101. Now we know how to make the IDists dance in their petticoats: blaspheme.

Comment #14183 by lpetrich on December 21, 2006 at 11:43 am

Their argument is that since we are so concerned with Xianity, then that means that we are all potential converts. An argument that can be made for any other religion that we might turn our attention to, it must be said.

And I think that it's some antiseizure medicine that Richard Dawkins might need :)

But just the same, it's fun to see Xian apologists tie themselves in doctrinal knots about speaking against the Holy Spirit, trying to deny that anyone can possibly commit that sin. Especially when they are often very concerned about sin and sometimes very judgmental about it.

However, someone who is knowledgable in atheist arguments and is a user of them tends to stay an atheist, as Steve Locks and Brian Holtz have found:
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/conversion_asymmetry.html
http://humanknowledge.net/Philosophy/Metaphysics/Theology/AtheistDeconversion.html

The only serious possible exception that I know of is Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad. He had been well-known during the WWII years as a result of BBC's "Brains Trust" call-in radio program, where people would call in with their questions. He had been especially well-known for answering "It all depends on what you mean by..."

But in April 1948, he was caught doing something that he had often done, riding a train without a ticket, and he got fined and fired from the BBC. He sunk into a deep depression, became bed-ridden, and got religion, writing the book "Recovery of Belief". He made arguments that he might have disposed of very quickly in past decades, like Xianity's spread requiring divine intervention. Bertrand Russell had debated him then, and from what I've seen about that, BR won *very* easily.

"He found his God when he lost his ticket" someone said about him.

102. Merry Mithras

Comment #13895 by lpetrich on December 20, 2006 at 2:20 am

I wonder what the primary sources on Mithra are, so that we can set the record straight.

But Jesus Christ does have a lot in common with other legendary heroes; he scores high on Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero scale -- and that's something more worth discussing than questionable stuff about Mithra and Mithraism.

(1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while
Virgin, yes, but royal, doubtful - 0.5
(this criterion ought to be split in two)

(2) his father is a king, and
While he lived as a commoner, both Matthew and Luke agree on his male-line descent from King David - 1

(3) the father is related to the mother.
No - 0

(4) The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; hence
Yes - 1

(5) he is reputed to be a son of a god.
Yes - 1

(6) Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, but
King Herod - 1

(7) he is spirited away to safety and
His parents flee with him to Egypt - 1

(8) reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this,
They apparently don't stay long in Egypt - 0

(9) we learn no details of his childhood until
Only that child-prodigy story in Luke; we don't learn anything until he's about 30 years old - 1

(10) he journeys to his future kingdom, where
Yes - 1

(11) he triumphs over the reigning king and
He refuses the Devil's temptations and the Prince of Darkness slinks away in shame - 1

(12) marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, and
No. Mary Magdalene, his extracanonically-rumored girlfriend, was a commoner - 0

(13) becomes king himself.
Yes, both figuratively as a great religious leader and literally, as someone willing to call himself "King of the Jews" - 1

(14) For a while he reigns uneventfully,
He mainly goes around and preaches and works miracles - 1

(15) promulgating laws. But
His teachings include lots of instructions to his followers - 1

(16) he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods and
When he gets put on trial, the people of Jerusalem turn from friendly to hostile, Peter claims he never knew him and he and the other apostles run away - 1

(17) is driven from the throne and the city and
The Jewish authorities find him guilty of blasphemy - 1

(18) meets with a mysterious death,
He dies very fast by crucifixion-victim standards - 1

(19) often atop a hill.
Yes - 1

(20) If he has children, they do not succeed him.
Yes - 1

(21) His body is not buried, yet
He rose from the dead - 1

(22) he has one or more holy sepulchers.
Yes, in Jerusalem - 1

I find 18.5 - JC usually comes out at about 18 or 19.

Two additional features sometimes found in mythic-hero stories are child-prodigy stories and prophecy fulfillment -- JC scores a 1 on both.


The likes of Moses, Romulus, Hercules, Oedipus, and Krishna often score very high in this scale. By comparison, well-documented people usually score very low; the highest-scoring well-documented people I've been able to find are Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar.

Sources:
http://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=180642
http://faculty.dbcc.edu/eaton/Hero/Raglan.htm
http://department.monm.edu/classics/courses/Clas230/MythDocuments/HeroPattern/default.htm

103. The Grinch Delusion: An Atheist Can Believe in Christmas

Comment #13439 by lpetrich on December 17, 2006 at 5:20 pm

The reason for the season is the Winter Solstice; some idea of the importance of that date can be seen from some astronomically-aligned monuments in the British Isles:

Newgrange
Dowth
Maeshowe
Stonehenge

They were built around 3000 BCE (Stonehenge in phases up to 2000 BCE), and that's 3000 years before Jesus Christ had existed (if there was a historical JC of course). And it's about 2000 before Pharaoh Merneptah's Victory Stele, the first mention of JC's ethnicity.

104. Christmas Present to Defenders of Darwinism

Comment #13311 by lpetrich on December 17, 2006 at 1:15 am

I concede that I found that extremely funny; I will concede that I have been guilty of some of that also, though on a lesser scale.

Duane Gish:
http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/Creationism/GishBullfrog.jpg
in honor of "The Bullfrog Affair", in which he has claimed that certain human proteins are closer to their bullfrog and chicken counterparts without ever telling us what they are.

Source: The Bullfrog Affair
http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/bullfrog.html

Jonathan Wells:
http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/Creationism/WellsShrimp.jpg
in honor of him once jumping the gun and misunderstanding some research on why brine shrimp (Artemia) grow abdominal limbs and insects do not -- it's a difference in a Hox gene.

William Dembski:
http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/Creationism/DembskiBeaver.jpg
in honor of him once seemingly claiming that beavers intelligently design their dams. In fact, they build their dams by putting sticks and mud wherever they hear rushing water.

Source: November 2000 First Things magazine, "Conservatives, Darwin, and Design: An Exchange"
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0011/articles/exchange.html

105. The delusion of Christianity: Fairy tales that changed the world

Comment #12848 by lpetrich on December 14, 2006 at 3:52 am

down_under -- prove it using primary sources and preferably pre-Xian primary sources. And if you can't, I suggest that you retract your claims.

The Osiris story does have some similarities, like the dying and resurrected god mytheme, and the women at the tomb. Isis reassembled and revived Osiris, and some women were the first to meet the resurrected Jesus Christ.

But all the details? I won't believe it until I see it. In the first place, Osiris and JC die in different ways, Osiris by being dismembered by the evil god Set, and JC by being crucified.

106. Atheists' bleak alternative

Comment #12789 by lpetrich on December 13, 2006 at 9:34 pm

Yet another right-winger whines about those alleged secularist Grinches who are out to steal Xmas. And in the process, acts totally unloving and unforgiving and uncompassionate. And totally unwilling to turn the other cheek.

107. The God of the Bible is No Delusion!

Comment #12058 by lpetrich on December 10, 2006 at 1:06 am

shauntheboy, an omnipotent being would have no problem programming us to be 100% virtuous. Your analogy with human parents is invalid because human parents are not omnipotent.

And as for free will, what's so great about it if it leads to sin? Jesus Christ had taught that one ought to amputate parts of one's body that make one commit sins, and if free will leads to sin, then amputate it also.

108. The Dawkins Delusion

Comment #12057 by lpetrich on December 10, 2006 at 1:02 am

This is Loren Petrich again. And I'm Loren, not Lauren.

Phil: Fossils can not be presented as evidence for evolution. First of all, the trillions of transitional fossils have not been found. Ambulocetus is commonly used to demonstrate a transition between whale and a land dwelling animal. Yet only a small portion of the bones were found and they demonstrate no crucial features to suggest it was a transitional anything.

LP: Why don't you check on some real sources on Ambulocetus some time? Its type specimen is 80% complete, and that's enough to work out where it is in the cetacean family tree.


Phil: There is evidence of fast fossilization.

LP: Irrelevant. Once a fossil is formed, it will continue to exist as long as its containing rock does.


Phil: If you walked into a court, threw some fossils on a table and said this proves frogs can turn into princes; if you add lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of time. In fact; millions and millions and millions and millions of years. You and your bag of bones/rocks would be thrown out. Any average solicitor would take it apart in no time.

LP: There are plenty of sets of fossils that suggests otherwise, like horse fossils, and much of the case for evolution is extrapolation from the features of present-day organisms.


Phil: Carbon dating measurements show decay within 30000 years but we don't know if c14 input is the same today as it was in the past.

LP: There are plenty of other radioisotopes that geologists can use.

Phil: Land dwelling animals where enormous at some point (reptile, mammal etc), but did they grow to those sizes due to high pressurized oxygen and fewer c14 levels penetrating the plants?

LP: Their biomechanics has indeed been studied, and they do not require elevated levels of oxygen.


Phil: One part of an animal's body can date a few thousand years while another part of the same animal's body can be a few thousand years older.

LP: Where in the professional literature has this alleged phenomenon been noted?

Phil: Some living animals such as snails and seals have been dated over a few thousand years old using the same techniques. It's unreliable and doesn't provide conclusive evidence.

LP: Oceanic C14 is much more diluted than atmospheric C14, because it takes time for C14 to diffuse from the atmosphere into the ocean, time to allow it to decay.


Phil: For reliability you can turn to index fossils where the fossils date rocks and the rocks date fossils.

LP: Except that there are ways to escape this alleged circularity, like looking for superposition and radiometric dating. Not with C14, of course, but with U, Th, K, etc.

(the coelacanth...)

The present-day species can be distinguished from fossil species if one knows what to look for.



Phil: There is hundreds of legends from different cultures (that based on evolution should not have met) that have legends of a golden age when people used to live a 1000 years.

LP: List them. And while "good old days" legends are common, they differ enough in details to suggest wishful thinking. Simply consider the "good old days" mythologizing of history, like King Solomon's reign or the early Roman Republic.

Phil: There is hundreds of stories and legends that talk of a flood event where a man took his family and the animals aboard an ark of some sort to protect them from a flood. There are hundreds of stories stretching the world of dragon slaying backed up by drawings from America to Europe.

LP: List them.

Phil: The word dinosaur is just over a hundred years old. In the ancient times should one have entered your homeland and threatened your family or flock, you'd slay the dragon.

LP: However, most dragons aren't exactly described as looking like dinosaurs.

Phil: Mans footprints have been uncovered walking in a dinosaurs (dragons) see http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm this would suggest they lived together.

LP: Those tracks are all dinosaur tracks.