Atheists, If You Believe in Evolution, Why Don’t You Believe in Christ?
While browsing the r/atheist 1.2 million “godless redditor” community’s FAQ page, I clicked on a link to another group, Iron Chariots, that collects arguments about the existence of God and the truth of Christianity, and provides counter-apologetics for atheists to use in forming their refutations.
They purport to be “collecting common arguments [though they misrepresent them] and providing responses, information and resources to help counter the glut of misinformation and poor arguments which masquerade [sic] as evidence for religious claims.” The section titled “Would someone die for what they knew was a lie?” caught my attention.
An often used modern argument for the truth of the resurrection of Jesus is that of martyrdom. The claim is that all of the apostles would have had first-hand knowledge as to whether or not Jesus actually returned from the dead and confirmed that he was the Son of God. As they died rather than admit the account was false, this suggests that rather than just believe that it was true like other martyrs in other faiths, they knew it was true for a fact.
Atheists make a distinction between “belief” and “knowledge.” For instance on the r/atheist FAQ page the author explains that “while it is impossible to ‘know’ for certain whether gods exist or not, that does not mean that one is prevented from evaluating the probability of a god’s existence and making a conclusion.”
In other words, they assert that people believe things even if they don’t know them to be true. They assert that people can even be fooled by their senses and their ability to reason. They even go so far as to say that people will believe something they know is false.
For instance, the counter-apologetic for the reality of Christ and the apostles’ account of his life, death, and resurrection is based on this idea of intentional falsity. They seem to admit that it is reasonable that the apostles and martyrs would die for their faith if it was based on the truth of these miracles, but Iron Chariots discredits the truth of the Gospels based on the possibility — the mere possibility — that the apostles were either mistaken, hallucinating, fooled by trickery, or lying.
- The apostles strongly believed the stories to be true, but were mistaken:
- The ones who were killed never actually witnessed the events take place themselves, but were told by other apostles, whom they trusted.
- They convinced themselves the stories were true, to the point of actually believing they were, even though what they witnessed directly contradicted them.
- They remembered the details of the events differently than they witnessed, because the false details were constantly reinforced by everyone they kept company with.
- They were fooled. They really did see the events, but what they saw was a trick.
- The apostles did not believe all of the stories, but died for another reason:
- They believed the literal truth of John 3:16, and thought they would not die.
- They considered the cause to be just, even though they knew some of the stories were embellished or exaggerated.
- They were protecting the lives of other people.
- They would have chosen death rather than be exposed as shameless liars.
- They were killed because they were public figureheads for the cause, not due to the specific stories they maintained or denied.
- They were killed without being given opportunity to retract their stories.
- They stuck to their story to maintain some dignity in their death, as they were going to be killed either way.
- They intended to become martyrs.
- The apostles admitted the stories were not true, but the admission was never made public.
- They did die protecting the truth, but the stories of those events were later embellished. The “miracles” we now read about are not what they actually saw and died for.
- The stories of the apostles’ deaths were themselves later embellished to present them as martyrs.
- The apostles as well as Jesus died for something else, perhaps they hoped they would help free Israel from the Romans.
- The apostles were never killed.
- The existence of the apostles was also an invention.
Atheists claim to be united by the sole principle that they all “lack a belief in a god.” So let’s say, for the sake of demonstration, that a person claims to be an “a-evolution-ist,” consistent with atheist line of reasoning to mean to “lack a belief in evolution.” Couldn’t such a person also question evolution based on the possibilities introduced above? If all the people who ever believed that Christ was real, including those who were killed because of it, were merely mistaken, hallucinating, fooled, or lying — if that many people in the history of mankind cannot trust their senses and their ability to reason — then on what basis should any of us accept that any evolutionary scientist is telling a factually true account of history either?
After all, no one was there to watch every single life form that ever existed evolve, no one witnessed those events first hand. What we know of evolutionary science is told to us by other people — the evolutionary apostles, so to speak — who claim they have dug up all the bones and studied all the strata, and have put this impeccable and coherent story together that they so firmly believe is true. And they hang their careers on it. Have all these scientists merely convinced themselves that the stories are true, to the point of actually believing them, even though they never saw it happen?
Are the evolutionists just mistaken or fooled into believing evolution? After all, it’s a possibility for any human to be mistaken or fooled, right? The discoveries from scientists could have been embellished, they could be protecting their own careers. Why — they even could have all agreed to publish lies! Moreover, they could have just been wrong about what they really saw in all their data. It could all just be made up. Heck, Darwin may not have even lived.
So, atheists, by your own reasoning, they could be hallucinating; they could be fooled; they could be lying. You may believe in evolution, but you can’t know whether it is true or not, right?
If you are consistent, your a-the-ism would also demand a-evolution-ism, but that’s probably asking too much. Let me see if I have this straight:
You question the integrity and sanity of everyone for all human history who ever sought after and believed in God even though every culture has been shaped by this search, and the integrity and sanity of every Christian for the last 2,000 years who believed that Christ actually performed miracles, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven based on the personal testimony of those who witnessed it, wrote about it, accepted it, lived it, passed it on, and even were killed rather than deny it was true; yet, you do not question the truth of the claims about this magnificent metaphysical story-line synthesized in the mind’s eye and witnessed by no one, that each and every living thing evolved in molecular steps directed by mutation and environmental forces alone over billions of years exactly the way the evolutionary scientists have been suggesting since, oh, 1859.
Tell me, in the alleged words of Sir Isaac Newton, by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?
If you believe in evolution, why don’t you believe in Christ?
Careful, I’m going to hold you to consistency in defining your terms of proof.
Category: Evolution
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Evolution as a fact – and science as a whole – is predicated on repeatable, logically-sound arguments that can be corroborated and reproduced by others. Evolution as a theory – the exact order and steps in which animals evolved over the millennia – is still on-going and subject to criticisms and revisions, and anyone who makes an assertion of the development of ancestry of a species must be able to substantiate their argument with evidence showing why it is a better explanation than others, or else it’s rejected as a theory and merely remains a hypothesis.
The story of Christ does not meet this criteria of repeatability, nor being logically sound. For example, no trustworthy eye-witness source can corroborate the rise of Jesus from the grave (an illogical premise to begin with), and no one – not even within the Bible – corroborates Matthew’s story of the earthquake that rocked the countryside nor the very, very noteworthy event of Jewish saints rising from their graves and roaming the streets of the city.
Evolution, both as fact and theory, is supported by evidence spanning across multiple disciplines – paleontology, physics, chemistry, biology, and more – and the story of Christ is not even corroborated evenly within the Bible itself, let alone contemporary sources external to the Bible.
[ Edit: also, the facepalm avatar is wholly incidental not intended as a commentary on this post. ]
Well there’s archeological evidence for Jesus resurrection and crucifixion.
http://www.realdiscoveries.com
Can you boil that down? It’s rather hard to read, and the only thing I can find is the Shroud of Turin, which is just a series of “we believes” without any actual substantiating evidence.
Josh, you have made a category mistake. You begin by discussing evolution as a scientific theory. You then extend your argument and apply scientific principles to the story of Jesus. Yet, the story of Jesus as contained in the Gospels and the tradition of the Church is not a scientific matter. It is a matter of evaluating history. Historical events are by their very nature not repeatable, which you cite as a criteria for belief in the event. Furthermore, historical events are very often accompanied by differing narratives, which might be inconsistent with each other. There might also be an absence of other documentation of the event. This is not evidence against the event. I wouldn’t doubt whether a battle occurred because eyewitness account differed, and another source omitted mention of it. The only thing that can be concluded is that there were multiple perspectives of the event, and some did not think the event significant enough to warrant comment.
History is not amenable to the scientific method. It is a mistake to apply the same criteria to the claims of the Bible that one applies to the claims of a scientific theory. They are entirely different things. Much of our knowledge of the events of antiquity is based on much less evidence than our knowledge of Christ. In fact, in the realm of ancient science, mathematics, philosophy, and history, our knowledge is based in some cases on a single fragmented scrap of second-hand writing. So do we discard it because we can’t use the scientific method on it?
No matter if some one searches for his required thing, so he/she desires
to be available that in detail, so that thing is maintained over here.
Josh is making some serious errors of conflation and assertion about evolution. The science destroys evolution instead of affirming it. But evolutionists have a faulty worldview and presuppositions that causes them for force-fit the data into supporting their biases. In fact, evolution does not fit the criteria for science that Josh is proclaiming!
He complains that the “story of Christ does not meet this criteria of repeatability, nor being logically sound.” This is terribly fallacious, as there are other methods of validating evidence outside the laboratory. In fact, using Josh’s criteria, we can also reject Caesar crossing the Rubicon or the writings of Plato. Empiricism is fundamentally flawed and self-refuting.
How about putting aside your biases and seeing that the logical conclusion is that Jesus did indeed rise bodily from the dead? He is the Creator, and he makes the rules. You can continue to deny him at your own eternal peril, or find out what he has to say.
I probably do have biases, but I’m interested in what particular biases you think I have.
One thing I am sure of, for each failure you can bring to bear against evolution, I know I can show a hundred against your god believe. And those will be logically sound, checkable facts that show the fault of religious belief.
One needs to know the subject, before one starts to beat on it, otherwise you will be the one getting beaten. (That is if facts mean anything to you, being a theist and all.)
I’d be curious to see these “errors”. Polystrata fossils? Petrified trees at Mt. St. Helen’s? Irreducible complexity? Cambrian explosion? Carbon dating of volcanic ash? It’s always fun to show how creationist arguments against science are founded in withholding or misrepresenting information.
> Empiricism is fundamentally flawed and self-refuting.
YOU ARE USING
A [had to edit the profanity that the anonymous commenter used who obviously suffers from a limited vocabulary ~Stacy]
COMPUTER
The problem with assuming that evolution and even creationism as scientific frameworks to describe how life came to be on this planet, as well as how it progressed, is that this all falls into the realm of history and historical methods, and scientific methods do not apply. There is information to be found in fossil records, geological data and other information that has been found, but the scientific method does not apply. Unless one has a time machine and can go back in the past to observe what really happened, there is no way anyone can prove how all of this came into being. Even then, since the event was a onetime event, it still falls under the category of historical methods. The creation of the earth and the universe are not repeatable. The universe is not eternally stable, so how does one know that the processes we see in the present even applied in the distant past. What laws of physics have changed due to the maturing of the universe? These are questions that science cannot answer because anything that has changed no longer occurs. How can the scientific method be applied if you cannot test the processes and laws of physics that no longer exist. How can you know what those processes and laws were? Historical events can only be evaluated by historical methods. Historical methods require that someone create a record of the events so that those who follow will be able to know what occurred from those records. Without records, you would not know about the significant people who lived in the past and societies and civilizations that rose and fell. Science cannot tell anything about these things. How do you know that Julius Caesar, his successors and the Roman Empire even existed? We have histories and many other documents that have been found or preserved that tell us about them and many other people, societies and civilizations. And the ironic thing about Jesus is that there are more documents dating back to within 100 years of his life than for any other individual in the distant past. So, how did the universe come to be? The Bible gives an historical record that one can accept or reject. If you think it is allegory or just a made up tale, read Genesis chapter 1 and notice the process shown in the record of the creation. If the Big Bang really happened, Genesis seems to me to agree with this event. Genesis indicates that the universe did not exist and came into existence in a very quick manner. If Genesis is factual, you now have an historical record that that was passed to Moses by God, the One who created it. What I have written probably will not convince the atheist because evolution carries the force of a religion and they place their faith in evolution. I just hope to help people realize that the creation of this universe does not fall into the realm of the scientific method. It was a onetime historical event. By the way, if a time machine has been built and scientists have gone back into the past to observe how it all came to be, I would like to borrow it so that I can go into the future and get the lottery numbers for the next few weeks.
Your argument amounts to: “There might have been changes in the behavior of physics for which no evidence exists. Therefore, my internally-inconsistent book that often fails to corroborate with external sources must be correct.” Consider that Genesis says seed-bearing vegetation predate the sun and that flying animals predate land-faring animals; it takes some pretty serious mental gymnastics to explain these errors in the Bible’s creation account.
If evolution, abiogenesis, the Big Bang, or any other theories or popular hypotheses turn out to have significant, fundamental flaws, the answer is not automatically your god.
Josh,
A couple of questions because you are using words in ways that are not clear.
Are you defining “fact” as something that is known with certainty?
Also, what are your criteria for determining the trustworthiness of a historical fact?
Finally, what are your criteria for declaring something “logically sound?” Remember, logic should be free from personal bias and emotion. Mathematics is a system of logic, the symbols stand for a given meaning and in any context the meaning does not change. That is the accepted test of logical soundness. It seems like your test is more a matter of whether you want to believe it or not.
Thanks!
> Are you defining “fact” as something that is known with certainty?
Insofar as evolution as a fact, yes. It’s something that’s been observed.
> Also, what are your criteria for determining the trustworthiness of a historical fact?
First-hand accounts that can be dated as contemporary and are free of any considerable concerns over modification since their creation.
> Finally, what are your criteria for declaring something “logically sound?”
In the context of my statement, it’s something that withstands logical reasoning. For example, many times, fossils are found with gaps in between them. Predictions are made that intermediate fossils that are dated in between the two fossils, and, when intermediate fossils are found, they match the expected range of radiometric dating. It is logically sound that, if evolution is true, transitional fossils will be found dated in sequence from ancestor to descendant, showing a progression of development of features, and any gaps in the fossil record, if the fossils still exist, will, when dated via radiometric dating, fall in a timespan between the fossils that it’s supposed to fall in between.
Natural selection has been observed but not evolution.
But it is not “logically sound” to assert that fossils claimed to be transitional have been found, therefore evolution is true.
Also, the observation of fossils is not the observation of evolution.
Mike de Fleuriot,
“And those will be logically sound, checkable facts that show the fault of religious belief.”
Just like I asked Josh, what do you mean by “logically sound” and “facts?” Both should served to protect someone from emotive bias, right and inconsistency, right?
“One needs to know the subject, before one starts to beat on it…”
I couldn’t agree more. The r/atheist and Iron Chariots pages I linked are full of inaccuracies and false statements that reveal that the author hasn’t bothered to study one bit of the Christian arguments he thinks he is refuting. That is a very serious mistake in any debate. How can you argue against something if you don’t even bother to learn what it is?
Or more importantly, how can you intellectually reject something if you never even learned what you reject?
Do you have an answer for why they do that? Spread misinformation and encourage intellectual laziness? It’s no different than someone saying, “I never learned anything about evolution, but, but, but…I reject it because…well, because someone told me to.”
I don’t believe in evolution, I accept that it has happened. Big difference to believing it.
Mat, that doesn’t make any sense. What’s the difference in believing something and accepting something as true. Seriously, what’s the difference? Please elaborate.
The difference between “believing in something” and “believing something” is the difference between believing in God and believing Stacy Trasancos.
You could also start your logic from the premise that both the Jesus narrative and the Evolution narrative are false. Then from there, you can decide which false narrative improves your life the most.
For example, modern medicine is based on the “false narrative” of evolution, yet has improved peoples lives and extended our lifespan by giving life saving medicines like penicillin.
Jesus did not give penicillin to humanity. So when people are dying from sepsis, they choose penicillin, not Jesus; thereby re-enforcing the narrative of Evolution as true.
Science answers how, but not why. If you want more “why’s” answered in your life than “how’s”, then the false narrative of Jesus would improve your life most. If Jesus answers your “why’s” better than any other deity or philosophy, than you’ve re-enforced the narrative of Jesus as true.
Each individual decides where value is placed.
I keep asking my invisible friend, “whad he say?”.
Is it me?
Mjeck,
Howard and I are stumped.
Can you be specific about which part you and Howard don’t understand?
We can believe whatever I want to, for example I believe I will have a good day to day. This may or may not be the case. However, I am forced to accept that if it rains, I will get wet.
Mjeck,
You lost me when you said “your logic.” Logic is supposed to objective, not just something you think based on your experience. In formal logic, you don’t start with statements you declare by fiat to be false, and then work backwards.
Logic is a branch of philosophy that treats of the forms of thinking in general, and more especially of inference and of scientific method. It is a formal system using symbolic techniques and mathematical methods to establish truth-values in the physical sciences, in language, and in philosophical argument. (OED)
And the Jesus and penicillin talk is devoid of any coherency. I guess the most I can say there is, again, to be able to argue against something, you need to understand it first rather than make up any old thing you think it means, and refute that because you like it.
I don’t disagree with your rebuttal to my post, (being that logic should be objective and such) in fact, my post was an attempt at mathematical logic.
Your logic piqued my curiosity: If Evolution is true, than Jesus should also be true. I had a different approach: If Jesus and Evolution start at 0 (false), which has the larger set of true? And how do you determine the value of true?
In my past search for God and truth, I had reached the end of religion, philosophy and atheist literature (because to know God, you also need to know where God is not); I turned to mathematics. I wanted to understand the concepts and logic of theoretical and applied math; thereby understanding God and my relation to God better. This was the purest form of language and logic, I could find. I determined that in mathematics, the closest definition for God, was infinity. How do I calculate, relate to, and understand infinity?
In the study of infinity, you don’t calculate the size of infinity by what’s inside infinity, but by comparing it with another “set” of infinity.
It’s impossible to know everything there is to know about Jesus or evolution; you can never calculate the true value of either by attempting to know everything that each contains; however, you could compare Evolution with Jesus, at a one to one rate, without actually knowing what each contains; thus determining which has the larger values of true.
I could go on, but I don’t know if I have you stumped at this point
OK, Mat, so you are using “believe” to refer to future events and “accept” to refer to the reality of things past and present.
You could also say that you believe the truth of something past and present too.
You could say that you believe you got wet when it rained yesterday, and you’d only say that if you had confidence that it was true.
So you do believe in evolution, if you accept that it is true. Otherwise you wouldn’t believe it.
Right?
You’re that lady that had a gay basher page a few months ago right? Whelp, It has been taken down from what I see. This leads me to believe that you we unable to stand up to the heat the post caused and deleted the page and run.
This, in turn, causes me to disgard anything a socail coward like you has to say.
Grow up Ryan. Anyone with a first grader’s level of skill at using search engines could find it for themselves. It’s not down, sorry.
Go ahead, click it: http://bit.ly/R7e6JH
All I have to say is “Wow.” Do gay couples who are simply doing what straight couples do really offend you? And the comment about the Heroin Needle drop box was a massive exageration, Heroin will not be legalized before Marijuana will be, and if it was legalized I’m sure it would be illegal to shoot up in a public park. And you tell Ryan to grow up? Stacy learn some tolerance before you tell other people to act mature. I personally don’t believe in gay marriage, but that statement is incredibly intolerant and gives the Christian Religion a bad name. Next time think before you post things online, articles like this only give the athiests more ammunition.
Also ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. “And a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” ( Matthew 22:37-40) Nothing in that passage says “Unless your neighbor is homosexual”.
And remember also “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward in heaven will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.” ( Luke 6:35)
There’s a pretty obvious reason why belief in Julius Caesar, and the belief in Jesus of Nazareth, son of God, one part of the trinity (etc etc) are not really comparable.
It doesn’t matter if Julius Caesar is fictional.
If we find out that Caesar was simply an elaborate fairy tale- a mythical being printed on coins, bronzed into statues and busts, and written about in thousands upon thousands of documents- then we change the history books. We shrug, laugh, and move on, searching for the true picture of our history.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence- so even should you be able to prove that a man called Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, lived in Nazareth and was crucified, (something that has not been ‘proven’ btw) you still haven’t proven that he was/is the son of God, or that God exists.
Your evolution versus Jesus argument is quite weak, too.
Is there any real reason, after all, that you couldn’t change ‘Jesus’ to ‘Vishnu?’ or ‘Zeus’ or ‘Amun’ or ‘Ahura-mazda’ or any of a thousand other deities?
I accept that evolution is the best fit explanation for the diversity of species. I came to that acceptance through my studies of biology and chemistry.
I do not understand what kind of mental gymnastics you would need to undergo to have it logically follow that therefore I MUST believe in your particular holy text, and the existence of your particular deity.
“If we find out that Caesar was simply an elaborate fairy tale- a mythical being printed on coins, bronzed into statues and busts, and written about in thousands upon thousands of documents- then we change the history books. We shrug, laugh, and move on, searching for the true picture of our history.”
So your conclusion is that there is a “true” history and that we can be satisfied that we have found it until proven otherwise, but, you will decide for me what historical events qualify. On what basis do you presume that power?
“Your logic piqued my curiosity: If Evolution is true, than Jesus should also be true.”
Mjeck, I think her point was that a method used to facilitate belief should be consistently used.
“modern medicine is based on the “false narrative” of evolution.”
False or true I don’t see how my Doctor’s knowledge or existance is any more dependant on a slithering creature from the primordial slime than he is on God or his mother and father. Or, the creature’s existence on the same.
Howard,
“False or true I don’t see how my Doctor’s knowledge or existance is any more dependant on a slithering creature from the primordial slime than he is on God or his mother and father. Or, the creature’s existence on the same.”
The evolution narrative in modern medicine facilitates for the creation of antibiotics (evolution in biology). Historically, the Christian narrative offers you bourbon and a bone saw. “Bad air got into your leg there, son, it’s gotta go…”
People like there legs, therefore, evolution, in the matter of modern medicine, has higher values of truth.
“Mjeck, I think her point was that a method used to facilitate belief should be consistently used.”
You mean hypocrisy? Paradoxes?
It was her logic, and how she framed it, which i found most interesting.
Mjeck, I still do not see your point. Medicine does not teach about God, Jesus cured the sick but told us to spread the Gospel not the Hippocratic oath.
“You mean hypocrisy? Paradoxes?”
I mean consistancy!
Jesus saves you from an imaginary place: Hell. Jesus cures you of an imaginary disease: Sin.
These two have no practical purpose in the real world.
Modern medicine heals people; millions of people, from real diseases and epidemics.
This has a practical purpose in the real world. It means that you now live till your 70yrs old, not 40yrs old.
I find it difficult to compare the imaginary with the real, but this is what I find interesting about Stacy`s post.
Mjeck, I think you are just revealing your own conclusions and preferences and not presenting an argument for anything in particular.
That’s right Howard, I presented some mathematical logic. Not an argument.
I’m not really into dichotomy’s all that much. Tit for tat never gets you that far into revealing God or truth, now does it?
Is it just about whose right and whose wrong?
Mjeck,
On this blog I expect people to understand argument to mean: A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood.
This whole post of Stacy’s is a challenge and is expected to divide into an exact dichotomy.
We can grunt “I think” at each other and we are done, or examine the subject and be stimulated and perhaps learn something.
I didn’t set a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood, by presenting mathematical logic? Were you not stimulated, or learn anything from my discussion on Set Theory?
If it’s all about exact dichotomy’s, then would you like me to discuss game theory? How opponents play against one other? That way, you don’t even need to wait till the end of the conversation to know how it ends!
I am here to discuss Stacy’s logic.
Mjeck, you presented undecipherable nonsense and are unable to explain it.
Be specific
Let me write my argument in plain English: Stacy may have presented her logic, in a way that the outcome is in her favor, re-enforcing what she already believes.
That is not an argument, it is a conclusion.
I honestly don’t know where you are going with this, or how you want me to reply…
I’m stumped.
“Let me write my argument in plain English: Stacy may have presented her logic, in a way that the outcome is in her favor, re-enforcing what she already believes.”
O.K.
You are proposing that Stacy has done something that you don’t agree with. Give your reasoning that supports that she has presented this in a biased and untrue way. Any argument is invalid that expects me to accept what you are saying just because you say it. I need reasoning outside of your feelings and suppositions. Statements that can be regarded as true in themselves without your approval.
I presented a different beginning point. Instead of Evolution being true, therefore, Jesus is true; I suggested, to start, that both Evolution and Jesus are false.
I re-framed value and truth into mathematical terms and specifically referenced Set Theory.
And now you know my conclusion.
You are welcome to ripe apart my argument, or lack there of.
Mjeck, re-read Stacy’s post. Now is your beef still with her?
——
Stacy Trasancos says:
October 3, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Mjeck,
I just took the Iron Chariots premises and applied them to evolution. Do you understand that’s what I did? I’m not really making any arguments either way, I’m asking for a little consistency.
I don’t have a beef with Stacy. I would like to discuss logic with her. And if you look further down, I directly replied to her about Iron Chariots. Do you not like my reply because it’s anecdotal? I thought I was very friendly and open.
Perhaps you should continue with her then.
Thank-you, Howard!
This is not true on any level, period.
Trina,
I’ve learned something very important. Always find out what people mean by “prove.”
You accept the proof offered in your coursework that evolution is true.
Presumably, then, you would accept proof in a theology course that Christ is real.
Maybe you’d say no because it doesn’t really matter how things evolved to land you right here today where you are, so part of your acceptance of it is that it just really doesn’t matter, ultimately.
But, if Christ really lived, died, and rose again, as the the written record declares and the life of the Church He instituted gives testimony, then that means Heaven and Hell are real, and that your soul is real, and that you are eternally responsible for your actions.
So it doesn’t just not matter ultimately. It matters a great deal.
It seems to me that if that is your distinction, then you should have an even greater impetus to learn what it is you reject, since it is of such great importance, than you had to spend all those hours learning something of no real significance.
Have you done this? I take it you have not, by your last statement.
What do you say to someone who says, “I reject evolution, but I shouldn’t have to learn anything about it?”
Mjeck,
I just took the Iron Chariots premises and applied them to evolution. Do you understand that’s what I did? I’m not really making any arguments either way, I’m asking for a little consistency.
The Iron Chariots wiki dismisses Christ as real because all those people could have (just merely could have, mind you) been hallucinating, mistaken, fooled, or flat our lying.
Well? Couldn’t we say that about anything?
Stacy,
When I was a Christian, I had very strict guidelines that I followed to prove that evolution, Allah, Mormonism, etc, were false. I would read and research all about Mormonism, for example; even reading the entire book of Mormon. Then I would dissect the religion in its entirety, and found huge gaping, laughable holes everywhere.
Then one day, I turned my strict guidelines onto my own beliefs. I discovered that what I believed didn’t hold up to my own guidelines either. My logic became: If Evolution is false, then Jesus is also false.
The allegory, the symbol, the metaphor, the idea of Christ is what I find true, not the historical accuracy. The historical accuracy of Jesus is an indefensible position.
Atheists acknowledge that the historical accuracy of evolution might be, at any time, an indefensible position. And so, if you can turnover evolution, you win a Nobel prize, and science is advanced.
Maybe I should have said, “If you believe dinosaurs roamed the earth, then how come you don’t believe Christ did?”
I’m actually really disappointed in the atheist responses so far. Come on guys, can you at least admit this Iron Chariots argument is silly?
> I’m actually really disappointed in the atheist responses so far. Come on guys, can you at least admit this Iron Chariots argument is silly?
Only when used outside of the context of, “These people die for their cause, and no one would ever die for a cause that wasn’t true.”
Josh,
So if someone saw with their own eyes that Christ died and rose again, then ascended into Heaven, it would be more compelling if they had just shrugged their shoulders and said, “Nah, I’ll cave and do what you want, don’t kill me man, whatever…”?
Please explain how you reason through that. Every step.
No, not at all. The list you linked to is merely equally-viable explanations for why someone might be willing to die for something they believed in. To say that Jesus must have been real because people died for their belief in him is to say that the spaceship in the Hale Bopp comet must be real because the Heaven’s Gate religious group killed themselves. Passionate belief does not make something true.
We can extend this comparison further; it’s generally accepted that there was, in fact, no spaceship in the Hale Bopp comet because there’s no evidence to corroborate this claim. Equally, there’s no evidence to suggest Jesus actually existed beyond the accounts of his followers. As far as I’ve been able to research, the accounts are equally credible (or incredible, as the case may be).
Then it could be equally viable explanations for why someone might be willing to stake their professional career on something they believe in too. Yet you believe them? Why? Did you see all the evidence yourself? Did you see all things evolve? People have been academically dishonest or mistaken before, you know.
So, I’m curious, how did you decide that evolution is true?
And what have you studied to arrive at your conclusion that Jesus never existed?
Oh, It’s definitely within the realm of possibility that someone would lie about evolution. However, given how rabid the likes of Dembski, Ray Comfort, Ken Ham, Kirk Cameron, and Hoven are in their criticism of evolution, one would expect them to have found a valid flaw in the evidence. None has yet emerged. As such, arguments for evolution – and evolution as an explanation for the development of life – remains the most credible explanation.
Regarding Jesus, I’ve watched debates, debated with people, and read arguments (though, admittedly, nothing formally published). I’m always interested to hear a new argument or piece of evidence, though.
I have a strong aesthetic preference for explanations that involve only physical causes, or at least the fewest non-physical causes possible.
Evolution is thought to be driven entirely by physical causes. The physical changes in organisms over millions of years have been cataloged, and the order of these changes, when where and what took place, has been well constrained. The mechanism of evolution is not so well determined, but it appears as though genetic mutation and natural selection may suffice.
As for the events that happened after Jesus’s death, there are four facts that most historians accept:
1. Jesus was buried.
2. The empty tomb.
3. Appearances.
4. Belief in his followers that he rose from the dead.
What is the best explanation for these facts? There is currently no satisfying explanation. Whatever explanation people have come up with either invokes the supernatural (which I find distasteful in an explanation), or does not entirely account for all four facts.
Maybe Jesus didn’t really die. This possibility accounts for 2,3 and 4, but not so well for 1, especially considering the circumstances of his burial.
Maybe Jesus’s body was stolen by his disciples. This could account for 1, 2, and 3 (his disciples lied about the sitings), but not 4. It seems unlikely that a group of people would be willing to die defending a claim that they know is false.
Maybe the disciples hallucinated. This explains 1,3 and 4 but not 2. People will die for what they believe, even if their beliefs are absurd. And mass hallucinations have been known to have happened. But the tomb was empty, and a hallucination would not explain how this would have come about.
Maybe some disciples hallucinated while others stole the body? This seems convoluted and very unlikely.
Why entertain the possibility of hallucinations for Jesus but not for experiments and observations about evolution?
Because evolution is already a natural explanation and requires very few if any non-physical causes, and because the evidence is strong. Also, the period of gathering evidence is spread over now more than a hundred years and at least tens of thousands of people.
The facts about Jesus listed above might have a natural explanation, and I find natural explanations much easier to swallow. It is much more satisfying to accept an explanation for an event when there is a hope that the explanation can be understood. But who knows? Maybe Jesus came back from the dead, and someday we will know the physical causes for his return?
In any case, the hallucinations plus conspiracy seem more likely as an explanation for the four facts listed above, because they would only need to affect a couple dozen people in one part of the world over the span of a few days. Not tens of thousands of people all over the world over the span of more than a hundred years, as in the case for evolution.
Agreed. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmerini (both atheists) in their ‘What Darwin Got Wrong’ and most recently another atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel ‘Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False’ explain that what these people are doing is natural history not in any way science.
The historical tradition preserved by Christianity is by far the better history of the Resurrection, to reject it in order to preserve one’s atheism means having to do pretty shoddy history.
I would be interested to see the historical data that supports the existence of Jesus.
“OK, Mat, so you are using “believe” to refer to future events and “accept” to refer to the reality of things past and present.”
No, it’s more of a subjective opinion, that was just an example. Two different people could have separate beliefs about a cerain thing but that would necessarily make one wrong and the other right or both of you wrong. Another example, is, “I believe my football team is the best in the league”, would be another example, you can disagree but both of you would believe your statement.
“You could say that you believe you got wet when it rained yesterday, and you’d only say that if you had confidence that it was true.”
As I said before, believe (at least to me) is a subjective statement. Your statement actually makes no logical sense to me because it also gives the opportunity to be falisifed and that’s not the case, you did actually get wet and there is no denying it.
“So you do believe in evolution, if you accept that it is true. Otherwise you wouldn’t believe it.”
Evolution is true, regardless of what people believe. I am forced to accept it because of the evidence for it.
“there’s no evidence to suggest Jesus actually existed beyond the accounts of his followers. As far as I’ve been able to research, the accounts are equally credible (or incredible, as the case may be).”
In what way Josh are these two reports equal except for your preferences?
Research?
Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, Philo and Pliny the Younger wrote about Jesus and were not his followers.
One account has no evidence at all (Hale Bopp) and the other eyewitness and early Christian era accounts.
What, exactly, did Philo and Tacitus write about Jesus? The rest were born no less than thirty years after Jesus was born; can the accounts they based their writings on be traced to a credible firsthand account?
I will respond more fully later, short on time today. To follow up Howard’s comment, there are volumes written about the historical evidence of Christ’s existence. I, too, am interested to know whether any atheists here have read them, or if you just have decided summarily without having studied anything, that He just never did what (to correct Ace) billions of people through 2,000 years have believed as true. Without question more people have believed in Christ’s life, death and resurrection than have believed that evolution is the sole explanation for all the diversity of life. Even in America today, there are far more Christians than strict atheistic evolutionists. So, that’s not a very good measure of truth.
To the anonymous commenter with the limited vocabulary, and anyone else, the flaw of empiricism and believing that there is nothing beyond the physical world is that it would also require you to accept that there is no higher science than physics. And we all know that unmistakably there certainly is. Even evolution as you describe it is a giant theatrical story in the mind’s eye. It is not physics. It’s a magnificent story with an explanation that relies on it’s theories of physics to be true, but it’s not physical science itself. It’s metaphysics — an overarching worldview that involves physics.
> …believing that there is nothing beyond the physical world is that it would also require you to accept that there is no higher science than physics.
Depends on your definition of “highest”. Most fundamental, perhaps, because it is the springboard for chemistry, biology, astronomy, and numerous other sciences that build off of aforementioned and each other.
Evolution is merely a macro result of micro processes described by physics. It’s not metaphysics because it’s still very much bound by laws described by physics.
Evolution is not physics. It is not even just complex physics. It’s not metaphysics.
It’s biology.
I recommend reading “Every Thing must Go” by James Ladyman.
He just never did what (to correct Ace) billions of people through 2,000 years have believed as true.
Stacy: Because of the testimony of a couple dozen people in one part of the world experienced over the span of about a month.
Millions of people accept the theory of evolution because of the experience of tens of thousands of people all over the world over the span of more than a hundred years.
For myself, I find the argument for evolution, even on this level, to be more convincing than the argument for the resurrection.
It also has the virtue of not retreating into the supernatural.
Josh: If you think that the case for the historical Jesus is weak, I recommend reading Bart Ehrman (agnostic, and expert on the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life). This article is a reasonable start:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html
Josh,
Although Philo a leader of Hellenistic Judaism did not discuss Jesus directly it was claimed by Eusebius that the Jewish group described in the Contemplative Life, the Therapeutae, was a Christian group. This has been disputed and is not a certainty. His descriptions of Jewish life in Alexandria at the time of St. Marks Christian church and the character of Pilate verify other accounts.
“Philo is also noteworthy for understanding the early church and the writings of the New Testament, especially those of Paul, John, and Hebrews. It is sometimes forgotten that the New Testament documents were written in Greek by authors who were Jews (of course now committed to understanding Jesus as Christ and Lord) who were part of the Hellenistic culture of the Greco-Roman world. Most of the early churches reflected and described in the New Testament were part of the social fabric of the Hellenistic Greco-Roman world.”
-Foreward to C. D. Yonge’s translation of Philo.
Tacitus was born after Christ’s death, AD56. A Roman senator and historian verified the death of Jesus by Pilate and his role as founder of the Christian Church. His surviving writings are Annals and Histories.
We have gone from “no accounts outside his followers” to “firsthand accounts” and this progression will continue. What would result if I was to present documents taken at the time of the crucifixion? A mug shot, his arrest report and his rap sheet. Solid arguments could be created. Being remote from Rome, small town law enforcement documents were compromised due to bribery. The photo is his double that was crucified in his place, Islam has claimed this (not the photo, s….. a..) because their beloved prophet Jesus did not die on the cross. We all know that written documents can be falsified. Any story related by his fanatic followers must be suspect. These arguments have a life, they ring true, they are believable arguments against non-existent things. What believable argument(s) will dominate in any question? We know from our own observations of the workings of law in our current overly examined culture. Facts, speculation, lies, bias, all forms of argument are presented in a case. Judgment is given. Are these judgments overturned, found out to be false or true by later judgment or DNA evidence? Not unanimous, why not? A messy world.
My own acceptance of Christianity is based on the entire 2,000 year story – the weakest and the strongest tales put together. One of the arguments resonated deeply and was not presented as such in scripture. Various degrees of belief from Judas to Peter to Thomas to those who just walked away. A key passage in Mathew 16 reveals this:
When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
- (NKJV)
His disciples seemed to be rather wimpy during the life of Jesus, then after the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles, after the resurrection, they went out into the world and succumbed to crucifixion themselves. No more Judas behavior, no more walking away, acceptance until death.
I have to get a paper written today, but Josh, one question I also have learned to ask when people ask for evidence is, “Do you believe Aristotle existed?” If so, what are your criteria for determining the truth of the evidence.
Thank you Howard for that information. I have a book Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to Ancient Evidence (Voorst) that a synoptic gospels professor recommended. I think I counted 30 pages in the bibliography.
It’s certainly a much better source than Huffington Post. Ace, oh shame!
I know for a fact that if I offered some “Conservative Daily” (or something) article that claims to disprove evolution, you’d have a good eye roll. I will be back to ask you about how you are defining metaphysics. The theory of evolution most definitely fits that accepted definition in the academic world though.
Oh, I could say more, I must be disciplined today and go write. More later. I’m reading. Thank you all for the comments.
> Although Philo a leader of Hellenistic Judaism did not discuss Jesus directly it was claimed by Eusebius that the Jewish group described in the Contemplative Life, the Therapeutae, was a Christian group.
The existence of Christians during his time is not that difficult to believe, but to say that, because someone wrote about Christians approximate to the alleged life and death of their savior is to say that someone who wrote of the Heaven’s Gate religion is evidence their beliefs were true, too.
> Tacitus was born after Christ’s death, AD56. A Roman senator and historian verified the death of Jesus by Pilate and his role as founder of the Christian Church. His surviving writings are Annals and Histories.
How did he verify the death of Jesus? When he described a Christus who was prosecuted by Pontius as the origin of the name “Christian”, where did he learn of this? Was it from the Christians themselves, or from documents kept by Roman or Jewish authorities?
> What would result if I was to present documents taken at the time of the crucifixion?
That’d be pretty hard to argue against, though it’s worth pointing out: that would merely prove the existence of a Jesus Christ, and not necessarily his divinity. The Bible wouldn’t be the first to build a “larger than life” caricature of a real person.
On that note, however, given that the Romans agreed to put down a Jewish revolt through a trial of its leader orchestrated by the Pharisees, which resulted in a man rising from the dead three days later, an earthquake, and the Jewish saints rising from the dead and roaming the streets, the absence of any contemporary documents detailing these stories is particularly intriguing.
> …Josh, one question I also have learned to ask when people ask for evidence is, “Do you believe Aristotle existed?” If so, what are your criteria for determining the truth of the evidence.
I’m aware of some disagreement of his existence (and maybe Plato’s? Homer’s?), but I’m afraid I’ve not researched it well enough to be able to form a solid opinion. Until any of my arguments hinge on his existence (or if my curiosity about the arguments against his existence are ever piqued), I’ll probably defer that conclusion.
As I said Josh, life is messy!
“The physical changes in organisms over millions of years have been cataloged, and the order of these changes, when where and what took place, has been well constrained.”
Ok, can someone explain this to me? First Josh says he has observed evolution. I don’t understand how you can claim to have observed evolution, Josh. What, exactly, have you observed?
And then Ace writes the sentence that I quoted above. What has been cataloged is that there have been organisms that were once alive that are now dead. Some of these organisms, if we have the entire skeleton or even close to an entire skeleton, appear to be similar to organisms that are alive today. Some organisms have no similar counterpart in today’s world. Neither situation proves that an organism alive today evolved from a previously living organism or line of organisms. Can you give me an example of one organism whose evolution has been cataloged, with conclusive proof that in each stage of the process, the “new” organism evolved from the old one? The further back you can go with your example in time, the more it will help me to understand your statement. Thank you.
Ace,
Sorry it took so long to respond. The comments on this thread require thought, and unless I have time to give sufficient amounts of it, I just wait.
“I have a strong aesthetic preference for explanations that involve only physical causes, or at least the fewest non-physical causes possible.”
Intellectually, that only gets you so far though. The defining characteristic of our rational mind is that we must synthesize the observations we make in the physical world into inferences beyond it. Even physical science demands we go beyond physical explanation. A child can measure how high a plant grows with X, Y, or Z experimental controls, but the scientific method requires him to go a few steps further and form hypotheses which in turn can be tested. It requires him to think up tests, to ask questions, to seek the truth. That’s why St. Thomas (you know I can’t not mention him) said there was an order to the sciences, and the highest science is the science with its object as God.
“Evolution is thought to be driven entirely by physical causes. The physical changes in organisms over millions of years have been cataloged, and the order of these changes, when where and what took place, has been well constrained. The mechanism of evolution is not so well determined, but it appears as though genetic mutation and natural selection may suffice.”
Scientifically speaking, we have dots that are connected. We don’t have the full picture. The picture we’ve conjured up in our mind’s eye (non-physical, I might add) is an explanation. Many do not find it satisfactory. Some do. My problem isn’t so much with evolution as an idea, it is more with people who think evolution as merely physical means must be true, because they think it supports their conclusion that there is no God. (Which is silly.)
“As for the events that happened after Jesus’s death, there are four facts that most historians accept:”
No, there’s much more. The Church has guarded and protected this history, scripture and doctrine and all the studies of all the scholars over time are not just embellishments from those four facts.
To use an analogy that you might understand better, it’s like saying evolutionary theory is only made up of four facts that non-evolutionary scientists decided were the only facts. Doesn’t make any sense. The authority for the body of knowledge matters, for it is that authority that has the vested interest in maintaining the truth of its discipline. As much as I have reason to doubts some evolutionary scientists, I still wouldn’t consider anyone but them the authority on what actually exists in their body of knowledge. If I were to begin criticism, I’d start with what they have put forth, not what someone outside the discipline opined.
“What is the best explanation for these facts? There is currently no satisfying explanation. Whatever explanation people have come up with either invokes the supernatural (which I find distasteful in an explanation), or does not entirely account for all four facts.”
Unless you’ve studied what the Church has to say about that, you’re making an unfounded assertion.
“Maybe Jesus didn’t really die…”
All those maybes are the equivalent of me saying, “Maybe the fossils were put there to fool someone. Maybe they weren’t that old. Maybe scientists are lying. Maybe they were hallucinating.” You have a problem accepting that something may have happened in history that is different from what you’ve seen in your lifetime, but I’m certain you’ve never seen a dinosaur, yet you believe they existed.
“Because evolution is already a natural explanation and requires very few if any non-physical causes, and because the evidence is strong. Also, the period of gathering evidence is spread over now more than a hundred years and at least tens of thousands of people.”
Wrong on all counts. Evolution only requires natural explanations because that’s what you call natural. It requires quite a bit of imagination to form this story in the mind’s eye. It’s an abstraction. It’s a story we haven’t actually seen, and never have. The period of gathering evidence about Christianity is as old as the history of man. Even the Old Testament events were leading up to the revelation of Christ, an objective truth, a revelation, that shows us how to live, a truth we need. It goes far beyond the four points you got (from somewhere).
“…because they would only need to affect a couple dozen people in one part of the world over the span of a few days.”
That isn’t true. The apostles were commissioned to carry the news to the ends of the earth. The ability of man to recognize truth is itself evidence of this truth. Your own ideas about evolution bear this out. Man is made to know truth, and can recognize it.
Ace,
I owe you an apology (evidence for why I should not engage in discussion when I’m short on time, sigh).
The link from HuffPo isn’t what I thought it was. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions. I have a negative knee-jerk reaction to that media source, but I should have actually read the article before responding.
What do you think of the author’s claims? Josh, how about you? I’ll have to read about him more.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html
Interesting guy.
I wouldn’t discount your knee-jerk reaction to the Huff-Poo.
“It is true that Jesus is not mentioned in any Roman sources of his day. That should hardly count against his existence, however, since these same sources mention scarcely anyone from his time and place. Not even the famous Jewish historian, Josephus, or even more notably, the most powerful and important figure of his day, Pontius Pilate.”
From my amateurish study of ancient history.
PHILO:
“though I suffered an infinite number of evils when he was alive; but nevertheless the truth is considered dear, and much to be honoured by you. Pilate was one of the emperor’s lieutenants, having been appointed governor of Judaea. He, not more with the object of doing honour toTiberius than with that of vexing the multitude, dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod, in the holy city; which had no form nor any other forbidden thing represented on them except some necessary inscription, which mentioned these two facts, the name of the person who had placed them there, and the person in whose honour they were so placed there. (300) But when the multitude heard what had been done, and when the circumstance became notorious, then the people, putting forward the four sons of the king, who were in no respect inferior to the kings themselves, in fortune or in rank, and his other descendants, and those magistrates who were among them at the time, entreated him to alter and to rectify the innovation which he had committed in respect of the shields; and not to make any alteration in their national customs,………………”
And on and on.
Thanks Howard. He’s, um, sort of mentioned there.
I got a chance to look in my copy of “Jesus Outside the NT: An Introduction to Ancient Evidence.”
Here are some points made in refutation to George Wells, a history professor who denies the existence of Jesus.
Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000-03-01). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Kindle Locations 301-328). Eerdmans Publishing Co – A. Kindle Edition.