AW! Epistles
From David P
Abstract
Tuesday, 02 September 2003
Mike, I have the following comments on Biblical Archaeology—God’s Truth or Pious Lies? Science or Religion? AskWhy! Publications.
Is your beef with amateur scientists or people who believe in God. I too believe when we start avoiding truth or denying it to save our structures or belief systems we move further from reality. As the prophet Jesus said “The truth will make you free”.
My “beef” in this piece is with Christian amateur scientists but you will need to read more of my pages to put it in context. My “beef” in general is with the Christian religion and the no-brains who ignore history in their absurd desire to get eternal life from a load of confidence tricksters. Again you wll have to read more to get the whole picture.
I don’t need to believe in the bible to exist in this world. Therefore, whether something is dated correctly or something happened the way the bible said makes no difference to me. I personally would be surprised if the bible was totally accurate. After all it was man who wrote it. Either way the existence of God cannot be disproved by disproving references in the bible any more than proving the bible to be correct can prove the existence of God.
Are you saying that you believe in God in spite of the bible? Most Christians believe in God because of it. Indeed whole sects of Christians have the idiotic belief, rejected by you I note, that the bible must be absolutely true because the Holy Ghost was put on guard to make sure it was.
When we search who we are without all the emotional walls and preconceptions thrown in. Then we find out what we truly believe in. If a man looks inside himself and is good and strives to do what is right in his heart and has a belief in his God so be it. If the same man decides not to believe in God so be it. It is the man who has to live with himself. Hopefully either way the man will do what is right in his heart in all things.
Quite so. Why should a man need an imaginary father to make him do right? I personally do not hold with figmentary daddies growling at us from the sky or some other dimension, or whatever Christians might think it is, but do not think I am unduly wicked. Presumably I am terribly wicked in Christian terms because I do not hold with their God, and they have been quite happy to murder those who did not, especially if they began as Christians—usually because their parents had them baptised shortly after they learned to breath. That though was not wicked but good to these dead heads. It turns out that killing people is God’s wish, and untold numbers have been murdered by these deranged people up until only a few centuries ago. Of course, they conveniently forget about it to preserve their deceit that Christians are angelic. You can find pages and pages of arguments and historical detail, if you care to read it on my website. My guess is that you will not.
I appreciate your reply. I read all your information the other day.
Wow! You must be a speed reader. Truth has 2.47 MB, Juadaism has 2.57 MB and Christianity has 6.71 MB. I hope you enjoyed it, but you didn’t say you did.
Yes, I believe in what some would call God. I cannot define him or it as well as Christians and Jews can though. I do not believe in a God that is there to harm you if you don’t do right in his eyes. You see I believe we are all part of a God or consciousness. God to me is Good and Evil, Ying and Yang, etc… Remember that even in the bible God created all. I don’t believe in being too pure or too bad but just trying to stay in the middle. Kind of more of a Buddhist or Tantric way than Christian I guess.
Have you read the Adelphiasophism pages. You might like them from what you say, but they do not have any concept of a conscious God.
No, I don’t think most people believe in God because of the bible. They believe in it because they were taught it. Deep-seeded beliefs from childhood are hard to break loose from. Look at how your childhood affects you to this very day. Good and bad experiences and lessons. How many overcome these things in their life and break the bonds of their past experiences.
I quite agree with you, but the “proof” they are offered by ministers or parents is the bible, so that is where they seek their evidence to refute anyone who disagrees with them. Jesus is the childish belief that they, as Christians, are encouraged to continue to believe into adulthood when they have long rejected similar ones like Santa Claus and Fairy Godmothers. Your experience was more like mine. We were not adequately indoctrinated as kids, but you were more than me. I dropped the Dead Donkey all together but you whipped it back into a semblence of life.
Don’t be too hard on Christians for past atrocities. Remember none of our ancestors had our consciousness. So many atrocities were done in so many names. Those created in the name of God were just part of that. If they weren’t done in God’s name they would have found another cause (Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Hilter). When man is involved then Ego is involved. Christians are learning like everyone else. Doesn’t make it right for what they do sometimes but we who understand should have tolerance. One day they will, and many do, understand Jesus when he said “the truth will make you free”. Our lessons are endless.
Now I have to disagree with you totally. It is plain enough that humanity is a brutal species, notably to its own kind, and sensibly we have no reason, without further examination, to think that any one group or nation is better in this respect than another. But there are two features of Christianity that they tell us makes them different from the rest. They say their religion makes them better humans than the rest of us, and they say that they therefore have been given a role as God’s own agents on earth to do what He desires. These are their own claims! In my view, even if they were no worse than the rest of humanity, the fact that they have these claims makes them worse. They claim special sanction and treatment from God Himself, then behave disgustingly, as history shows. They end up, as they did with heretics and witches—as I have perhaps too exhaustingly detailed on this web site—saying they are killing people for their own good. Perhaps I am an old sentimentalist, but that to me is far worse than frankly admitting killing people because you do not like them. As far as learning is concerned, I feel the same way, when people learn something at the expense of the lives of innocent bystanders. Tolerance is a way of letting them forget their crimes. They can only learn the lesson that the truth will make you free if they are made to hear the truth. Most people, even critics of Christianity, accept their own plea that it is all too distasteful to mention. It must be mentioned as loudly as possible to get over the message that no Good God either needs or approves of self-righteous twerps killing off God’s own creation, so they call it, because they think that is what He wants. If that is what God wants then He does not need human beings to do His dirty work for Him. If that is what He wants then He is not good!
I am in holistic medicine. I see a lot of emotionally distraught people. There emotional state is affecting their physical body. Many of these are also spiritually bankrupt. Admittedly things like muscle testing acupuncture points are not accepted science, but after 15 years of getting most people better I use it, although not as a sole source for diagnosis. I have found I cannot help a Buddhist spiritually get better by testifying about Yahweh or a Jew by calling upon Jesus Christ. I can say that every atheist I have tested was spiritually weak and needed emotional work. I admit that I haven’t tested all atheists. I see only those that are sick. It does seem a lot of atheists are atheists due to some trauma in their life rather than out of a logical choice. In other words, the “how could God let this happen” scenario is common. I see this a lot in losses of a loved one or severe trauma such as rape. Anyway, in what I do, a belief in something spiritual seems to be needed by most people for them to be emotionally balanced.
Well, you are not the first person to give me this line but I do not buy into it. I admit I feel sick as soon as anyone starts talking about spirituality and spiritual needs because I have not found anyone yet who knows what they are talking about when they us the word “spirit”, so my deduction is that they are more of the same pseudo-religious confidence tricksters who take advantage of the weak and the sick. That is one way that Christianity grew. Spirituality for most people is something they are told is brought to them by religion. So, it amounts to meaning religion. You are saying that atheists or agnostics are likely to be sick because they have no religion. I think that religious people are sick either because they depend psychologically upon believing a scam, or they make their dishonest living out of it. People undoubtedly need a belief system, but we are now in a position to offer one that is true. That is what people should be taught. Your assumption is that everyone needs God however He is fancied to be, but inasmuch as Christianity is right at all, it is that people need to feel a purpose in their own lives. They do not need any philosophical belief in the purpose of life in general, but they need themselves to feel useful. We have a page on the Adelphiasophism site that addresses this very question that you might like to read.
http://www.askwhy.co.uk/adelphiasophism/000Nature.php
As far as archaeology and science is concerned. I change ideas daily depending on what is discovered. Dates can’t be exact whether it comes from Christians or Agnostics when it comes to much of the archaeological information that you stated. Even at the Temple at Karnac much of the information isn’t readable and they aren’t exactly sure what happened first. The Egyptians spoke more figuratively than literally most of the time. This is true at many ancient sites. Also 200-300 years in archaeology is a small time span and it doesn’t take much to be off 1, 2 or 3 centuries. All we really know is that David and Solomon aren’t proven archaeologically yet if ever and that a fortressed city at Jerusalem in 1000 B.C. hasn’t been verified. Let us face it though, we would be hard pressed to find substantial archaeological evidence for a lot of things we take for granted existed in the ancient world. When in doubt we choose to believe in what is inside us.
You chose to run down modern scholarship, but that is for the reason you end with. It is your choice not based on the evidence—or sometimes the profound lack of any. I make the point on the website that Christian and Jewish dishonesty certainly has led to severe disturbances of chronology in the ancient near east for the reason again that you mention—to accommodate a Jewish history that never happened. Honest scholars now think Samaria was founded by 900 at the very earliest, yet Jews and Christians insist on Israel existing by 1200 at the very latest! This 400 years is to fit in Moses, Joshuah, Judges, Saul, David, Solomon, and a mythic set of petty kings until Omri, when the kingdom was really founded. History today is a scientific study. It does not just depend on one source but on an interconnecting set of sources. It is this lack of interconnexions that first made people suspicious about the supposed biblical history. Vested interests are hanging on, but for the first time there is some hope that the problems of gaps or dark ages in history around 1000 BC might be resolved.
Jesus didn’t teach violence. Don’t throw out good teachings in the bible that benefit all mankind. Jesus agreed with you and he tried to teach the Jews love and understanding. I don’t necessarily believe the way of the Hindus and Buddhists but they also have so many good teachings and can really help us spiritually.
For someone who does not hold with the bible as truth you seem remarkably defensive of it. The Jesus you speak of is a myth. I agree that good intentions can be put into the mouths of fictional people, and I can therefore accept the good intentions while rejecting the fictional mouth that supposedly uttered them. I have shown in a great deal of detail that the biblical Jesus fits conveniently into the history of his time if he is seen as an Essene leader. Christians cannot accept this because it means that Christianity evolved and was not revealed by God Himself doing the trick of appearing as His son and contriving to be crucified. Once again, for a God who is almighty, it is a poor plan that He came up with, not least that He threw out all the rules He had previously given, including the one that no one should believe false prophets, and the one that Yehouah Himself was the only Saviour—plainly warnings that any men who came along pretending to be a prophet, a saviour, a god, or sent by God, should be rejected. His chosen people fairly uniformly therefore refused to accept the claims of the Christians, and still do. What people need in life, Hindus, Buddhists, and the rest of humanity, is practical guidance, not religion, unless the religion is honestly based on proven knowledge. Humanity has had enough quackery.
What you truly believe in is your reality and your reality isn’t always the reality of the person next to you. Being right doesn’t get you much because it is only right to you and the ones that already feel the way you do.
That is true for you and all other Christians, Buddhists, etc, too, though you will not be able to get it because you have the delusion that God is telling you what we all need. He is not. As you rightly say, we are all quite different, and therapy has to be applied individually. What is not needed is snake oil medicines and guilt-enhancing penances.
Jesus didn’t beg or plead anyone to believe in him. He knew that some of those that heard him would believe and many wouldn’t. It was their choice. Kind of like leading a horse to water but not being able to make him drink.
Who should believe anything the mythical character said when he prophesied that he would return withing forty years but never did? According to the laws that this myth supposedly abrogated, the laws supposedly given to the world via Moses and the Israelites as God’s laws, any prophet whose prophesy did not happen was a false prophet and should be killed. Your hero was a false prophet and was killed. Then you resurrect him and make him the god of the quick and the dead like Osiris! It is infantile. It is true that some people have such badly developed critical faculties that they will believe anything at all. Most of them are Christians.
In closing, don’t let yourself get so angry at the stupidity of others. Remove yourself and don’t get too personally involved. Through detachment your understanding that all men have their own life to lead and those that see your way may be right, but also that those that hear and don’t listen have other issues maybe to attend to in their life first.
If stupidity were an innocent failing, I would agree with you, but the people you mean have been lying to the world and causing endless trouble in it now for 2000 years. It is time that someone refused to accept the phony innocence of Christians, and spoke up. I have. A few more do. I hope that more will.
Man, you have a lot of anger. Yes, I read about 20 books a year not to mention daily reading of research papers. I read quite a lot.
I speak of God and spirituality in a way that most people understand. It doesn’t mean I hold to total belief the way Christians do. To explain that and back it up would take the space you have on your site.
It was my mistake to think that your site’s main interest was historical. It is obviously just for bashing Christians, Jews and anyone else who believes in any concept of God, either as a Being or the consciousness of all things. I made 1 statement about Jesus’s teaching for brevity and you made it sound as if I wrote a thesis in defense of the bible. Anyway, as I said before I read your information and actually liked it. I have done very little to deride your comments but you seem to go out of your way to deride me even when on many principles I agree with you. You stated that your reason was to show people how God didn’t exist. If you deride those who don’t think you are the devil then I can only imagine how you are with the holy rollers. Anyway, the point is you will probably have little impact on most you run across, not because of just their beliefs and yours, but because of your belittlement of all you talk to. I have learned that to get people to listen you must first listen to them. In other words hear what they aren’t saying. You deride their belief without understanding why they believe (and no, deep down they don’t continue their belief in God because of the bible their minister speaks about). You need to understand people before you try to persuade anyone. I have the feeling you may be hard pressed to have any friends, even among atheists with etiquette as poor as yours.
What I hear from you is beyond history. History is your side issue. It is a way in which you try to prove what can’t be proven. What you are trying to do is to persuade yourself and others that some concept of God doesn’t exist, not that jewish historical documents are wrong. One being right or wrong doesn’t necessarily make the other right or wrong. It isn’t necessarily a logical conclusion.
My friend, most of the world believes in God. Moslems, Jews, Christians, and many variations in between. I have never had any who said they were “better” than someone else. They believe they are going to heaven and I am not. This is because of my belief not that I am not as good morally and ethically. You sound more arrogant and righteous than any Christian I ever met. When I say be tolerant of Christians it is for you not Christians. Forgive others to keep it from eating you up not them. Anger and resentment make for an unfulfilling life.
I never stated that atheists and agnostics are more likely to be sick. To restate I am saying not all my clients have emotional problems that affect them physically. I have not yet found any emotionally happy atheists though. As I said, of course I am only seeing sick people to begin with. What I mean by spirit is that there is no significant life force emanating from them. Call this their aura , energy field what have you. “Auras” or energy fields can be measured with devices and it is now accepted that we all have electromagnetic fields. This is all I know about spirit. I am not saying it goes to heaven. It may well diminish just as it does when you stop a motor. I don’t know.
NO, I don’t disagree with modern archaeology. Are you daft? Did you not really read what I said? I stated what MODERN archaeologists are saying. I have read a lot about the Temple at Karnac. You can’t state anything I have said that disagrees with the MAJORITY of archaeological scientists concerning archaeology. Dates are not exact which is admitted to even in your own information. New things are discovered daily. How often does something get discovered that rewrites our history. New archaeology shows Egypt to be 1000 years older than what archaeologists thought it was. As I said you must think logically when you use science and understand that nothing is written in stone when it comes to history. Now tell me, what archaeologist would disagree with that.
As far as quacks. If you are going to use the term then use it but understand from where it is derived. In the 18th century mercury was used to treat illness in many people by allopathic physicians. Those doctors that used homeopathy called the allopaths quacks after the german word for mercury, quicksilver. They found the allopaths were making the people sicker even though the quacks (allopathic doctors) were the accepted mainstream doctors.
It is evident that you have no desire for truth unless it meets your already conceived criteria that God doesn’t exist, and maybe he doesn’t. But using only science that shows there is no God to prove this preconceived idea is as bad as a christian who uses science to prove the preconceived idea that God does exist. Either way both of you have done science a disservice. I thought science was here to help us understand not to prove beliefs we already had. It should be Absolutely objective. But I am writing to someone who seems to believe 2 wrongs make a right.
If you truly want to help people see the light then calling them fools and saying they have childish ideas probably wont get you very far. I hoped the energy and time you put into this was to help people. I have used nutrition and homeopathy for 15 years and have helped many people. Call it quackery if you wish. I wished you could help people also in a different way, but your anger and ridicule tells me you have helped no one except yourself by trying to feed your ego. At first I respected what you were saying but the way you have behaved and ridiculed people in your replies sounds as defensive and short-sighted as the most ardent Southern Baptist I have ever met. I wish you peace and wisdom.
I am sorry Mike. I didn’t see the last sentence you wrote to me. My kids were interrupting me a lot this morning. Why would you assume I didn’t want to read the rest of your site?
Well there were just a few obvious uses of words in your original letter that suggested to me that you had disapproved of what you had read, the first one being “beef”. I inferred that you were typical of my Christian correspondents who all regurgitate the same sort of undigested chaff telling me I am wrong, unlike them.
It wasn’t necessarily information I wasn’t already aware of but I found it interesting just the same. I mean your commentary extrapolated a lot but not any more or less than the Christian sites do. I found it interesting how you say that Judaism was created by the Persians. Although fascinating, there was no hard data provided to say we know for sure that this was the case. It is more or less circumstantial.
These few sentences give me the same impression. For the sake of Christians—who think we can know things absolutely because the absolute God in their imaginations tells them what is “true” without question—I have several digressionary sections on history and interpretation on the AW! website. It is in the nature of entropy that information is lost over time. Doubtless Christians will believe it does not apply to their God, but it applies to history. It is therefore usually impossible to prove anything absolutely in history. Various degrees of probability have to be used, and what can the evidence be other than circumstantial? “Circumstantial” is an unnecessary qualification to the word “evidence”. All of it has to be assessed and interpreted. That is what historians do, but not theologians, who think they know for certain that some things passed down to them are “true”. They do not. It is their delusion. In the case of Persia and Judaism, you want “hard data”, a typical Christian requirement, though far lesser criteria will do for their own beliefs. You have read the evidence, and seem unconvinced, whereas I find it such an overwhelming case, I cannot see how any reasonable person cannot be convinced. I recognise that Christians are the opposite of reasonable. If you want to discuss it, then say what you find unconvincing.
I love history and archaeology and don’t really care if it agrees with the bible or not. I mean if the bible is totally false then so be it. It is only words and isn’t really where I derive my belief from. My love of history and archaeology has nothing to do with the bible either.
I am pleased to hear it, but you do sound inconsistent to me. You are perhaps struggling against Christian indoctrination. If so, you are who the AW! pages are meant for.
Anyway, I never intended you to think I was in any way discrediting you. I am not sure but it sounds that you have contempt for anyone who believes in any God in any form. If this is so then so it be. The world will be here either way and you and I will still be doing our own thing. PS. Don’t let those that ridicule you make you bitter. Life is for living. I know how it is. Believe it or not many people think I am an atheist because I challenge their beliefs too.
Well, I have come to my conclusions based on the evidence I put on the pages—quite a lot of it, I think—and Christian attempts to persuade me otherwise are not likely to work, simply because I do not think like a Christian, but like a scientist—or at least, I hope I do. The basis of science is not to accept anything without testing it, and, if it cannot be tested, it is unimportant in practical life. I therefore cannot begin by believing in God, and I cannot see how anyone who claims to be scientific can so believe. God is in the same category as Santa Claus. Such scientists are inconsistently hedging their bets, and I cannot see how any just God could regard that as anything other than slimy and despicable. So, I am an atheist because there is no evidence of a God that can be tested, and God is an unnecessary invention that is inadequate to provide any coherent answers. No Christian has yet told me who created the Creator, yet without knowing that, no Christian has an answer to how everything began. They are not bothered of course. God will do to explain how the universe began, and they consider it impertinent for anyone to ask how God began. If they decide to offer an explanation, it is that God lives forever, so that they are happy with the idea that everything does not have to be created. Why then postulate a Creator at all? Perhaps the universe is eternal.
Anyway, I am not bitter. Your earlier word is correct—contempt. I cannot stop considering as contemptible people who think they can get absolute knowledge without the least bit of effort except to listen to their local minister, or to read a manifestly faulty ancient book. How can anyone consider such people as anything other than contemptible? As for life being for living, what else could it be for. I totally agree with you on this, but Christians think there is something better when they die!! That means that they consider this life as inferior. It is the cause of many, many of our troubles in the world, whether it comes from fundamentalists in the Whitehouse and Number 10, or from maniacs in Israel, Palestine and the rest of the Moslem world. All think God will reward them for killing His own Creations. They can belief it, but either they are insane or God is.
Finally, I hope you practice what you preach. Kids can be a nuisance when mature adults want to do other things, but they are kids for an astonishingly short time—as you realise when you are older—and so have to be enjoyed when they are young. I am sure you know this.
I have stated all before that I wish to on archaeology.
I shouldn’t have to reply about my children but I will. I stated that my kids had interrupted me a lot that morning. This was because I had to make their breakfast, get them bathed, get their clothes out to wear, wash the dishes, listen to them argue, etc… This was before taking them to the zoo. Anyway, I hope you are sincere when you speak about my children and are not using them to try to prove a point about hypocrisy. I wont debate how I take care of my children. Anyway, my kids adore me as I do them.
You wrote in reply to my earlier mailing, and then replied ignoring what I had said in the second one, except that you sounded narked that I mentioned the children you had already introduced into the conversation. You turn out to be so angry yourself that you seemed to infer that my innocent bit of grandfatherly advice based on your own precept was some sort of insult.
Let me repeat to you that you are making the assumptions. I am not bitter. As for anger, I suppose it might be said that I am, but it is hardly a life threatening sort of anger that fights with words the people it is angry with. That has not been the Christian way, and I suspect it still is not.
I have to delete over 1000 spurious emails a day to get to the few people like yourself who want to talk. I am being mail bombed. I wonder who could want to do anything so childish. Surely not Christians? So far as I am concerned, it is only a matter of degree between people wanting to shut me up by filling my mailbox with spam, and the same people shutting me up by their traditional methods.
I understand that quack as in a quack doctor or charlatan comes from their habit at fairs of “quacking” out the merits of their nostrums, though I do not doubt that quicksilver might have been one of them. Quacksalver certainly sounds like a pun on quicksilver, but even this dubious trade was better than the Christian method which was none at all other than prayer. God ordained the outcome, so let it be! I note that Cowper wrote (1782):
Church quacks with passion under no command,
Who fill the world with doctrines contraband…
Plus ca change! Anyway, since you have plainly lost your rag, and do not want to answer what I say, there is no point in my saying anything, so I shall leave you to to it.
Mike, telling you I missed something that you wrote because I was interrupted by dealing with my kids is hardly making them part of our conversation. From the method of your writing it seemed likely that you were using my kids in your conversation to make a point about hypocrisy. If this was not your intension the I am sorry.
Well, you sound a bit cooler, now. In the point about the kids, I was simply referring back to your point that “Life is for living”. It seems I was wrong, but you sounded a bit harrassed by them (though perhaps it was just your annoyance at me) and, as a granddaddy several times over, I was merely saying that those years when your kids are young, and sometimes trying, soon go. I was therefore agreeing with your point about life.
Mike, the only other reply I will make is to the last part you wrote, “Anyway, since you have plainly lost your rag, and do not want to answer what I say, there is no point in my saying anything, so I shall leave you to it.” I have listened to you. I don’t necessarily disagree with you. What you are doing though is to insight Christians or people who believe in a God rather than help them. If this is your way to serve it then do it. Basically as you have said, the world will be here tomorrow. All you will ever attain though is what you have now. A lot of people pissed at you and a gazillion emails to along with it. They can no more prove God to you than you can prove there is no God. I would think you could have figured that out a long time ago and have tired of this by now. Obviously you realize the belief in God is a very psychological need in many people apart from any religious reasons. So archaeological proof isn’t really going to mean a lot to these people anyway. Now psychological help may help them over there need for a God, but historical data wont.
The point is that I know that most Christians cannot be induced not to believe. There is therefore no reason why I should not be utterly frank in my disdain for them. The pages are really for people who have already decided to give up their belief, but wonder whether they have done the right thing. I therefore give them rational reasons to feel reassured. Others who are confident enough not to need reassurance, having given up irrationality, like to hear reason, a novelty to them after their years in the asylum.
No Christian has to read the pages I write. I am not advocating what we spoke about before, the actions that Christians have all too often taken in the past—kill off your enemies. Modern believers in patriarchal gods differ not a whit from the old ones. These religions are, in my view wicked, and that is why I rail against them. I do not force my views unsolicited on to Christian friends, though I will be just as forceful to those who invite me to express them. But it is a requirement of Christianity that they force their views on to others! They call it being evangelical.
Mike, if the emails from all these people bother you so much then you could stop. You aren’t the only guy trying to disprove God. Anyway.
I can live with divvies playing their tricks. It simply confirms what I know. They are completely hypocritical. They just do not know what love means, and use Christianity as a veil for their own deceits. They don’t bother me that much. It is an irritant, although it is also theft. These goody-goodies have stolen my email address. So some of them are plainly thieves too. I will, no doubt, not make a dent in the present world of religion, but it is time that someone openly declared that Christianity is fraud and lies. So I do.
From what you say, you are inclined towards atheism and in some sense agree with me, but you are dismayed simply by the frankness of my criticisms. We have a convention that everyone’s religious views should be respected. It is a convention that is exposed as false on a daily basis by the religious wars that are presently going on. I do not accept the convention that wicked and insane ideas should be respected. What should be respected is everyone’s right to criticise. At present, religious cracked vessels can criticise my outlook because it does not hide under any camouflage of religion. I therefore reserve the right to criticise them.
I appreciate your being to the point and not using too many negative adjectives to define people. I feel that people like me would be much more inclined to you if only you didn’t rail against people who believe in a Hebrew God or any God for that matter. By rail I mean the name calling in particular. That turns a lot people off to accepting your message. A lot of people are in the middle of the road. They are often attracted to the softer message. Negativity turns many people off.
My fiancee was really into believing the God that her mother and brother believed in. I didn’t deride her family for it. I simply told her what I thought without ever ranting on christianity. I admitted quite frankly that I didn’t know if there was a God or not. I said I hadn’t seen him and that the bible doesn’t prove or disprove God. I stated there are errors in the bible and at the same time said that with something written like that there were bound to be errors, but that doesn’t necessarily make God untrue. I also stated that a lot of what Jesus actually preached is not carried out by modern christians. Jesus would never have acted the way some these modern christians do. They seemed to have read too much of Paul’s writings and have never let Jesus’s message come through, which was "to love thy neighbor as thyself". Well anyway this seemed to impact her greatly. She now sees that maybe God isn’t like in the bible. Maybe there is no God maybe there is. Who really knows. People don’t necessarily need the bible to have ethics and morality.
Anyway this is all I was really ever saying. I hold no grudges because I feel it makes me sick emotionally. I try to understand people and though I don’t think they are right I know their motivation and understand it is a lack of insight. The same insight that caused people to crucify a man for his beliefs and ideas. I truly believe christians wouldn’t know their Jesus if he came today instead of 2000 years ago. Many christians have forgotten the compassion that Jesus had. Take Care.
I agree with your last few lines particularly, but instead of calling it politely a lack of insight I do what Jesus did—I call it hypocrisy. You do not like my name-calling, as you put it, but I call these paople names that suit them, and I offer the evidence for it. I would not like to say for certain that I always justify the adjectives I use because having justified them somewhere, it seems tedious to have to keep doing it, and perhaps sometimes I have used a word unfairly. I defend myself by the pages of evidence of lies, deceit, roguery and murder that Christianity just cannot disguise from anyone who ceases to ’respect’ this insane cult.
You are probably quite right that a less frank criticism would impress some Christian waverers more than a frank criticism, but I cannot do it. I am not stopping you or anyone else from doing it, though. I suspect that if you or anyone else did take a soft line, you would end up compromising and the Christian liars would then again have triumphed. Christianity is the problem. You cannot compromise with a problem. It can only meaning accepting it instead of solving it.
The success of Christianity is that it is the minimalist of all minimal religions. Belief in Christ is notionally all that is required for salvation, but in practice it is simply professing Christianity, so that millions of people think that by being willing to say, ’I am a Christian,’ that they are therefore heading for a balmy place. If that is so then God is a joker.
Adelphiasophism is also a minimal religion, or ’world outlook’ as I prefer to call it for myself. All you need do is accept that ’one should not offend the earth directly or indirectly’. It is a simple statement but has a profound effect on anyone’s life, if they try to act on it. Why is there such a difference in take up of these two? Because Christianity is a scam and a lie whereas Adephiasophism is true and has no professional practitioners.
I think the evidence I present that Jesus was an Essene leader who gave his life for the cause of Essenism or first century Judaism is compelling, and that Jesus therefore had a set of beliefs himself that came from his own sect. Much of it is true and valuable, and one of the things he said, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”. Perhaps there are so few Adelphiasophists because they are the few that find the strait gate that leads to life.
Well I only hope that your approach gets you what you are after. As I have said pretty much, it is what you are after that determines on how you are to achieve it. My goal is only to broaden the insight of people. In the end depending on their psychological and emotional make-up they will still make their own choices. Most that make the choice to still believe in the bible the way it is written do so out of their own conviction.
Naturally they do, and I have nothing against broadening the insight of people. The trouble is that Christians have a religion that rejects all such broadening. That is why I do not mince my words. I can see the sense of your argument, but, as your examples that follow show, it is based on ordinary arguments over worldly matters that we all have to deal with in life, not over insane indoctrinations.
I live in the Bible Belt of the United States. This covers Texas to Georgia in the Southern US. Please don’t tell me that you have heard more rhetoric than I have growing up concerning religion.
Why should I? I am thankful that I grew up in a place that is scarcely bigoted at all, mainly because the UK is now essentially a secular state. People rarely can be heard arguing about religion. Mainly it does not concern them. They are shocked that Blair thinks he is the Pope running the Vatican City. It seems to me that even Christians here cannot be bothered arguing because they accept they believe and that is it. Without being dishonest, they cannot persuade anyone else to believe. It is a personal matter.
But in life and not just in archaeology and religion, we as people are more apt to listen to the objective message than the subjective one. If this is compromise than so be it. But maybe I don’t consider it a matter of winning or losing as you do. I learned awhile ago with my fiancee whom I am marrying next month that I can stand there and give the most eloquent reasons as to why she or we should do this or that, but if the door isn’t open it is just a waste of breath. Now if I deride her or defame her on the subject then I often will never get her to see my point even after weeks when things have cooled down. So no I don’t agree ever on defaming anyone and being inflammatory if I am trying to get them to see my point. Remember, you have their attention at the time they are reading or you are talking to them. Why blow it by being so abrasive to them. I mean just because they are like that doesn’t mean you have to go to their level.
If your fiancee wants chintz curtains and you want gingham, then sure you are right. I would be no more likely than you to say only maniacs would choose chintz. These are matter of fact arguments. I can hardly see that your fiancee would want to burn you at the stake because you want gingham. Perhaps you do not get me, but religion is intrinsically insane. Religious people argue vehemently and will kill over things that they simply know nothing about. I just had an email saying the Moslems are wrong about heaven because there can be no sexual rewards there. This pious man knows this! It might seem bizarre to me too, having been brought up in a Puritanical Christian society, weak as it might now be, but I know one thing and that is I do not know what heaven is like and I cannot see how anyone else can know it either. This is not an argument about chintz and gingham.
I work in sales. Yes, I do wholistic medicine but I first got into it by being a sales rep for a nutritional company in the United States whom I have worked for for 15 years. If I go into an office and tell them what they have been using is crap and explain to them why I probably wont get a sale even though I am right. I know this through experience. If I tell them that what they are using is fine but that their may be something better for their patients, and more advanced that they may not have been aware of then I often see goods results. Hence, what I tell you is true, I know people and people don’t like change and they certainly don’t like criticism. Anyway you are older than me and already know this, and as you have said it is your choice.
I do not envy your working in sales. I find it demeaning and cannot do it, but the best friend of my brother in law is a top salesman and he does not see it the way I do. Nor do you, I imagine. I have books to sell but cannot do it, and have to depend on this medium for marketing. I will not get rich!
It is always better, if you are in selling, to feel condfident in your product. A good friend of mine, now dead, who was a salesman, insisted that the salesman can only be successful, unless he is a confidence trickster, if he thinks his patter or spiel or whatever it is called is honest. Not only that, he claimed, it makes your job easy because you will not be getting endless complaints to deal with, but instead you’ll be getting repeat orders, so you can go for a swim the odd afternoon! So, fine, if you can persuade the production side that they are making crap without being so blunt then do it. Again we are taking about what can be established as true or not. We are not taking about God’s truth. Generally speaking even in such a case as yours, however polite you are, if you say that the sugar tablets you are selling as vitamins had some vitamins in them you might get better sales, you will rarely bother the board of directors. They make such money as they get by saving money on the vitamins. If you still sell them, then it is on your own conscience. So, knowing the board will not change, and that you personally cannot sell crap to poor unsuspecting punters buying the stuff in good faith, you can go into the office and give them the full force of your tongue and let them do their worst.
Of the replies I get, some actually like the forceful way I present my arguments sometimes. They agree with me that these things need to be said. You are right that I have not persuaded these people, they have left the spider’s web of their own volition, but they value what I say, and how I say it. Others think broadly as you do, but often these people are Christians still who really think it is in bad taste to say anything awful about them.
Perhaps I will see at some time in the future your own website presenting pure reason about Christianity but politely. I hope so. Meanwhile, best wishes for the future to you and your partner.
To demean my arguments by only concentrating on what you wish to debate and not addressing what is really my arguments does neither of us justice.
Dear me! Which of us is supposed to be the touchy one then? If I have not addressed your arguments then perhaps you ought to consider that they are not very clear. The trouble for you is that my own arguments are all too clear.
There was never an argument between us as to whether Christians have a doctrine that rejects broadening their understanding. You STILL have this need to talk only of doctrine and not UNDERSTAND people. Seldom if ever will all people of a certain sect believe totally in that sect’s doctrine. In the U.S. there are few in the Republican party or Democratic party that believe totally in the doctrine of their party. Also since I live in a very Christian region and don’t consider myself to be intellectually lacking, I feel I am more qualified than you to say that most Christians don’t believe totally in their doctrines. Doctrine is usually formed by those in power and not by the average person of Christian. This may have been doctrine recently formed or from 100s of years ago. Even in work environments or home environments it is seldom that the doctrine is 100% Sympatico with everyone. It is just that there has to be lines drawn somewhere. This does not mean that everyone will believe in it wholeheartedly. This is why doctrine often changes.
If this is a reiteration of what you were saying, then I have answered it. Arguments about matters in real life, whether the cloth for curtains or the promises of political parties, can be argued about, but religions spout about nothing verifiable, and yet hold these views so strongly that they will kill for it, or condone others killing for them in the case of most Christians. I would not expect all Democrats to agree, but I would expect them to have certain common ideas, and ideas that were not held by Republicans. Christianity, as I understand it, is not a matter of picking whatever you like and do not like out of a 2000 year old book. You keep bragging about your intellectual ability and Christian qualifications, but your arguments are inconsistent. If most Christians do not ’believe totally in their doctrines’, then how are they Christians? You are frankly admitting to me that these pickers and mixers are not Christians at all. That is one of my arguments. Christians are hypocrites and do not even know what their own religion means. It certainly does not mean whatever the supposed Christian choses! Yet that is what many US Christians think. They think they are God.
AGAIN, SO WHAT IS IT YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH? People no matter what doctrine can be converted or reasoned with to some extent. What is essential is the willingness of the person in the first place AND A MESSAGE CONVEYED IN A WAY THEY CAN ACCEPT. The way you go off on Christians makes the essence of your whole message negative. I have found negativity gets you usually nothing. Haven’t you been around negative people like this in your life. It is as if they suck the life right out of you just standing around you. I am not saying to give up your beliefs by not being so insulting. I am trying to get you to see that more people will be receptive to the message. I am wondering what you have to gain by insulting people.
You can textually shout as much as you like, but you are not hearing what I am saying. I will not repeat that I am not writing for Christians. I have said it before, and I suggest you read it and try to digest it. It is indigestible only tho those who do not like it. People who have escaped the Christian spider’s web like these pages. That is who they are written for. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? (This shouting is catching!)
What is more, the message I have is not negative unless you have tied your life to a lot of rogues and liars peddling poisonous nostrums. I am offering sound arguments against these people, and I base it on data in the world we live in not in figments and fictions. Negativity is accepting all this dangerous garbage after 2000 years of murder, torture, bigotry and robbery. If Christianity does not die out then it will revive, and we shall be back in the situation we were in for a millennium from 500 AD, except it will be worse because the Christians bullies will have technology.
I gave you examples in my life last I wrote. I used my fiancee whom I found to be of the AVERAGE Christian views. You may get mail from fanatics but it is sad you believe that MOST Christians are like Mr. Pious you wrote about. Most are not anywhere close to what you write about. I tune these people out because they are extreme. The people that believe totally in the extreme are few as I stated. Most of us in the middle have learned to tune these people out. My only wish was that you would not be at a point where you were only listened to by the extreme.
You are seriously deluded. It is the extremes that are the cause of problems, not the average person. History shows, though, that when the average person gets so comfortable that they do not keep on guard against extremists, then they get the extremists in power. You already have them. The average ’Christian’ here in Blighty is not a Christian. Most people asked in surveys about their religion will say Christian as a sort of conditioned response. They do not go to Church and know nothing about Christianity except perhaps the crucifixion. They believe that we are brought up as moral people, and that is why they call themselves Christian. They associate morality with Christianity. They have read nothing at all about Christian history but only have the remnants of doctrination they got at school. Are these the sort of Christians you are talking about? All, being well, they are the next generation of secularists.
I am sorry you feel that my profession is demeaning.
You really do not read too carefully. I did not say that the profession of selling was demeaning. There is a distinction between the subjective and the objective. I said I find it demeaning, and I made it clear that others do not. I also made it clear that I myself need to sell books, though I cannot go about physically doing it. You write what suits you, just like a Christian trickster.
If were not for what I do many innovative therapies may never be known to my doctors. I relay information and seldom actually take orders. I don’t go into offices with the thought of how many bottles I can sale. I don’t sale many more lucrative products because they are too expensive and I can find less costly methods or they are not that great. Of course in the context of our discussion I shouldn’t have to justify my profession since it wasn’t our issue. I am wondering why you find it necessary though to take stabs at people every time you write? You aware that it is poor etiquette to demean and belittle people period much less to do it outside the context of the argument.
I wonder why every time you raise an issue and I remark upon it that you get touchy about it. You can be as proud of your salesmanship and your intellectual ability as you like, but I am not myself keen on selling and I am beginning to doubt your vaunting of your ability and experience. You sound to me as if you need to believe it, but your touchiness tells another story.
As far as those that appreciate the forcefulness of your arguments that include derision, sarcasm and belittlement of people, well it is obvious you have your sect that holds totally to the doctrine that ALL PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN GOD ARE MORONS.
Pass the earplugs. Should I think that people who believe in fairies are morons? Or people that believe in Santa Claus? Or people that believe in Harvey the Rabbit? Or people that believe they are Napoleon? God is a scam. Like fortune telling and scientology. The trouble is that it is far more dangerous. Every believer knows that God acts through them, and they act with God’s approval. That is a seriously bad delusion, and why killing continues in the world.
No I wont waste my time on a Website. If it makes me as cynical as you are then why would any happy person want to do what you are doing. Really, anyone that does what you are doing has a grudge from somewhere in their past to begin with. I would think you would be better off to learn to get over your grudges and truly become as happy as the person you say you are.
You sound anything but happy. If these discussions bother you, I suggest you stop it. Like the man beating his head on the wall you will get some relief from ending it. As for the amateur psychology, I have had it all before many times, and it comes out consistently from Christian apologists because they just cannot understand that Christianity can be opposed by anyone. They live in a cocoon, isolated from history, and wrapped in lying mythology. It makes them feel secure, but it is only a false security. Christians ought to learn a little about the history of their religion at an early age instead of being told fairy stories about gentle Jesus. But then there would be no Christians!
The grudge I have against Christianity is the same as the grudge that Christians had against the Moonies until a few years ago. It is a wicked sect that brain washes its adherents so that they lose their free will. Now the Moonies control political opinion in the US through their ownership of the main politcial newspaper there. We can see the outcome. If people like Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleaza Rice are Christians the Pope is a Communist.
First let me say that in no way have you defined your arguments any better than me. What you do is address whatever points you feel like addressing and skip the others. An example is an argument I made that although there is no evidence as yet to support a thriving Jerulsalem in 1000 BC that that doesn’t mean absolutely there wasn’t. As I stated, recent archaeology shows Egypt is 1000 years older than they originally thought. Also I stated the years may not be exact and could be off 100-200 years on dating Jerusalem. The fact is scientific hypothesis is just that. It is a best guess. Often to be proven wrong as I stated about Egypt. Anyway, this is one of several examples where the I argued about not being able to disprove the bible just off of what hasn’t been found. Your response was nil either as an oversight or purposefully, and by the way you flaunt your superior intellect I would have to assume it was on purpose. To say to read your website which I did still never addressed my points.
You are a purler, David! You are the one who said, some time ago, that you had “stated all before that I wish to on archaeology”. That to me says that you do not want to talk about it anymore. You did not want to! Now you berate me for not talking about it. Why should I say anything about it when you have said you are no longer going to respond. You are utterly dishonest, my friend, but you are only kidding yourself. The whole of the Christian argument is that “there is no evidence for it but it doesn’t blah, blah”, as you say. This plainly impresses you, but it does not impress me, and I have given a lot of reasons why it is absurd for anyone to believe in anything for which there is no evidence. And when it comes to science, I have explained it fully on these pages for simple Christian sheep to understand, science does not say that we should believe in anything for which there is no evidence. Science is not merely a guess. It is a deduction from the evidence. When it comes to reiterating what is well set out and set out in some detail on the pages, it is no argument against me to say that I have not defended a position. The bible is not merely wrong about Jerusalem in 1000 BC, it is wrong about almost everything it claims as history from the creation of the universe to the kingdom of Bit Khumri. That is a lot of history, and a lot of errors, for a work written by God or his Holy Ghost. You will continue to believe every absurdity that you like but your belief is irrational. As for my superior intelligence, I have never flaunted it because do not think I have it. You were always talking about your own, though, and I must admit that if the website does not answer your points, you must be pretty thick.
What I also find interesting is that instead of addressing archaeological points as I did when we first spoke you went out of your way to deride Christians instead. You make statements that you have no possible way of knowing whether they are true or not. An example is where you now say all Christians think they are God. Now you have become as absurd as the people you seem to despise so much, just on the opposite side.
Who do you think you are impressing with your distortions? I already said you do not read too carefully, but you change what you see to suit yourself. This is a discussion that exists in hard copy, not just the airy fairy unrecorded discussions that you apologists depend upon to confuse your lambs. I have pointed out that you are the one who dismissed any further discussion of archaeology, and now you say I said all Christians are God. I said this: “that is what many US Christians think. They think they are God”. That is not saying that all Christians are God. Are you the full shilling? As for deriding Christianity, I have made no bones about the point of the website. It is to expose Christianity as a scam.
You state that Christians have to believe all the doctrine of the bible. Well if this is true then what denomination do you become to have the right doctrine. They all have differences and some are big. To say you can’t be Christian because you don’t believe every aspect of the bible is ridiculous. Because it is religion centered around a God not a bible there are going to be different doctrines. God is the central doctrine. You would not know what Christian doctrine is if it bit you on the face. AS I SAID in the last letter, only a few radicals believe the way you think Christians are “supposed” to believe.
There you go again. I said this: “If most Christians do not ‘believe totally in their doctrines’, then how are they Christians? You are frankly admitting to me that these pickers and mixers are not Christians at all. That is one of my arguments. Christians are hypocrites and do not even know what their own religion means. It certainly does not mean whatever the supposed Christian choses! Yet that is what many US Christians think. They think they are God.” Your defence is God, but how is God telling you or anyone else what is correct doctrine and what is not. That is why they think they are God! There are 30,000 Christians sects precisely because all of them pick this bit or that bit of the Holy Word of God. If you think God is behind this then you are truly lacking something. Is the Almighty determined to split His religion into thousands of sherds? My point is that there is nothing in the bible that makes a consistent religion. That is why there are thousands of inconsistent ones. The archaeology simply shows that in some obvious ways the bible is provably false. If is is false in these minor matters of history, then how can it be trusted in major matters of public morality? I argue from the bible as the yardstick of Christianity. If you have a better one, then tell me what it is. Meanwhile, if by citing the bible as the center of Christian beliefs makes me present an idealised picture of them, then too bad. You are saying they are not ideal. They are only ideal liars.
If you believe it is demeaning, then to you it is demeaning. If you say others don’t and give examples then you still, personally think it is demeaning. Yes, I did read it completely and I would think such a logical man could have seen what he was writing.
Indeed I did, but you did not. For me it is demeaning. That is what I said. I did not say it was demeaning for you or good friends of mine who are or were before they died themselves salesmen. I find it demeaning and I cannot do it. No doubt you still do not understnd the difference, but that is your problem.
If the Christians in your area are the next Secularists so what. Isn’t that a good thing? I am not sure if your point is clearly stated there.
You got the point for once, but think you haven’t. Yes it is a good thing. I do hope that Christians will learn sense, and around here, they seem to be. I hope they will be the same where you are too.
I read my statements and saw no unhappiness or negativity. So where ever you got that I was unhappy I will never know. Of course you seldom give any corroborating evidence when making personal attacks. Its kind of like you are saying, well since he said I am unhappy I will say the same to him and that will make us even. Only thing is I never said it to try to get my digs in as you seem to always do.
Did you ever hear of tone? Your tone was anything but happy. But then again, if you do not see it, that is your problem.
To address the rest of your points. I thought this site was about archaeology and now see you use it only to draw people in to discuss your real agenda. That agenda is to discuss how wicked Christianity is.
You are telling me that I am getting things wrong about what you are saying, but this website is plainly not just archaeological. It is archaeological to the extent that it shows huge errors in the word of God. You cannot even understand that without it seeming to be a revelation to you.
I feel that many Christians are misguided and sometimes outright stupid, and I would think the same of fairy believers. The difference between both of us is that I would be there to help them see differently and you would be there just ridiculing them. You or I never helped anyone with ridicule.
You are quite wrong about me again. I have put on the website a large amount of evidence that shows that Christians beliefs are unfounded. That is the basis of the website. When people believe false things and, what is more, refuse to accept that they are false, despite the evidence, then they are setting themselves up for ridicule. So, I ridicule them.
But as you stated, you aren’t here to help Christians. As I stated before though, you are surely to draw only radicals, which is only a minority of people like the radical Christians. Anyway, if you are to make out of the blue statements like “if Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleaza Rice are Christians the Pope is a Communist” then it is obvious we have spent about all we should with each other since there is nothing else more profound to speak about. By the way, I think at one time the Pope was a communist since he came from Poland.
The website is not aimed at Christians, if that is what you mean about helping them. I repeat that there is no help for people who refuse to use their brains. The website is therefore for those who do. If they are radicals or whatever, then so be it. Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing about Rice and Rumsfeld? Once again I make my judgement on the recorded sayings attributed to the Christian God, the sayings that you tell me this God uttered for people to accept or not, according to their whims. If these are the Christian God’s words and Christians ignore them, then how are they Christians? I do not read, Blessed are the rich in material wealth, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. The Christian God said the diametric opposite. So, the Christian God was not a Christian, I suppose. A slip of his tongue. Regarding the Pope, “was” is not the same as “is”, though so far as I know he never was either.
In a separate letter soon after this one, you wrote the following to conclude the discussion.
I wanted to write this separately. I am sure you are doing what you feel right. I read a lot of your website. I found a lot very good. I did see several places that you extrapolated on Jewish history just as Christians and Jews do in the other direction. I stated this when we first spoke but you didn’t reply to this statement.
I have just explained this, though it ought not to have needed explaining. You said you did not want to talk any more about archaeology. Your memory is selective, even though you can verify it by looking back at the correspondence.
You basically have stated that parts the bible were written to bolster Jewish pride after coming back from exile, and this may well have happened and does have some basis. Yes this is a quick summary used for brevity’s sake.
It is an inexact summary, whether for brevity’s sake or not. I said that the bible began to be written by the Persians colonists who, at the time had no idea of subsequent history, as none of us do except Christians. Later it was extended by several sets of people, but mainly still for political reasons. There is clear evidence for this even though Christians have consistently destroyed or ignored it. You will not accept it for the reason that most Christians will not. Their priests and pastors ignore it for their own selfish reasons not for anything based on scholarship, or seeking the truth.
Unfortunately there isn’t hard archaeological evidence to prove this and yes it makes a lot of sense to me, but lets not say this is an absolute. It is little more than a hypothesis. I assumed you were a scientist and would understand this.
I seriously have to wonder about you, David. I am a scientist and I present what I say in the scientific way that all modern historians do, namely as a hypothesis. I have explained this onsite as well as in similar correspondences to this one. What you have to realize is that the Christian and Jewish interpretation of things is also a hypothesis, and a poorer one.
Unfortunately I had no idea your site was really an Anti-Christian site when I first wrote you. I should have figured this out when you took exception to my statement “Do you have a beef with Christians.” In the course of our talks I now understand why you would extrapolate on these issues that are speculated by other archaeologists. I don’t necessarily agree with the two wrongs make a right deal but it is your site and its main purpose is to inform the reader to the fallacies and wickedness of Christianity.
The only reason I can think of for your thinking what you thought is that you dropped into a page from a search engine not knowing what the purpose of the website was overall. That again is your oversight. I am well aware that it happens, and I wonder sometimes about how people can get onto the internet without some understanding of what they are doing. The very first paragraph of my reply made my position clear with no exception taken to it. I said openly that “my ‘beef’ in general is with the Christian religion and the no-brains who ignore history in their absurd desire to get eternal life from a load of confidence tricksters”. Was that not clear enough for you? I do not claim to be a mega-brain as you like to make out, to insult me, but I have learned to check out a site that a search engine leads me into. Often they are cranky like Christian ones, based on no sound evidence. So I exit them, and ignore whatever they have said. If these are your views now of my site, you should have done the same. But my site is based on evidence, not on hope or bad dreams.
I realized that while my intent was to talk about archaeology I have gotten off into a tangent as to whether God exists and that Christians are stupid and closed-minded. This is my fault.
Why then did you say you had said all you meant to about archaeology, at a relatively early stage of these discussions? I would have been quite happy to argue about whatever you wanted, as I have done with real archaeologists that have addressed me, and are presented also in discussions here. You claimed not to want to defend Christianity, then defended it. You are incoherent.
My life I guess is based more on having the wisdom to understand I know nothing. Your life, which I admit has only been gained from our few talks, seems to be based on knowing you know everything. Unfortunately though this thought process is too close to the “dangerous” fundamentalists who tell me they KNOW there is a God and the BIBLE is absolute. I have already been there both as a Christian and an Atheist. Therefore, I don’t really think there is anymore to gain from our talks. I do wish you the best though.
If I knew everything, I would not be wasting my time arguing with people who wilfully want to understand nothing. This strikes me as being at the core of the Christian, perhaps the whole religious, delusion. I am willing to present evidence and consider its consequences. I do not claim I know everything because I am a scientist and know that is impossible. You are a Christian, in spirit if not fact, and have defended the Christian view, by and large, despite your occasional steps back from it. Christianity claims it knows the Absolute because it has it from God. It is God’s Truth, and impossible to argue with by reason. Christians typically know nothing but know enough to tell scientists that they are absolutely wrong. How can that be? Because God’s Truth—and for most Christians, if not yourself, that is the bible—says everything, even though much of it can be shown to be utterly wrong.
You have hinted above that there is some other source of Absolute Wisdom other than the bible, but you do not say what it is that allows correct doctrine to be distinguished from incorrect dosctrine. Meanwhile, I only know of the amazingly fallible bible. Now you do not want to talk any more, so I shall never find out. But I suggest that you try being honest to yourself. There is no half way between disbelief and belief, between skepticism and gullibility. We learn by being skeptical. Ignorance depends on gullibility.
Learn more about science, then you would not make stupid statements like this or that is ‘little more than a hypothesis”. Except, perhaps, for “I think therefore I am”, all knowledge is hypothetical, whether some goons think they have absolute knowledge from some supernatural source or not. Anyway, I enjoyed talking to you.
When I said I didn’t want to talk about archaeology anymore it was in reference to the particular letter I had written. It was not meant to be taken as an absolute from now on. Maybe the context was not understood well whether it be local slang or whatever. I haven’t bothered to read anymore of your letter since it just appears your letters are about nothing more than bantering. Suffice it to say that I would rather say you are right than to argue and spend too much energy and time writing anymore.
