Gather ‘round children…it’s story time!
Our guest storyteller today is a resident of the local sanitarium. He is here to share some of his delusions and hallucinations with you all.
He has practiced long and hard, weaving the threads of his fantasies into the fabric of his own version of reality. Spinning colorful yarns about mythical characters and fictional events, he is eager to share his journey to Oz with anyone anxious for a make-believe thrill ride.
Have no trepidation, reality will not be making an appearance today, or for that matter, likely not ever, as far as our esteemed guest is concerned.
So grab your pops and candies and get comfortable…He will be joining us as soon as he downs a couple more Redbulls and petitions his favorite deity for inspiration…
Well then, since this will be such an auspicious occasion, I feel it is only proper that I provide our special guest with some appropriate intro music…
And now, I suspect we’re all in for some more comedy moments … wholly unintended by the mythology fanboy in question, of course, but possibly all the more amusing and enjoyable for that …
And the comedy beings as predicted. Let’s see what our mythology fanboy considers “evidence” shall we?
Blind assertion, and false to boot.
Do explain to us all which part of, for example, Mayan mythology “points to Jesus”? Before you try peddling the apologetic evasion that Mayan mythology isn’t " a major religion", it was when the Mayans were an active civilisation on this planet.
I’m also pretty sure that the world’s 1.2 billion or so Hindus will point and laugh at you, if you tell them this.
For that matter, Judaism rejects your assertion. Practising religious Jews think that the “messiah” has yet to turn up.
Looks like all the “I live in a smug, complacent Evangelical bubble” boxes are being ticked here …
“Right time” for WHAT?
Not merely a blind assertion, but a vague one at that, and almost certainly deliberately so.
Poppycock. Your cartoon magic man was, if anything, the motivation behind murderous mythology fanboy attempts to snuff out science. Giordano Bruno ring a bell here? Facts which flush down the toilet the smug and dishonest “science was created by Christians” bullshit you ilk keeps trying to propagate to anyone stupid enough to fall for the snake oil.
Once again, all the usual “I live in a smug, complacent Evangelical bubble” boxes are being ticked, complete with all the usual tiresome blind assertions we see being peddled by occupants thereof.
By the way, in case you never learned this, sixteenth century geologists set out to try and find if there was any evidence for the fantasy “global flood”, and disovered that there was none. I suspect some of those geologists did so not because they actually believed in this horseshit, but out of mere natural curiosity.
Again, poppycock. The only reason past mythology fanboys expressed an interest in education, was for purposes of indoctrination. They weren’t interested in genuine education, they were interested in the ideological weaponising of pedagogy for their cartoon magic man.
Which is why a proper, modern education only started to appear when the Industrial Revolution made it necessary for schools to be contructed, to turn out technically educated workers. Indeed, a modern education includes subjects that did not even exist when past mythology fanboys were building their god-bot factories.
Wow, this really is lame desperation on your part.
First of all, calendars are all human constructs, and are constructed specifically to allow long periods of time to be measured. That is IT.
Second, humans have invented multiple calendars throughout the history of civilisation. The Mayan calendar, for example, is possibly the only example of a pre-scientific calendar capable of encompassing and measuring deep time and geological epochs. More recently, every Unix and Linux computer in existence, relies upon a calendar whose “zero hour” is 12:00 AM on 1st January, 1970 - that date being chosen because it was the date when the Unix operating system was first run in a live installation other than a computer science laboratory.
Third, the only reason that the BC/AD calendar became a feature of Western culture, was because once again, murderous mythology fanboys spent 1,500 years in Europe shoving their goat herder mythology into every nook and cranny of society. Without this activity, we would probably be using a far better calendar based upon far more rigorus criteria than the arbitrary birth date of a mythological magic man.
Incidentally, the system we use for hours, minutes and seconds, was handed to us by the Babylonians, centuries before your mythology existed. Babylonian number systems also feature in astronomical coordinate systems, such as right ascension and declination.
Oh look, FACTS that once again burst your smug, cojmplacent Evangelical bubble.
First, this assertion is questionable, given the number of people exerting far more recent historical influence who have had volumes written about them, in an age where the printing press has been present in abundance like never before. Second, once again, those past murderous mythology fanboys have an input here, and it would hardly be surprising for their activity not to have resulted in a tidal wave of second-hand mythological bilge.
You really are clutching at straws here.
So what? Buddhists could probably compile a similar list of assertions about Buddha.
No, it was his raving followers who did this.
No, this was a convention forced upon Western civilsation by murderous mythology fanboys.
No, it was his raving followers who did this.
Because of the large number of determined and murderous raving followers I’ve mentioned above?
You really don’t know what constitutes genuine evidence for an assertion, do you? Here’s a clue for you: ex recto apologetic fabrications don’t count.
Since it’s obvious that our mythology fanboy doesn’t know what constitutes genuine evidence for an assertion, I’ll refer to my university mathematics textbook, Theoretical Mechanics by Murray R. Spiegel, Schaum’s Outline Series, published by McGraw-Hill, ISBN 07 084357 0
In chapter 5, Central Forces and Planetary Motion, a worked example is provided on the behaviour of central forces, the example in question being the worked problem on page 127, problem 5.15, where an explicit demonstration of an alternative possible behaviour for a central force, obeying a 1/r5 power law, is presented as part of the student’s education.
When one examines that worked example, the path followed by a particle obeying a 1/r5 power law, is found to pass through the body being orbited. As a corollary, if gravity obeyed such a law, every planet would cease to exist the moment it crashed into its parent star.
Since observational data tells us that this isn’t happening, we know that we can reject a 1/r5 power law as being applicable to gravity. A 1/r5 power law fails to model gravity in a manner that is in accord with observational data.
On the other hand, if a 1/r2 power law is tested, that law models the behaviour of gravity with exquisite precision, as determined by the vast quanity of observational data obtained on the matter over the past 350 years. Indeed, Kepler’s Laws performed this task admirably even before Newton devised his Universal Law of Gravitation, but I digress. As a corollary, we now know that the equation:
F = G(M1m2)/r2
is an excellent mathematical representation of the behaviour of gravity. That equation is used by NASA to plan spacecraft trajectories for interplanetary missions, a classic example being the Cassini-Huygens mission to Titan. This mission involved three gravity slingshot manouevres, a flight distance of some 7 billion miles, and a flight time in excess of 7 years. Yet, using that equation as a basis, the NASA mission planners were able to park their spacecraft in orbit around Titan, within 100 metres of where they wanted it to be, and within about two minutes of the predicted timeframe.
I’m reminded from my mathematics classes, that at the moment, just two methods of testing assertions have been found to be reliable. With respect to assertions about concrete entities, correspondence with observational data is the acid test. With respect to assertions about abstract entities, error-free derivations in appropriate formal systems are the acid test (pure mathematics being the canonical example of a formal system reliably determining the status of assertions in this class).
If you want to tell us that some other means of testing assertions is reliable, then you have a lot of work ahead. First, you need to determine that your alternative system does indeed reliably differentiate between true and false assertions. In order to succeed in this endeavour, you need to establish that your alternative system is applicable to a range of assertions of known provenance, and provides the same answers as the previous two methods. Second, you need to establish that your alternative system is applicable to your collection of assertions of interest. Third, you need to establish that your system reliably differentiates that collection of assertions into true or false assertions.
Without completing the above steps, a task that would almost certainly guarantee you all manner of awards from the academic community, you have nothing to offer, except unsupported assertions.
Quite simply, ex recto apologetic fabrications are useless. Until you learn this, and learn how much hard work you have ahead of you to support several of your assertions, you’ll always be taking peashooters to a tank battle.
There is no good evidence for the existence of ‘Christ.’ The best possible evidence suggests there may have been an itinerant preacher at one point in history whose name was Jesus, Certainly not anyone capable of spitting into a blind person’s eyes and curing them of blindness, These are ‘stories’ not evidence. You have a book full of stories. Stories are not evidence.
Timing? The timing was horrible. He appeared (if he appeared at all) during the iron age to a bunch of war-mongering Jews, with no communication ability at all. If it were not for the Roman Empire adopting Christianity as the state religion, it would have gone the way of all other major religions of the time. Christianity was then spread with thousands of years of bloodshed. The timing would have been much better today. We could put Jesus on TV for the whole world to see.
^^Certainly nothing here counts as evidence for anything but the spread of the religion.
An unevidenced claim. (Not evidence)
The Calendar BC and AD is due to Dionysius Exiguus in the year 525, It had nothing to do with Jesus, Dionysius took a wild guess at the possible date of birth of Jesus, got it wrong, and started a calendar. The Bible contradicts the BC / AD system and from all evidence asserts Jesus was possibly born in mid to late September, not December. Humphreys has argued in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society that a comet in early 5 BC was likely the “Star of Bethlehem”, putting Jesus’ birth in or near April, 5 BC . In short, WE DON’T FUCKING KNOW! and THIS IS NOT EVIDENCE OF ANYTHING.
Regarding the ‘story’ of Jesus. Do you have a single fact that can substantiate any of the claims made by your story? Hearsay at best.
@Calilasseia
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM, A COMET IN 5 BC
AND THE DATE OF CHRIST’S BIRTHt
Colin J. Humphreys
I. Introduction
The star of Bethlehem has been considered either to be mythical
or a miraculous object beyond the bounds of scientific
explanation or a real astronomical phenomenon.2 The
question of whether a celestial phenomenon reported in
ancient literature in an historical context was a real
astronomical object is one which occurs quite frequently. In all
such cases it seems best to consider as a working hypothesis
that the report is correct and to investigate whether any
astronomical phenomenon exists which fits the report. Thus,
tentatively, we take seriously the references in Matthew’s
gospel and in other ancient literature to the star of Bethlehem
which is stated to have appeared near the time of the birth of
Christ.
If an astronomical object can be identified with the
characteristics described in Matthew and other ancient
manuscripts, this information may throw light on the long
standing problem of the date of the Nativity. In AD 525 a
Roman scholar and monk, Dionysius Exiguus, fixed the AD
origin of our present calendar (Anno Domini = in the year of
our Lord) so that Jesus was circumcised in the year AD 1 on 1
January (8 days, counting inclusively, after his birth on 25
December the previous year). More recently dates ranging
I don’t give any of this biblical junk much credit for anything. It’s like the Spiderman in NY analogy as far as I am concerned. Still, it proved the point I was making. Not even Biblical scholars can agree an a date for the birth of the Jesus character.
Colin Humphreys
Research interests: Materials science, Graphene, Gallium Nitride, Electron Microscopy, Science and Religion
Sir Colin John Humphreys, CBE FRS FREng FIMMM FInstP is a British physicist. He is the Professor of Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London. Wikipedia
Even quacks have credentials. (I can’t legitimately call the guy a quack.) Still, the skeptic hairs on the back of my neck begin standing up when someone tries to explain the Christ Myth scientifically. Stating the star of Bethlehem was a comet, means a whole-lot of ‘nothing’ to me.
Even if historians could reliably establish the dob of Jesus, and therefore his existence as an historical figure, this does not objectively evidence him being anything but human. It amuses me they focus on the lesser claims that lend nothing to the core belief, as if adding up these irrelevant minutiae are building credence into the unevidenced claim a deity and the supernatural exist or are possible.
“You said that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove. The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever. However it is important to note that we can never be certain of anything, and so we must assign value to any claim based on the available evidence, and to dismiss something on the basis that it hasn’t been proven beyond all doubt is also fallacious reasoning.”
" Ambiguity"
“You used a double meaning or ambiguity of language to mislead or misrepresent the truth.” So any theist who has ever claimed atheism or atheists need faith, and fail to distinguish between the primary definition and the definition of faith in a religious context.
Faith
noun
Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
Strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.
So this claim is either a false equivalence that wrongly conflates two different meanings, or a flat out lie, as to claim atheism requires a “strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof” is risible mendacity.
Bandwagon fallacy - or argumentum ad populum
“You appealed to popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation. The flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing on its validity. If it did, then the Earth would have made itself flat for most of history to accommodate this popular belief.”
NB@Sid you have used all three fallacies as well as others besides, and more than once.
@Sid Why is the existence of (evolved) human emotions like love a reason to believe a deity exists?
Oh, here’s another logical fallacy @Sid has repeatedly used from that site:
Appeal to authority
“You said that because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true. It’s important to note that this fallacy should not be used to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus. Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However, it is entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not.”
Book on “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle” looks at water and shows that “its specific heat, its surface tension, and most of its physical properties have values anomalously higher or lower than those of any other known material.”
I have no problem with the idea, that a bright new astronomical object might have appeared in the sky, visible from Middle Eastern latitudes at the time in question, or that superstitious, pre-scientific humans treated the appearance thereof as some sort of magic sign from some god or other.
The question of whether a new, bright and naked eye visible astronomical object appeared in the night sky, visible from Middle Eastern latitiudes at the requisite point in history, is a valid scientific question to ask. Finding such an object doens’t of course validate any of the supernatural myths arising therefrom.
I’m reminded that the appearance of new astronomical objects in the night sky, has had some interesting effects upon the people who saw them in the past. I’m reminded of the Bayeux Tapestry and its famous depiction of an appearance of Halley’s Comet, considered to be a portent of monumental change by the pre-scientific humans who observed it. There’s also an appearance of the comet in 1301, apparently observed by Giotto, who included a rendition thereof in a 1305 nativity scene he painted,
Even as late as 1910, some people were getting into a tizzy over Halley’s Comet. The 1910 appearance thereof was accompanied, for the first time, by spectroscopic analysis of the gaseous tail, and the discovery that cyanogen formed part of the material of the tail, led to wild accounts in newspapers that life on Earth would be snuffed out if the planet passed through the tail. The hilarity that ensued from that episode is covered in more detail here.
Then of course, we have the much more recent Heaven’s Gate episode (1997), in which a weird UFO cult all committed suicide, in the strange belief that they were going to be transported to a new dimension by Comet Hale-Bopp.
Makes you wonder what lunacy will ensue if Betelgeuse produces a visible supernova in the next few decades. Because the star in question is only around 600 light years distant from Earth, the forthcoming supernova detonation will be bright. The resulting object will be visible in the daytime for weeks, let alone at night. I supsect that a Betelgeuse supernova will bring all mannner of crackpots and crazies crawling out from under their stones once it happens.
The diligent will find that history is littered with instances of people entertaining strange ideas upon the appearance of a bright comet or a supernova. Just look at the shitstorm that erupted when Galileo found that Jupiter had moons of its own.
While water has a rather large specific heat, there are other chemicals that have larger ones. Ammonia comes to mind off the top of my head. If that book says what you claim it says; it is wrong as fuck. I’m guessing it does not say that.
What about the bond angle and internuclear distance in the water molecule i.e. 104.5 degrees & 0.965 angstrom. This too plays a role in its arrangement in ice and hence its density and thus we don’t have a frozen planet and have life.
Some of it is frozen right now, and yes there is life in those frozen environments, it evolved to survive there. No need for any deity or any magic to explain it.
