposedly only used Tacitus to only argue for a historical rabbi, but that isn’t true at all. As I have pointed out, that isn’t the entity you worship at all, and that entity depends on a miracle, an empty tomb. Craig and Habermas use Tacitus to argue for a real live man/god complete with empty tomb.
Nice try to avoid the question but again, how does the mention of a culture support that its myths must be true, SC? The question hasn’t much to do with Tacitus at all, SC. But it does have to do with your claims that the existence of Christians means that their myths must be true, and that the mention of Israel in the Amarna tablets and the Merneptah stele were evidence supporting the exodus. Again, we see your claim in lovely pixels “This is why you continuously fail, you do not read my sources and then question me on things that are already answered in them, such as the relevance of the Merneptah Stele and Amarna Tablets to the exodus, the population of Israelite’s, etc, etc, etc.”
Hmmm, now why would a man who you claim is the greatest historian of the ancient world, not mention the sky going dark on a certain day, an earthquake on that same day and the dead rising in a Roman held city? You see, SC, your claim of an argument from silence is handily destroyed by your own claims of how “great” Tacitus was. You want to have your cake and eat it too, and that doesn’t work terribly well.
I am still waiting patiently for you to show me these lies of mine, SC. You do know how to cut and paste, right?
I certainly have gone on your website and found what I needed. As I have said before, if you have evidence for the exodus, you may present it here. What you have given so far has been less than impressive so I see no reason to waste my time any more than I choose to on your website. And no dear, I didn’t go through each post. Oh my. I hope you do remember that nifty thing on your website called a search bar. So again, your most peculiar ignorance causes you to be wrong again. As for your creationist posts being irrelevant, they are hardly that. They show that you lied when you claimed you weren’t a creationist. Why did you choose to lie about that, SC? Did you think we’d believe you more if you hid your light under a bushel? Tsk.
For someone who constantly misuses the term strawman, you have created a lovely one:
“So you think dinosaurs exist, eh?”
“Duh”
“So what year did they come into existence?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“LOL DINOSAURS DIDN’T EXIST LOLOLOLOLOOLOLOOLOLOLOLOlOL”
Hmmm, now who is saying “how am I supposed to know?” SC? Scientists don’t. So you’ve invented something false and have tried to attack it as if it was posed by me. Thank you so very much for this. You also try to compare the claims of Christians which is based on that they do in fact know the exact dates, with scientists who are quite happy to admit that they don’t but only have a range. The existence of dinosaurs isn’t dependent on an event that is claimed must have occurred on a certain day for it to have significance. For instance, take Christianity, certain events must have happened in a certain order and on certain days for things to work. There has to have been a creation, that has no evidence for it, to have an Adam, a woman and a talking snake. Then there has to be a flood, of a certain duration and actions, where there is no evidence. Then an exodus that has to have happened during a certain period,which Chistians try to give dates for, and no evidence. Then a man/god must be born on a certain day dependent on a Roman census (no evidence), a massacare of children, go to Egypt (religious significance but no evidence), then end up in a certain city on a certain date, all for religious significance and of course no evidence.
Funny how we can actually date other events but not the bible’s.
It is not a strawman at all to note that you have repeatedly said your bible, and various translators, are wrong. You have claimed that the number of Israelites reported is wrong, but when you want to make other claims, those same translators are right. You try to claim you have the only correct interpretation, but other Christians are sure you are wrong and the bible as written and translated is correct. You have tried to claim that the bible’s flood was just the Black Sea basin filling, and not the world-wide flood that covered mountains. Which is it, SC, was the flood just a local phenomenon and the bible wrong or is the bible correct and there is just a problem with there being no evidence at all for that flood? One answer and we can see if you think your bible wrong or not.
I did read the blog that claimed that the translators were wrong about the hundreds of thousands of Israelites and then claimed that when those very same translators said “few” or had the Israelites being afraid, those translations were without question. No reason was given, SC. But again, if you want to show where James said why he accepted some parts as true from the translators and then declared some parts false, I’d be happy to see it. I certainly did comment on points 9 and 10.
How did I “misrepresent the links” I gave to Craig and Habermas, SC? It seems you are unable to show this, but must make a baseless claim. I am glad that you now admit that you referenced Habermas when making your claims. Why you chose to lie about this before is baffling. The sources of your information are important because it shows that you try to spread known falsehoods. The “info” is not “legit”. And it is easy to see just who you repeat. It is no surprise that again something is deemed “irrelevant” when you can’t support your claims.
No, you haven’t proven your claims that education and wealth correlate to being less religious and less responsible. You have offered no data at all, no causation. It is not a proven fact at all, only a false claim made by a person who thinks that by stomping his feet, his claims will suddenly become true and lauded by everyone. Where is the evidence that Catholics living in wealthier countries are less religious than those living in poorer countries? Or is this one more opinion you’ve pulled out of your nether regions? You see, SC, you’ve lied so many times, that any statement needs evidence to back it up.
Unfortunately for you, the wiki link says exactly that the parts that mention the miracles are the interpolation, the words added long after the author wrote the source.” Of the three passages found in Josephus’ Antiquities, this passage, if authentic, would offer the most direct support for the crucifixion of Jesus. The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate which was then subject to interpolation.[5][6][7][8][10] James Dunn states that there is “broad consensus” among scholars regarding the nature of an authentic reference to Jesus in the Testimonium and what the passage would look like without the interpolations” and “For instance, the phrases “if it be lawful to call him a man” suggests that Jesus was more than human and is likely a Christian interpolation.[“ I do love how you try to be horrified by me not getting Wikipedia right and then claiming that Wikipedia is wrong in the first place, after of course having no problem with it before. Nice hypocrisy there, SC. Which false claim would you like to go with this time?
Unfortuantely for you, I know a lot about ancient history and ancient historians, so your further false claims don’t work very well. Here is what you have said about Josephus when you were claiming him as extrabiblical evidence for miracles. “These are further lies, we’ve seen support for Christian claims of history from numerous non-Christian writers, like Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, etc, and early Christian writers as well, like Clement of Rome (70 AD), Ignatius (95-105 AD), Papias (95-110 AD), etc. Furthermore, there are the pre-Pauline creeds in Paul’s epistles which predate Paul by a long shot, such as the creed in 1 Corinthians 15, Romans 10:9, and several others. You go on to claim that “surely someone must have noticed the rising of people from the dead”, which is of course irrelevant because virtually nothing in ancient history has survived for us to know what the ancients ‘noticed’. Therefore, any whining about any lack of recordings is an explicit argument from silence fallacy and great showing of how ignorant one is regarding the documentation of early history. In the entire first century, there was a single Jewish historian that was interested in the Messiah claimants and supposed miracle workers of the day. Just one. And he was Josephus. And Josephus mentions Jesus and the supposed miracles he was believed to have done.”
I’m notn quite sure why you mention the Islamic translation of the TF. Again, it supports that the interpolation is indeed the parts about the miracles, which you said wasn’t correct, when you claimed my analysis of this was a lie: ““Yep, I certainly did cite the wiki on Josephus and it says that the parts of the testimoniam flavianum are not authentic and those parts are the ones about the miracles.”
Actually, that’s a complete lie. That’s absolutely not what the Wiki link says, read it again. But unlike you, I’m not insane enough to get my information from Wikipedia.”
Which is it, SC? The Islamic version also talks about the Christians reporting what had happened. And the original says this “And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.” Christians are mentioned, belying your claim. So much for my “enormous lies”.
Thanks for showing that you randomly claim some people aren’ t historians because they don’t agree with you.
As I indicated, I believe that the character of Jesus Christ is fictional and was an amalgamation of various legends. There is no evidence for the entity you claim to worship. There may have been a real person at the kernel of the legend but that isn’t the entity you worship, is it, SC? Again, no, it is not obvious that Jesus existed. You have no evidence for that. The story says he did and that his believers believed that. The story says that Jesus had disciples, and the believes believed that. The story says that JC was cruxified and the believers believed that. The story says that he was cruxified by Pontius Pilate and again the believers believed that. The believers believed that this character rose from the dead and believers did believe he was the messiah. You try to conflate what was believed and what we have evidence for.
As you have said, you have no idea what Tacitus’ source material was, nor Josephus’ so your tantrum claiming that you somehow know that neither are reporting on what Christians believe is just nonsense. Terribly sorry that the facts are annoying. I know that folks like you enjoy your alternative facts and get angry when someone points out the emperor has no clothes. Hmmm, and now you’re back to claiming that Josephus does mention miracles??? No, dear, that is the interpolation.
I am happily agreeing with your statement that you haven’t done any surveys. Again, yep, scholars do think part of the TF is true, and they don’t think those parts are about the miracles.
Oh please do devote a blog post to your nonsense. Considering how many times you’ve contradicted yourself just now, this will be grand fun. Please do include lots and lots of embedded links to show just how wonderful you are.
Again, not a lie at all to note that the creationist that you cited tries to excuse his claims that the bible is wrong by saying it would take a long time to do what was described by the bible and it couldn’t’ simple be a day. You invent a nice excuse too, that some how you know why and how god does things, when there is nothing in the bible to support your nonsense about God doing things as he pleased, which some how SC knows was longer than just poofing things into existence like omnipotence will allow. This is another example of SC rewriting the bible to make it fit reality better and not the other way around.
My goodness, the transference. And the inability to google someone’s name. And I’m happy to stand against ignorant theocrats who want to force their religion on others. Yep, I hate them, just like I hate Nazis. I’m guessing your crocodile tears about hate don’t extend to your own words.
You claim that Habermas has confirmed the number of authors and papers. Where is the list of these, SC? Where is the evidence that supports your claim that “even if he was wrong, it’s almost certainly not by any amount”? Your baseless claims are worthless. You claimed this about the 19 citations: “1. It’s a paper 2. Academics consider the statistics trustworthy” As I indicated, the stats were not considered trustworthy in the 19 you claimed.
Please do a blog post. I wonder, will you allow comments that show you wrong…again. I won’t bother with it because I’ve already shown you wrong. Why would I bother to do so again? No propagation needed. But if you do come up with something new, let me know. And I do love how you again assure everyone how great you’ll be. Poor thing, no one else will do that for you, so you are left to masturbate alone.
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“there is a relationship between the Israelites and the tablets, and shucks if wikipedia says what it is, that Canaan, aka Palestine, aka the land of the Israelites, and the city of Jerusalem, is mentioned in those tablets. ”
BAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Jerusalem can be traced back to 2000 BC, but Israel didn’t even become a country until 1400 BC. Mentioning Jerusalem isn’t mentioning Israel.
“For someone who rants three times on how much he is going to ignore me and dismiss me, it is most curious that now you cannot control yourself. Ah, yes, when you threatened violence against me when you didn’t get your way, that was always nice to see a TrueChristian do. And then you proceeded to lie repeatedly about the FFRF being terrorists. Thanks for bringing that up again. ”
As we have seen, you are very possibly hyperemotional and are incapable of understanding JOKES! LOL. Again, for me to actually posit a violent threat to you, I would need to know where you live, and of course I have no clue. So, there is not even a possibility for me to threaten you. You have been shown that FFRF are national terrorists that must be locked up for their insanity and probably put on consulting therapy while their rethinking their actions in jail.
“You attempted to claim that Tacitus supported your claims of a magical god/man and his empty tomb”
This is yet another lie, I’ve noted for TRILLIONS of times that these are the four sole facts that I use Tacitus for:
1) Jesus life
2) Jesus founding of Christianity
3) Jesus crucifixion under Pontius Pilate
4) Crucifixion occurred in the reign of Tiberius
You claimed that there were ZERO confirmations of the Gospels outside the Gospels. As I recounted the trillions of extra-Biblical confirmations I’m aware of for the Gospel accounts, I decided to cite Tacitus.
“Unsuprisingly, for claiming that Tacitus puts in disclaimers, you haven’t been able to show where this is. ”
AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
Sometimes I don’t note obvious things about Tacitus because I expect 1) you’d at least know this general fact about Tacitus for yourself considering you love speaking about him and his sources for information or 2) even if you didn’t, I’d at least trust you’d put two minutes of google searching to find out what I said is a fact.
The Tacitus scholar Ronald Meller notes Tacitus “distinguishes fact from rumor with a scrupulosity rare in any ancient historian” — so this is no secret information at all.
“Hmmm, now why would a man who you claim is the greatest historian of the ancient world, not mention the sky going dark on a certain day, an earthquake on that same day and the dead rising in a Roman held city?”
OOOOOPS. You fall once again into the argument from silence fallacy claim. The argument from silence is worthless unless it can be shown with a good degree of validity that we would specifically expect certain people to mention certain events. Now why would a Roman historian named Tacitus, who did not witness these events for himself and even called Christianity a superstition waste his time by talking about the darkness and earthquake, something he cares nothing about? The argument from silence argument doesn’t work here as we have as much reason to expect Tacitus will mention the darkness as he would mention John the Baptist (interestingly enough, Josephus actually does happen to note of John the Baptist, Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2).
“I certainly have gone on your website and found what I needed. As I have said before, if you have evidence for the exodus, you may present it here”
I have already proven it would be a waste of BOTH of our time if I did that, because 1) I would have to re-assert a 4,000-lined page with pictures and embedded citations into a comment, which would take very long, even though I literally have the finished product on my blog, and 2) you would have to read through a crappy formatting of my blog, rather than read my finished product.
In other words, it’s a lose-lose situation for both of us. YOu have LITERALLY scrolled right by my blog post and not clicked on it. On your whim, you may finally make your click and then comment your objections to my great evidences. Also, you continuously reject Habermas’s factually published claim. It’s almost too funny how you try to do this, citing the most embarrassing reasons for doing so — we’ve seen over 1,400 publications, which no matter how the cake is sliced, would represent an extraordinary large amount of scholars. A lower estimate would be 1,100 in accordance with what Habermas has said, and a conservatively optimistic estimate would put the # of scholars at about 1,350. But either way it’s a ton and definitely a representative sample of scholars of the scholarly community and establishes that 75% of critical scholars accept the historicity of the empty tomb.
“Please do a blog post. I wonder, will you allow comments that show you wrong…again. ”
have now COMPLETED my meticulously researched post on the FACTS concerning Josephus’ attestation of Jesus and comments are OPEN for you to attempt your responses. Once you click and realize you are wrong, there is no going back :).
(Link has been removed because the commenter has been told repeatedly that links without explanation or examples will not be allowed. He may post his supposed meticulously researched evidence here, though he has yet to do so. No one needs to do his work for him. This will be SC’s last post here unless he offers something new here. If anyone is actually interested, one can click on his avatar to find his blog)
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Oh, there is the cackling again. I wonder, do you think it is impressive that you type nonsense in capital letters?
I do like how you disagree with fellow Christians, SC. Again, you claimed that the Amarna tablets had something to do with the exodus, not I. And now we can see that you were evidently just making nonsense up for they have nothing to do with it.
More baseless claims. Please do show how someone threatening violence and lying about others is evidence that I am “hyperemotional” and incapable of understanding jokes. As I’ve indicated before, it’s a bully that has to try to excuse his words and actions by saying that they are just a “joke”. No, you don’t have to know where I live to make a threat of violence. If you say you need to hit me because I disagree with you, that’s quite enough. You’ve also made the claim that you would attack those who disagree with you with a “bat” (seen below in your false claims about the FFRF). Was that a “joke” too, my little bully?
I do love to see you doubling down on your lies, SC. It’s hilarious to see you yet again try to call the FFRF “terrorists”, and now “insane” because they dare disagree with you. Let’s see again how SC lies when he makes his claims (his claims are in italics): ““Let’s see about this claim of yours about what I said: ““SC, you have claimed that people who don’t agree with you are terrorists. You have claimed that you would do violence to them.” (the people being the Freedom from Religion Foundation)– my words and then your response:
“Two lies.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10391
Happily, I have exactly what you’ve said before:
“I’m also very sad to hear you read from the Freedom from Religion foundation, a terrorist organization that sues children schools because they allow the kids, if they want to, to gather up for a Bible class after the day is over. Freedom from Religion foundation is something I’d happily destroy with a bat.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10283
“Definitely terrorists that should have their organization destroyed — these people sue any organization that so much as conceives of having groups devoted to their own religion or anything religious whatsoever.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10314 On Christmas Day no less!
“By the way, the FFRF are in fact terrorists — their terrorist organization should be shut down and destroyed. They sue schools for having after-school Bible clubs where anyone is free to participate, they sue hotels for leaving a Bible in their drawers, etc, etc, etc.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10336
And here is where poor ol’ SC now tries to walk back his histrionics: “I obviously didn’t mean they bomb people — but I call them terrorists because their insane people who constantly persecute institutions for even THINKING about allowing Christian to practice their faith. Complete garbage.” – https://clubschadenfreude.com/2016/09/20/not-so-polite-dinner-conversation-a-response-to-dale-re-prayer-and-free-will/#comment-10349
So much for your claims that I was lying when I pointed out that you have repeatedly called the FFRF terrorists for not agreeing with you. I’d say please do continue lying, but you’ve earned yourself a place under the refrigerator for your silliness.
Oh my “trillions” of times. Such a drama queen. You’ve used Tacitus to support the existence of your magic man/god because you don’t believe in a man who thought he was a messiah and was murdered by the Romans and stayed dead. You have tried very hard to claim that Tacitus got his information from sources that even you admit that you have no idea what they were. There is no evidence that Tacitus got his information from anywhere other than Christians and the populace who knew about them, 80 years after the supposed events. You have postulated that since he was a member of a certain priesthood, this may have been a source, however nothing supports that. We also have the fact that Tacitus reported things that were not true, e.g. the miracles of Vespasian. Which baseless claim shall we believe.
There are indeed zero confirmations of essential events in the gospels outside the gospels and the Christians who believe in them. There are not “trillions”. No historian reports on a man/god being cruxified, and on the same day the sky darkened, there was a major earthquake and the dead rose from their graves. The gospels don’t agree on what happened having directly contradicting accounts. Christians cannot even agree when this was and certainly have no idea where the supposed empty tomb is.
Again, where is the disclaimer that you claim Tacitus gave, SC? I see that you can type in caps, but cutting and pasting seem beyond you. Again, there is no general fact to support your claims about these supposed “disclaimers”. Thanks for showing again you cannot support your claims. Ronald Meller isn’t Tacitus, SC. Where are the disclaimers from Tacitus? I am quite happy to quote you to show that you’ve tried to lie again: “The funny thing is about Tacitus, Tacitus is the only ancient historian I know about who actually literally makes a disclaimer for his readers whenever he uses a source that is potentially hearsay/unreliable.”
No, SC, I do not fall into any fallacy, but you certainly try to claim I have. Now, you have claimed that Tacitus is the “greatest historian” and yet you cannot explain why this greatest historian misses the sky going dark over the eastern Med, there being a major earthquake and the dead walking around in Jerusalem on the same day. If he had access to official records, why not date, SC? Why does he repeat the same ignorance that Christians have? If this Roman historian named Tacitus doesn’t have time to write about these supposed true supernatural events that would have impacted half the empire, why would he write about Christians at all? You see, SC, you keep trying to claim that Tacitus is the greatest historian to try to give some validity to his words about Christians but when that isn’t convenient for you, suddenly Tacitus has to be disinterested in such things. It’s very funny to watch you run back and forth from excuse to excuse, and those excuses contradicting each other. Indeed, Josephus did write about John the Baptist, and he wrote lots about other things involved with the Herods. Funny how he missed the massacre of the innocents, just like the authors of the gospels of Mark, Luke and John, another bit of evidence that shows that the gospels do not tell the truth.
No one has said you have to post 4000 words or pictures. You can give what you thnk is the best evidence. And you’ve refused every single time. No, it would not be a waste of my time at all, so your claims that somehow it would be a waste of “both” our times is just another sad excuse to cover up why you have nothing. It’s nice that you mentioned embedded links again. You lied about me not knowing how to use them, one more bit to show that being a Christian doesn’t mean that you are honest. And formatting doesn’t make a blog worth reading. It’s the content and if the content is “crappy” the best layout in the world won’t make it better.
I certainly have ignored your attempts to get me to read your blog. You came to my blog, you made baseless claims that I was wrong, and you tried so very hard to get people interested in your blog. It’s very cute that you now try to hide how idiotic you sounded when you claimed I had to have read every post on your blog to find your creationist claims when that wasn’t the truth at all. You didn’t know your blog had a search function on it.
The published claims of Habermas is that he surveyed 1400 documents and that 75% of the authors of them support an empty tomb. He does not offer the number of authors, only a percentage of an unknown number. He has claimed that it might be 1250-1300, but there is no evidence offered to support this. He claims to have 400 pages of citations, but again, no evidence is offered. As I have indicated before, this is a very strange way for a supposed scholar to offer his evidence. “For a supposedly scholarly paper to lack the numbers of authors claimed to agree with the premise is simply silly. There is no reason to omit that information and a very good reason to include it, to support that the empty tomb claim is supported by many individuals, the more the better. Citing the number of papers is meaningless, as indicated by the fact that Habermas has written many himself that repeat his claims.” You have nothing to support your claims that constantly go lower and lower, SC. Now we’re at 1,100.
If the number of authors is not given, then it does not establish at all that 75% of scholars, critical or not, support Habermas’s claims. For example, if I said that I had 1,000 documents that support the idea that Christians worship a man who died and never resurrected, you would ask me for evidence of these. If I then said that 75% of the authors agreed with me, you’d want to know how many unique authors there were out of that 1,000 documents to know how many authors agreed with me, not how many documents there were since one author can write more than one article. That you try to excuse Habermas from giving evidence for such information is nothing more than bias.
You may have completed whatever you wanted. Since you have not indicated that there is anything new from the nonsense you have offered here, there is no reason to bother with it since you haven’ t supported your claims here. As I’ve said, I don’t care what you post on your blog. Beg for external validation elsewhere.
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Your latest comment has been noted and ignored since again, you offer nothing new and repeat your lies. And no, SC, haven’t see your blog at all after I found the posts about creationism that demonstrated you were a liar when you claimed you were not a creationist. Beg for external validation elsewhere.
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your most recent comment has been read and ignored. So much for your protestation that you don’t need external validation since you evidently need my attention, SC. Beg for external validation somewhere else.
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And don’t forget this:
You made the claim that wealth decreases religiosity:
“I have already explained that wealth is what causes a lack of religiosity, which in turn causes secularism. It is wealth and a lack of commitment that is responsible for a lack of religiosity.”
And
“I have already shown it is a fact that the higher ones standard of living goes up, the lower their commitment to religiosity, marriage, having children, and other life planners, whereas this on average goes up with less wealth.”
and it was pointed out to you that one of wealthiest organizations on earth is the Roman Catholic Church. You then tried to move the goalposts by citing education and you tried to claim that you didn’t really mean what you wrote, that wealth causes lack of religiosity, with no caveats or exceptions offered. You often do this, SC, make a claim and then when its shown to be wrong, then try to lie and claim you didn’t say what you did.
I find it wonderful that now you say “Why isn’t the Catholic Church unreligious?” Oh my. It’s great that you now try to claim a church and a religion isn’t religious. The RCC uses its wealth as a unit for reasons defined in its beliefs so you fail again. Where are the data that shows your claims of causation, SC? For instance, where is a higher standard of living causing fewer marriages? Now, let’s guide you through thinking about this. You need to establish causation, not just correlation. The hypothesis would be: wealth causes fewer marriages, from your original claim and not what you tried to change it to. Then you would ask the question why would this be. One answer could be that more wealth may lead to more education which may lead to people coming to the conclusion that the social rules of ancient cultures have little application to this modern world. But this would end up supporting that wealth isn’t the causation, but education is.
We also have the problem for your claim, in that the social group most likely to have divorces in the US is evangelical Christians. http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/marital-status/divorcedseparated/ We also have that people who completed a high school or more education are more likely to marry: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divorce-patterns-by-gender-race-and-educational-attainment.htm
“Men and women who did not complete high school were less likely to marry than were men and women with more education. Men who earned a bachelor’s degree were more likely to marry than men with less education.”
“The chance of a marriage ending in divorce was lower for people with more education, with over half of marriages of those who did not complete high school having ended in divorce compared with approximately 30 percent of marriages of college graduates.”
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And once again, he would’ve already addressed this claim to militant anti-theists. Yet you pretty much seem to just pretend nothing happened.
Both religious and irreligious would have the same intellect, but I highly doubt that you have one.
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Hah! 🙂 Thank you. It’s no surprise that poor ol’ SC is still lying and still trying to change his story. He is quite a liar and coward, all in all a great example of a TrueChristian(tm). It’s too bad that there are some decent Christians who have to share the sobriquet with such a person.
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I don’t think so. He wasn’t lying nor being a coward just wanting to change the story, it was just that YOU are being so pompous, stubborn, arrogant and ignorant like true atheists. (See how bad you sound when calling us like that as you think you are smarter than all?)
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Somehow this confirms my thesis that creationists are just poo flinging monkeys…
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Excellent catch… and not to mention 3 million+ human graves.
I’ve seen other apologists recently moving away from the 2.5 million number and to something less fantastic. So flexible the bible!
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Same thing with atheists – but pretty much more and reasonable.
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what are you nattering about, VGP? examples please, or all you are doing is making baseless claims as most TrueChristians do.
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Like you would ever listen.
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And there we go with the classic excuse of a Christian who has nothing to support their claims. Thanks, Vic, for showing again that many Christians make claims and then when asked for evidence, run away because they know they have nothing. Then they try to claim that no one would listen anyway, which is bearing false witness against others. That is something your god says is a no-no.
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If that had made even a molecules worth of sense I might have responded… Alas…
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Indeed. The James Bishop link that ol’ SC gave is exactly that type of Christian. This fellow’s arguments are “since there is no evidence for the biblical claims, then the biblical claims are wrong; except those that must be true since I am relying on those same translators to get my new excuses there.” Such lovely examples of Dunning Kruger, these fellows are.
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Actually they are, you’re just ignorant and thoughtless to assume that there isn’t any ever for these stuff.
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and still waiting for you to show it, Vic. Funny how you can’t.
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that there isn’t any ever for these stuff.
Good. Grief. Man.
Do you actually believe you’re constructing coherent sentences?
Where did you go to school?
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typo.2. he was also not aware that *Red Seed was a mistranslation. (Reed Sea of course)
*Red Sea, of course.
Sorry.
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Someone sent me a link to this blog. Please tell me where you got the 706 miles from, and I’m going to post a response. Thanks mate.
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You’ve already been on this blog, SC, so it’s rather silly to say you were sent a link. The answer is simple geometry, SC. Do your own work.
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A dude named Victor Polk posted a comment under one of my posts telling me about your blog on me. Anyways, I need to know where the figure of 706 square miles comes from because I plan on posting a debunking of your post on me on my own blog, considering you decided to take our conversation to your own personal blog. I can’t get the figure of 706 miles on my own of course, because the reference is so radically vague that it’s impossible to pinpoint your reference. Without any insights on where your numbers come from, your entire calculation of 906,000 tons of quail is meaningless, just one enormous assertion.
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oh, that idiot. The reference is not vague at all and I posted what figures I used and why for the 706 miles. Not doing your work for you, SC. You can learn geometry on someone else’s dime.
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You call him an “idiot, heh? So I guess that pretty much explains that you are indeed a complete nobody who has a huge ego.
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No, Vic, I call *you* an idiot. It is curious that you would respond to a comment made to SC, and say “him”. And how is your being an idiot, show that I am a supposed “complete nobody who has a huge ego”? I do expect you to show cause and effect here.
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Just because we have “V” in our name doesn’t mean we are the same person.
He was asked because he is bringing more points that could have still support the real events, They’re could have. But you think that Christians like us know absolutely nothing at all, and of course you where wrong on so many levels.
Again you acted you are so great, but not even close. You where pretty bitchy when it comes to this or a WHOLE LOT of things.
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wow, still incoherent, eh?
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I’m very curious where “scientific Christian” has a v in it.
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The English in this comment would have failed a Grade Three English exam.
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The opposite of yes.
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I am wondering if maybe SC and Vic are either very close relationship wise or the same person having a bout of schizophrenia?
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I wonder that too, but I think I just want to hope that there are so many very ignorant people in the world.
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I guess that already proves that you are the most condescending person to think everybody including almost ALL Christians are so “ignorant”, the only one is you.
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Oh, I know plenty of Christians who are intelligent decent people. You are not one of them, Vic. And I do enjoy seeing a TrueChristian trying to call anyone “bitch”. Thank you for being such a great example of how being a Christian doesn’t mean much.
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That’s what you think. Doesn’t mean we should always sweet nor nasty.
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The answer would be the first one, no he’s not in relationship with anybody. Schizophrenia? Not very likely at all.
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So, just an indoctrinated fundamentalist half wit, then?
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The opposite, Sherlock.
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Er …. in his reference to you regarding this post he said:
”A dude named Victor Polk posted a comment under one of my posts telling me about your blog on me. ”
So how the hell would you know whether or not he was in a relationship?
I get the feeling you are not entirely telling the truth.
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I was.
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I was.
I seriously reckon that you and SC are one and the same person. You are merely logging in and out under a different logo/avatar.
Your phraseology is very similar,your English is poor,and your grammar is atrocious.
Aside from being blatantly ignorant, this behavior simply makes you look like a bloody idiot.
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Uh no we are not.
Once again, just because we made a mistake in our English or grammar or supposedly “messed” up doesn’t mean we are stupid. Atrocious and poor? I wouldn’t recall that.
Uh no, it’s not because our behavior or the points we made doesn’t make us bloody, ignorant idiots. The one who is you.
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Club can tell by ther IP addresses on the email notiofications.
Neptune only knows it wouldn’t be the first time a Christian apologist has tried to pull this stunt.
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Granted, both could be Syrian … as SC is, apparently?
This might explain the poor English. No problems for me, here. I certainly could not communicate in Syrian, so kudos at least for making the effort.
But it is not the grammatical errors and poor sentence construction but the fact they make the same ones on a fairly regular basis.
And there are several other give-aways if you read carefully.
Yes, there could be two people using the same IP but the simplest answer is usually the right one:
Same person logging in and out.
Why bother doing this is beyond me?
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well, SC’s ip is 64.231.42.86 which is around Toronto Canada. Vic’s is 72.179.11.56 which is Austin, TX (evidence that Austin is indeed weird, just not always in a good way). It isn’t that hard to fake them or be run through one far away from where you are. But considering the education level on these two , I’m not guessing that they would know how. This why I always default to figuring it is two different people. Dunning-Kruger is more common than one would like to think.
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Okay, I see the IP addresses!
Should not comment from my drop down, but rather visit the blog!
All the same, there is something weird about these ”two” and I am still not totally convinced. ( based on my thorough lack of understanding of internet tech.)
🙂
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What are you guys, stalkers?
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And yet more evidence that these two aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. sigh.
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It’s most interesting. His IP address changed to 23.119.30.66 Still in the area around Austin.
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My mother once said I was a storker …. does this count?
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I have to ask, what is a “storker”? 🙂
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One who arrived into this world via a stork.
As opposed to those brought by the Milkman or found under Cabbage Leaves.
*Sheesh* Didn’t you do biology 101 at your school?
😉
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Ah, a stork 🙂 I guess I missed those bits of bio 101.
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I’m turning on the moderation so we don’t have to be bored with pointless comments from VGP, who is evidently illiterate. VGP is on the blacklist.
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I guess that does make you a bitch.
This is VGP. The poor little fellow had to go to another IP address to try to post. His new IP address is just outside of Austin, TX. 23.119.30.66. and he had to make up another screen name to try to get through. He got caught in the moderated posts. This is a self-professed Christian, who has done all he can to ignore the few good bits in the bible. And all he has is name calling, not one bit of evidene for his claims. Thanks, VGP, for showing that Christianity doesn’t make for a honest person. Sincerely, Vel
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lol
“Scientific Christian”
I remember this guy. Last month I got him to contradict his position in only three posts. Here’s the exchange for your amusement:
https://faithfulphilosophy.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/god-jealousy-and-sin
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I may have posted this before, but since the original website is now down, here is a link to the mirror:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160326110529/http://theskepticalreview.com/authorfarrelltill1.html
Scroll down to “Tall Tales of Wilderness Wanderings” for a series of articles explaining the logistical problems associated with maintaining the encampment.
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I may have posted this before, but since the original website is now down, here is a link to the mirror:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160326110529/http://theskepticalreview.com/authorfarrelltill1.html
Scroll down to “Tall Tales of Wilderness Wanderings” for a series of articles explaining the logistical problems associated with maintaining the encampment.
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I popped back to see how your were getting on with Senor Dipshit and I see he is still jumping up and down over the TF.
This you might find interesting if you haven’t read it already.
http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7437
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Yep, SC is still having a fit over the TF. Thanks for the link, I have seen Carrier’s work and I generally agree with it. The Senor did such a lovely job here with his lies, and then when he didn’t get the obedience he thought he deserved, he has evidently gone on about this at his own blog using the same nonsense. I have him on moderation and he keeps commenting, doing his very best to have me visit his blog.
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