NonStampCollector
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Come on, apologists. Is the gospel story REALLY worth defending?

5/22/2015

4 Comments

 
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Yet again, I recently found myself engaged with a guy who wanted to offer up some narrative glue to reconcile the four contradictory gospels into a single coherent narrative, and thus 'prove' that it contained no contradictions.
Whilst reading his attempt, it occurred to me what an embarrassing pursuit he was on. Suddenly, the socially-normatized (if that's a word) thing of defending one's religion became utterly, utterly laughable when one considers the ludicrousness of the assumptions the story takes for granted.
One could argue I went slightly off topic in my response, but I had to make the point to this guy that perhaps even HE wasn't aware of the idiocy underlying his assumption that the gospels OUGHT to be defended.
Enjoy my response:


Your fourth paragraph is a masterpiece of nonsensical jibberish, and I will treasure it as a fine example of the garbage that believers have to fill their heads with in order to reconcile the gobbledigook of the bible within themselves.


Before I reproduce it hereunder, let's just ponder that we're dealing with a story, that claims to be history, that involves flying angels. Yes. A historical event, just as historical as September 11, or the Battle of Britain, or the sinking of the Titanic - it's just that this historical event, centering around the coming-back-to-life of a dead middle-eastern iron-age miracle-man, features angels: supernatural flying beings from the realm of heaven.
This "historical event" is recorded in four different and differing accounts, written decades apart by anonymous authors who never knew each other and likely lived hundreds of miles away from each others' home towns, in a language other than the reported events are supposed to have occurred in, each using different source material, each recording different details that any objective reading will attest do in fact contradict each other.

The apologist's responses to having these contradictions pointed out,>>> once again, I reiterate, contradictions amongst four versions of a fantasy story about a water-walking dead miracle-man coming back to life and thus bestowing eternal life unto anyone who wants it after THEY're dead (yes, you must believe that with a straight face), reads as follows:... (Prepare yourself to read an adult, obviously very capable, educated person, defend and attempt to reconcile the mismatches in an ancient tale about angels from heaven descending to earth to attend to the coming-back-to-life of a recently-dead miracle man:).... Here goes, and I quote verbatim:

"Matthew's account of the angel rolling away the stone probably occurred while the women were en route to the tomb, so that only the guards saw the angel sitting on the stone. John's account of Mary Magdalene and the angels is a separate event; Mary had likely gone back to get Peter and John before the other women encountered the angels. Clearly there were two angels, as described in Luke and John. The second angel may or may not have appeared to the guards, but did appear to the women entering the tomb. It's likely that only one angel spoke, hence Mark only mentions one angel. While Mark and Luke refer to men instead of angels, the men are wearing white "in clothes that gleamed like lightning" and their appearance causes the women to be greatly distressed, which is consistent with Matthew and John's descriptions of the angels (as well as other descriptions in the Bible of people encountering angels)."

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing the incredible lengths you'll go to to avoid the inevitable and reasoned response to contradictions in these jumbled and confused records of this fantasy non-event that one meets if one simply applies a bit of adult common sense to it all.


4 Comments

Ah, so it all depends on what a 'contradiction' really is.

5/17/2015

5 Comments

 
A believer wrote to me, on my Quiz Show: Bible Contradictions video, the following:

“…The questions is, regardless of our thoughts and opinions, do the synoptic gospels, when read collectively, reveal an actual and technical violation of the law of non contradiction, when communicating the resurrection account.”

My response to this person, and anyone who similarly tries to eliminate the points the video makes by taking the semantic approach of defining and/or redefining what ‘contradict’ really really means, follows.

That’s what the question is? No. 
That’s not the question at all. 
The question is, whether a being capable of CREATING physics, designing the laws that led to the formation of galaxy super-clusters, and who fine-tuned the mathematical constants of the universe with such inconceivable precision, would leave, as its written message to its favorite species, this garbled book of contradictory, slip-shod, wierd, altered, mistake-ridden texts and tell us that if we didn't believe the message they could possibly (by some) be interpreted to convey, then we would suffer eternally after death.

THAT, sir, is "the question". And the answer is "You've got to be fucking kidding me.”

Read new testament history. Learn about the process by which these texts came to be put together, how random, how prone to errors, how late, how infused with the competing ideologies of the day they are. 

Think of the breathtaking amount of faith you have in the veracity of people you've never heard of - such as the third and forth guys to copy Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, or the fifth and sixth guys who copied the second letter to the Corinthians. Or the first to translate James’ letter into Latin. Or Greek, its original language, for that matter. Do you think James spoke Greek? Had you even thought of that? Do you think that the first translation into Greek, or Latin, was a good translation? How would we know? Seriously, how would we know that it was a good translation or a lazy one, or an inaccurate one, or even a complete one?!

You don’t know anything about the people whose translation and copying skills you trust to be absolutely flawless. You simply operate on a certainty that they were incapable of making errors. 

You're trying to sell to me the idea that this book is the perfect non-contradictory record of the concerns of the being that came up with pi, nuclear physics, and quantum theory IN ITS IMAGINATION. Those things are literally mind-bogglingly accurate, measurable, confirmable. That, if anything, is the fingerprint or signature of a god. Not this jumbled, mistranslated, garbled thrown-together bunch of decades-old records of hear-say tales.

It’s perfectly accurate, just like the laws governing physics? Well, I know for a fact that there are puns attributed to Jesus that wouldn't have worked in the language he spoke, and that he therefore certainly didn't say. They were added later by anonymous editors. I know that there are stories that don't appear in any ANY copy of the gospels for the first 300 years and then gets suddenly inserted. I know that there are competing translations of a few of Paul's passages in which scholars can't know for certain whether he really said x or y, because textual traditions of both can only be traced back so far until all the earlier manuscripts are lost. I know that there are things inserted into the texts later because they interrupt literary forms egregiously.

So, keep trying to tell me that these texts are perfectly non-contradictory, and keep trying to tell me that the only reason I see the texts as anything other than perfectly divine is that I'm coming to them with personal biases. Keep telling yourself that, more like it, because that's all you're really here to do anyway. Keep telling yourself - "He's got biases! That's the only possible reason why anyone would question the perfection of these texts!!” 

You’ve only got facts to contend with.
5 Comments

Share the good news: the Empire State Building is made out of CANDY!!

5/5/2015

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    NonStampCollector

    Youtube antitheistic video maker. See "info" section above for more of who I am.
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