You’re aware of the “lorazepam challenge”. This is gold standard in first defence against catatonic schizophrenia. Interestingly enough, treating benzos for catatonia is where the “typical anti-psychotic” revolution in treating schizophrenia began.
Of course Haldol and the likes have horrible extrapyramidal symptoms. Tardive disconesia being one of them. I cringe at the thought of one day not being able to control my mouth and limbs from flaying about. I’ve seen it in a fellow schizophrenic at a boarding house. Not pleasant.
A 12 step program, you say? Are these not for addicts? Who fall back and forth on and off the wagon?
I would honestly say that the miracles are absolutely made up, but how is unknown. We already do have precedent for this with this with basil I. If you are interested in this listen to the history of Byzantium podcast.
Did you understand anything? It looks like you are not very good at English. What are you looking for. Why are you here? I don’t need someone elses podcast to convince me of anything. I have my own perspectives. Just logging in to tell people to watch a podcast is a bit weird.
Are you using Google translate? (I’m sorry for my English and I’m here for 1/2 an hour.) Je crois que vous êtes censé utiliser l’anglais. C’est une regle.
Another point that’s relevant to this thread is that people were–evidentally–very skeptical of Jesus in his own time.
Below is the oldest depiction (graffiti) of Jesus that has been found so far, which probably dates to the early 2nd century:
The caption translates approximately as “Alexamenos worships his god.”
The tagger portrays Jesus as having the head of a donkey, and obviously intends to convey ridicule toward an early Christian for being so foolish, which seems unlikely if Jesus actually performed all of the miracles ascribed to him.
People were, perhaps, much more superstitious back then (maybe because of lower literacy), so it seems unlikely that a near contemporary of Christ would be inclined toward this kind of disrespect if Jesus actually performed the miracles ascribed to him.
This is why it appears to me that Jesus was perceived as a fraud in his own time.
LOL “Back Then?”
Ted Haggard was magically cured of homosexuality and then went on to perform miracles of his own. He boasted of a congregation of 14,000 souls. * Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, Gloria Copland, Jimmy Evans, Jack Hibbs, Kent Hovind, Rick Warren, Tony Evans, and these are just the miracle workers I can think of off the top of my head. (I was going to look up the number of people in their congregations — but that would just be ‘beating a dead horse,’ I’m sure you get the picture… Back then?
The difference being, of course, that “back then” people had no other sources of information than what they were being taught by their parents and peers, and the amount of knowledge about Nature/natural philosophy (as it was known back then) and of psychology and group dynamics didn’t exactly float around in society as public knowledge. Today, however, people have little or no excuses to not know about these things, at least on a primary or secondary education level. The rejection of said knowledge and acceptance of supernatural explanations are, however, due to the same millennia-old mechanisms regarding the importance of belonging to a group and thus to accept and adopt the doctrines and ritual behaviour of your in-group.
I never knew about Pierre Brassau before you mentioned him.
I like abstract art, and given a choice between having a Jackson Pollock vs. a Pierre Brassau . . I’d pick some of the Brassaus . . . as long as we’re talking about my taste, and not buying the art as a financial investment.
Many scholars conclude that the Christ did exist, was a real person, so that aspect of them at least is regarded as true, not made up. So there’s some truth, but how much? Well how much truth is there in any written historical account?
Historic truth is based on opinions and beliefs as to what is “reasonable” what is plausible and so on.
But by definition an account of truly extraordinary events cannot meet the criteria that many use for plausibility.
One cannot reject an account of a miraculous events as being untrue when that is based on the belief that such miraculous events cannot or did not occur.
We cannot escape from belief, those who accept the accounts often have sound rational reasons for that belief and those who reject the accounts also have sound rational reasons, each position though is based on an initial set of unprovable assumptions, we are free to select those.
Even if one accepts the scant evidence that Jesus existed, there is no objective evidence he was anything but human, and the gospels are anonymous hearsay.
No, at least not solely, here is a reasonable article explaining the historical method. As you can see historians identify secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence, such as that derived from archaeology, for example, and these are not merely opinion.
You’re using an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, to try and reverse the burden of proof. I don’t need to reject anything, but I can and do withhold belief from all claims that are unsupported by sufficient objective evidence, or in this case any. FYI a miracle is nothing more than an unevidenced appeal to mystery, and it is by definition an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy that leaps to the unevidenced assumption of divine causation in the absence of a natural or scientific explanation, how many of these has science disproved?
I’ve never heard one, and yours use all the logical fallacies I encountered in all the others in over 4 decades of listening to them.
Nope, firstly I need reject nothing, atheism is the lack or absence of belief, though an atheist is of course free to go farther, but I do not. This needs no assumptions, unevidenced or otherwise. Only a criteria for belief, which is that sufficient objective evidence be demonstrated before I accept any assertion. If a claim is unfalsifiable then I must remain agnostic about it, but I must also withhold belief, as to believe some and not others would be biased, and to believe all would inevitably be contradictory and so be irrational. So I disbelieve them all.
Even if one accepts the scant evidence that Jesus existed, there is no objective evidence he was anything but human, and the gospels are anonymous hearsay.
On the contrary the Gospels are evidence (but not proof), they are what we’d reasonably expect to find if the claims were true. What else could one expect if the events were witnessed and efforts made to record them and preserve that record?
What would you have done, had you witnessed such events first hand two thousand years ago? what could you do beyond what was done? No photographs, no voice recordings, no movie footage.
Further, there is no way to argue the accounts are untrue without first choosing specific assumptions, one must assume certain things in order to argue that the accounts are false.
No, at least not solely, here is a reasonable article explaining the historical method. As you can see historians identify secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence, such as that derived from archaeology, for example, and these are not merely opinion.
Well there are plenty of historians who are familiar with this yet conclude Christ existed and the claims are true.
You’re using an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, to try and reverse the burden of proof. I don’t need to reject anything, but I can and do withhold belief from all claims that are unsupported by sufficient objective evidence, or in this case any. FYI a miracle is nothing more than an unevidenced appeal to mystery, and it is by definition an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy that leaps to the unevidenced assumption of divine causation in the absence of a natural or scientific explanation, how many of these has science disproved?
No, I disagree that this is argumentum ad ignorantiam. Of course there’s a burden of proof and you do need a reason other than whim to reject something, you surely have to apply some process to a claim to be able to categorize it as “acceptable” or not.
You say “I can and do withhold belief from all claims that are unsupported by sufficient objective evidence” but such a position requires a clear definition of what is “objective evidence” I just said that the NT is evidence, but you choose to believe it isn’t. If the record was literally, to all intents and purposes, true, then where does that leave you?
The problem the atheists have is one of reconciliation, they cannot reconcile claims like those in the NT with their assumptions about reality, change the assumptions or at least question them and the problem starts to diminish.
Witnessed by whom? Certainly not by the writers of the gospels. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and when you filter it through many oral tellings and re-tellings over several decades before it gets written down, it becomes exponentially more unreliable.
I would have immediately written down my recollections of the event as soon as possible and confirmed my memory of the events by talking to other witnesses. In the case of the gospels, the witnesses of the events (assuming they happened at all) were likely illiterate, so the events were only propagated orally (and that’s assuming they weren’t just made up).
Which ones? There were plenty of other historians active at the time, both in Judea and elsewhere, that make no mention of jesus or any of the events described in the gospels. Don’t you think these historians would notice things like the sky going dark for three hours or dozens of zombies wandering the streets of Jerusalem?
Have you considered the possibility that the NT is religious propaganda made up to promote the religion?
What assumptions about reality? I base my view of reality on scientific theories that are backed up by empirical, objective evidence, not ancient texts written by what one fellow on this forum likes to describe as followers of an ancient goat herder mythology.
No, unless they are either committed evangelists or theologians. That a very human jesus (yeshua) figure, that may have inspired the later stories, existed in the first third of the 1st century is indeed, considered probable by “most” historians studying the 1st century.
That is a far cry from the magical, divine “Christ” figure as described in the gospels. Most historians would not accept that conclusion.
A warning, word games are not looked on kindly here.
On the contrary? They are in fact of anonymous authorship, and they are ipso facto hearsay, they are no more compelling evidence for the claims made than Harry Potter novels are “evidence” for wizardry, though you are free to believe otherwise.
I strongly disagree with your bare unevidenced assertion. In fact unevidenced hearsay is about as weak an example of evidence as I can imagine, and for the most extraordinary of claims.
Sufficient objective evidence, have I not made that clear as my criteria for belief? I’d certainly need more than completely unevidenced hearsay, else I would have to believe every such claim.
Well I need have no expectation of course, as the claim and belief are not mine, but one could rationally infer that an omnipotent omniscient deity can do better than unevidenced superstitious hearsay, that directly reflects the ignorance and superstition of the people from the epoch in which it is derived.
No that’s wrong as well, we already have overwhelming objective evidence that people don’t rise form dead, and we know why. Do you think it is a coincidence such claims tapered off in direct proportion to the advances of medical science’s understanding of human biology? None of that requires any assumptions. However even if I had no explanation I can still rationally withhold belief from the unevidenced hearsay of the gospels, obviously.
Well I don’t care what subjective unevidenced beliefs theists hold, just because they also happen to be historians, there is some scant indepenatant evidence for the crucifixion, as I said the gospels are anonymous hearsay, you may base belief on that if you wish, but then what is your criteria for disbelieving it elsewhere?
You’re free to do so, but you’re wrong.
I already said quite plainly I need not reject anything in order to disbelieve it, so this is dishonest, it is also a repetition of your argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy of course as one cannot rationally assert a belief has any credence because it has not been disproved, or because a contrary explanation or belief has not been offered,
No, it is irrational to claim a belief gains any credence in the absence of contrary explanations or evidence, this is the very definition of any argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.
Both words are in the dictionary.
You did, though of course since it is anonymous hearsay, it is neither objective nor sufficient to support its own claims, else I’d have to believe the Harry Potter novels evidence for wizardry, were they written in earnest.
Disbelieving it, I’m not sure why my criteria for withholding belief needs so much repetition? It is at least consistent and unbiased, unlike yours apparently, as I doubt you believe every claim that is based on anonymous hearsay, and if you do a violation of the law of non-contradiction would be inevitable and you’re back to being irrational. Though of course you are free to be as irrational as you like.
So deny facts in order to believe in unevidenced anonymous hearsay? No thanks, that’s irrational, also knowing why the cells of the human body can’t reanimate themselves after the death of the brain is not based on assumption, so you’re being pretty disingenuous there.
Now how are we looking on a demonstration of any objective evidence for any deity?
You mean it is true that many scholars agree that a person called Jesus may have existed is true. That says nothing of Jesus, the magical deity of the bible. Scholars are not agreeing to someone who can spit in your eye and cure blindness. You are making an equivocation fallacy by confounding what scholars are actually agreeing to and a supernatural being.
Do you know what the word ‘History’ means? (The study of past ‘events.’) Events being an operative term here. Things that actually happen. How does one study an event that did not happen?
Then the correct reply for the cause of such events is (I don’t know.) and not (God done it.)
You certainly did not say this correctly, but I get the gist. The belief that such events cannot occur does not mean they do not occur. Correct! And the time to believe that such events are supernatural is when that claim has met its burden of proof. Until then there is no reason to believe such claims. (Each and every time, all throughout history, when we have discovered the reason behind a supernatural claim, that reason has NEVER been supernatural. That reason has always been natural.
