"The greatest argument against Christianity would be the fact that Jesus never lived"
The first sentence of your first piece of evidence and you are already on shaky ground.
Actually no, that is not the greatest argument against christianity. The greatest argument against christianity is that there is no evidence to justify the belief in the things that are attributed to him.
Granted, there is also little evidence regarding his existence as a real person, but I consider that to be a red herring. Even if Jesus existed as a real, flesh and bone person, there is no evidence that supports or even justifies the belief in his miracles. It’s all hearsay and anecdotal evidence is not reliable, and when we verify the claims made about him and when we look for other accounts we find none other than the ones in the bible.
"Many biographies are written by people who loved the person they are writing about, but we do not question their validity"
Yes that is true, but you are comparing apples and oranges. If any of those historians claimed that the person they were writing about was the son of god, we would be equally skeptic and we would demand more evidence than the evidence we would ask for if the author was only writing about an average person doing average things. The standards of evidence change depending of the claims made; if a random person in the street comes and greets you and tells you his name is Bob and that he is from Michigan, you may have no problem accepting the truthfulness of his claims based on his word alone. However, if he tells you his name is Bob and he is from one of Jupiter's moons and that he moved from a different galaxy a few days ago you wouldnt just believe it!
There are different standards of evidence, which is why I have no problem accepting the evidence for the existence of a man like George Washington or Julius Cesar and I reject the ones made about Jesus; the standards of evidence are different. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I know you wont understand this so i will explain it with even bigger apples.
When a friend of yours comes over and tells you he just came back from the movie theater YOU DO NOT ask for evidence, you do not say "do you have any proof of that? Let me see your ticket!" you have no problem accepting this claim because the claim itself does not require a lot of evidence to be believed.
But what if it wasnt your friend? What if it was someone knocking on your door saying he was an FBI agent? The most sensible thing to do and in fact the best thing you can do is ask for some kind of ID, a badge or something. The same is done when buying cigarettes or alcohol, if you look too young to be 21 the cashier will ask for some sort of ID to verify the claim you are making.
"The very enemies of Christianity claimed that he lived"
This is not true at all.
First of all, what those historians wrote about Jesus were NOT eyewitness accounts! You even provided their dates of birth! Did you even take a second to look at the evidence you copied and pasted here or did you just google "evidence for the historicity of Jesus" and copied whatever looked legit? All those writings you talk about (tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius, Phlegon)(by the way Phlegon was born CENTURIES after Jesus allegedly lived) were NOT eyewitness reports! They were hearsay accounts, describing events they heard about from other people, events they did not see and they were not even alive when those events happened.
This is all I have to say to discredit their accounts as irrelevant but I can say more.
Lets take josephus' account and say that it was written as an eyewitness account. Just because someone writes that he or she saw something is NOT evidence that the event actually happened! Even if all the historians you mentioned were in complete agreement on this, this would not be sufficient evidence to justify the claim that Jesus was the son of god! It may be enough evidence to justify the belief in his existence as a flesh and bone person but not his divinity.
You are aware that we have thousands and thousands of eyewitness accounts of people who claim to be abducted by aliens correct? Are you also aware that a lot of these accounts are remarkably similar? All of them claim similar things: They were either somewhere outdoors or in their rooms and then a bright light came and took them into a spaceship where they were experimented on. We have accounts of people that have never met each other, that live hundreds of miles away from each other and that have no connection whatsoever, making identical claims about aliens. Sometimes the descriptions of the spaceships, the aliens, the way in which they were abducted are one and the same. We have the same kind of remarkably similar accounts for things like big foot, the lochness monster, the chupacabra, crop circles, ghosts, etc. We do not believe the accounts!
Anecdotal evidence is the worst kind of evidence out there, it is not reliable at all. There are too many things that can influence the way in which we process an event. I suggest you read about this topic, anecdotal evidence is insufficient evidence to justify the belief in anything.
Suppose that 2.5 million people all testified, "God answered my prayer". The sheer quantity of evidence is sufficient to warrant an investigation of the claims, but the testimonies still don't qualify as sufficient evidence to support acceptance of the claim. Increasing the quantity of claims doesn't increase the quality. Ultimately, what you did (throw a bunch of hearsay accounts) is nothing but throwing a bunch of bad and insufficient evidence at me. It doesnt matter how many non eyewitness accounts you can find online, they are still non eyewitness accounts.
"Why would there be so much material on a man who was never born?"
Because many people believe that he did with insufficient evidence? Why would George Lucas spend so much time energy and money creating UNIVERSES in his own mind if they didnt exist? This is a silly argument Jeff, you cant seriously believe that the number of words used to describe something is an indicator of the existence of the thing described!
By the way, back in 2005 (I think it was back in 2005 I could be wrong though) the harry potter series sold more books than the bible did in that year. Why would Harry Potter sell more books than the bible if it was just fiction?! You should probably rethink your options here, you claim to be a filthy sinner, but may very well be just a filthy muggle.
Its like you are not even trying to think about the stuff you sent me man... seriously, you are not dealing with a gullible retard with half a brain, you are dealing with an atheist who actually thinks about things for a second.
"In a nutshell, the Large Hadron Collider experiment is a huge scientific effort to sneak a glimpse into the Mind of God at the moment of creation… Stay tuned!"
WHAT? Let me read that again....
WHAT!?!?! How in the world did you read that and then come to the conclusion that these scientists are trying to understand the mind of god??? This experiment has NOTHING to do with god, and has everything to do with understanding the way in which the big bang happened. This is not proof of god, in any way shape or form Jeff! Its a scientific attempt to understand how something happened, it has nothing to do with god. Some of the words used to name things have some kind of biblical interpretation, the "god particle" "God’s boson force carrier" is not evidence of anything. This is no more to the point than the fact that I named my foldable stair in the basement "stairway to heaven". This is way worse than silly Jeff, shame on you for being so dumb!
"God provides the best explanation for the existence of the universe and all that's in it. (The alternative theory is that "nothing" exploded and resulted in everything that we see)"
Wrong, wrong wrong. (sighs)
God is the WORST explanation we have ever come up with to explain anything. To me, saying “god did it” is a NON answer. It doesn’t tell you any details about the event, knowing (or in your case believing) someone did something is not even half of the answer.
This is a god of the gaps argument, where the hand of god is simply and without any kind of justification posited on whatever gap of information we have. Besides, the big bang theory is NOT saying that everything came from nothing! All you need is a few minutes of your time to actually do some research and realize that you are dead wrong about this theory (I can only wonder how wrong you are about evolution). The Big Bang theory states that around 13.7 billion years ago the universe was condensed into an incredibly small, hot, dense "ball" of space and time called a singularity. At that time there was no physical matter in the universe. Go to Wikipedia and look for "Mass–energy equivalence" and "Physical cosmology" for much more detail.
Besides, this is not an "either or" question. Lets assume that you are capable of disproving the Big Bang theory. That doesnt say anything about god, it only means that you disproved one theory. 2+2 is not four because it isnt 5 or 6 you actually need to show your work, show the evidence and justify your claims. Saying that one explanation is wrong does not mean that yours is right. This is not a multiple choice question that you can answer by eliminating choices.
"God provides the best explanation for abstract notions such as numbers, mathematical formulae, chemical-based processes, and natural laws. (The alternative theory is that the chaotic first elements ordered themselves into complex information systems.)"
Once again, you are wrong.
My response to this will be basically the same as the one before, its a god of the gaps nonsensical argument and you need to show your work.
But I am nice, and I want to help you come up with a reliable way to know if you have a good argument of if you are about to say something, really, really really stupid.
If in your argument for the existence of god, the word "god" can be taken out and replaced with something else, like "magical transcendental pixies", "zeus", "flying spaghetti monster" or "superman" and your argument is still pretty much on the same grounds... go back to the drawing board!
See these examples...
God created the universe out of nothing just for us because he loves us so much. We do not know how he did it, but we know god did it because only god could have done such a thing.
The flying spaghetti monster created the universe out of nothing just for us because he loves us so much. We do not know how he did it, but we know the flying spaghetti monster did it because only the flying spaghetti monster could have done such a thing.
Both of those arguments are equally supported by evidence, and thus stand on the same evidentiary grounds. To me, they are equally silly explanations of an event. Show your evidence and make your argument distinct from just making shit up.
"God provides the best explanation for the absolute complexity inherent in cosmological, stellar, planetary, chemical and biological systems. (The alternative theory is that random chance engineered apparent design.)"
Another god of the gaps, another argument from ignorance and another either or argument. Three strikes! You are OOOOOOOOOUUUUUUT! lol
No, I hate to be repetitive but you are wrong again. And I also have a commentary that may help you understand why this is not only wrong, but an argument that makes the god you believe in look like an idiot. Evolution is the best explanation we have for the diversity in life. It explains how certain facts happen, FACTS like change over time, the geographic location of certain species, the anatomical similarities of animals, the similarities in DNA, similarities in embryology, etc etc etc. There is no debate when it comes to evolution in the scientific arena, it is as solid as the ground we stand on. There is no debate, its a accepted by everyone except for people like you who have a mental grudge against it and who reject it just because of religious reasons.
Evolution has very little to do with random chance. The only thing that is random about evolution is the mutation part, everything else follows a sequence, a patter, things that among other things, require no intelligence, no intervention, no purpose. Natural selection is the engine of this process, it "selects" (selects is the wrong word, it implies there is such a thing as a selector) which trait is better for the individual, which trait helps the individual reproduce and thus perpetuate the species. I suggest you also do some reading on this. Take a biology course at your nearest community college.
Now, I said I would tell you why your argument demonstrates that you worship a stupid god.
The universe we live in is a universe that is hostile to life. Our planet is not hostile but 99% of all the living beings that have lived here have gone extinct. There are entire galaxies being sucked into black holes right now, entire solar systems being destroyed by super novas, galaxies colliding with one another. Complete chaos, eventually our universe will cool down, lose its energy and cease to exist as well.
Some design!
"Irreducible Complexity. God provides the best explanation for fully functioning biological organisms, systems, and subsystems that couldn’t come about through gradual evolutionary process without totally ceasing to exist at lower, evolutionary levels. (The alternative theory is that biological systems took huge, unseen leaps from simple to complex without any guided process or forward-looking instructions.)"
I skipped a few of your arguments because I already replied to them. They are just arguments from ignorance, and more logical fallacies. This irreducible complexity nonsense is getting old and it has been debunked already, multiple times. There is no such thing as something that is irreducibly complex. Michael Behe is a moron and he has not done his work either. I am pretty you are talking about the bacterial flagellum when you talk about irreducible complexity. This was publicly debunked years ago and I am surprised you didn’t know that when you research things “for a living”.
Irreducible complexity as defined by Michael Behe in Darwin's Black Box is a property of a system such that if any part is removed, the system ceases to function.
The most common example of an irreducibly complex system is a mousetrap: it consists of a base, hammer, spring, trigger, and fasteners to hold the pieces together. If any of those parts is removed, the mousetrap no longer works. This is something considered to be irreducibly complex.
The argument by theists is that since evolution proceeds by adding parts to an existing system one by one, the antecedent of an irreducibly complex system would have been ineffective or useless, and would not have been selected for. Ergo, all of the pieces had to be put together by an intelligent designer!
FAIL.
Lets take the bacterial flagellum example for a second. If you take one of the parts out of the bacterial flagellum you WILL lose some functionality, but the bacteria will still have an advantage over another bacteria that is missing two parts. Every single one of the parts that make up the bacterial flagellum have some kind of use by themselves. But I am no biologist, so I will link you to a video by a real scientist, Ken Miller explains this and debunks the nonsense put forth by Michael Behe. By the way, this debate right here was in a court not to long ago and the creationists were laughed out of the court.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hW7ddJOWko
“When it comes to the question of “Does God Exist,” there are only two scientific worldviews -- Someone/Something did it, or it did itself.”
I am very sorry, Jeff, but you did not disappoint me. You are wrong once again.
First lets begin by demonstrating that once again, you made a flawed either or statement here (a false dichotomy). Either it was caused by someone or it wasn’t. That’s a true dichotomy, and something causing it would fall under the category of “it wasn’t caused by someone”. So you are wrong there right of the bat.
But you went ever further, you reached a conclusion by doing some very dishonest and ignorant things. First of all, science is not claiming to know all the details regarding the Big Band, secondly, you showed once again, to be completely unaware of what the theory says. As I said before, the Big Bang theory does not talk about a time when there was nothing, so you are incorrectly representing the other side of the argument.
You have reached very improbable conclusions without showing any work whatsoever, you may be right, maybe a god of some kind did this, but until you take the time to demonstrate this and show the evidence, I do not care (nor does it matter) how hard you believe that it was god. Show the evidence; do not just assume that god is a good answer in and of itself because as I explained earlier, it just isn’t.
“Concept and design necessitate an intelligent designer.”
I wonder if you really thought I would be left speechless after these claims you are making.
If everything that is complex and requires as designer (something which you claimed) then why is god void of this kind of explanation? I am sure that you believe that god is very complex, maybe even too complex as most theists claim he is perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, etc. So certainly, something THAT complex requires an intelligent designer because something as complex as a god cannot come about on its own; it requires some kind of designer.
If god has always existed why cant we say that the universe has always existed too? Is it only rational for you to say that? Your argument falls on its own, it is self refuting and it is not an explanation at all (like most of the crap you have said so far).
Evolution explains the appearance of design. Read about it, understanding and grab hold of modern science for once in your life. We are not designed, and we are certainly NOT intelligently designed! Why do men have nipples? Why do we have toe nails? Hair? Wisdom teeth? Tail bones? There are way too many things wrong with the way that our bodies are made, and I believe I could have done a much better job at designing something than what you claim god did.
Saying “magic man done it” is not an explanation; get that nonsense out of your head.
