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Is Defense of the Gospel a Legitimate Activity?

As an atheist, do you think doing apologetics is a legitimate activity?

  • yes

    Votes: 9 47.4%
  • no

    Votes: 10 52.6%

  • Total voters
    19

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I disagree with your claim that Mark rules out that Jesus made the universe.
Mark's Jesus is just an ordinary Jew. There was nothing special about his birth, nothing to tip off his family that God had somehow chosen him (Mark 3:19-21). He needed to have JtB wash his sins away. Only then did God adopt him as [his] son on the model of [his] adoption of David as [his] son in Psalm 2:7 (affirmed Acts 13:33).

And if Jesus made the universe then Genesis is simply wrong.
For me it comes across as saying "how do you teach this when you also teach something else."
Or, If you're going to assert something special about Jesus, don't make stuff up.
It seems to me, this question was designed to be the beginning of a debate (that never took place). It does not rule out that he is David's son, as I see it.
"How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said unto my Lord, / Sit at my right hand,/ till I put thy enemies under thy feet.' David himself calls him Lord; so how is he his son?"

That doesn't sound at all ambiguous. Mark's Jesus is saying the messiah doesn't have to be of the line of David, something he would have no need to say if he was of the line of David himself.
Maybe, Jesus wanted to bring across something like "hey, you guys know nuts about these things."
Careful ─ you're starting to sound like an apologist.
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
Yes, because there is evidence to support those issues.
Religion should be taught at home and at church.
You can teach about ALL religions and non-belief then pupils learn all the options.

Sounds good in theory. Trouble is - students, beginning with universities and working
its way down the food chain, teach kids all sorts of things that shouldn't be in class
rooms and lecture halls - the entire panoply of postmodernist, woke, political agitation
and anti-religion.
 

oldbadger

Skanky Old Mongrel!
I'd like to ask all atheists of this board... do you consider this a legitimate activity?
Or do you think it is lying?

The Defense of the Gospel is usually called apologetics.

Yes. Absolutely 'yes'. Legitimate activity.
I'm a Deist but can answer because Deism is a sub-division of atheism as per google. :p

Anybody has the right to defend their faith and beliefs. Of course.
 

oldbadger

Skanky Old Mongrel!
I recently saw that standpoint in a debate.
An atheist called all apologetics from the Christian side flat out lying.
I think it is not, obviously.
But I wanted to ask the rest of the atheists here first.
You do get extreme atheists, or Hard-Atheists. Most of these are 'mythers' who accuse the whole New Testament (or even the whole bible) as pure fantasy fiction.

How to communicate with them?...... I swear that don't know...... never have worked that out yet. :)
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
@TagliatelliMonster


An important misnomer. The mortal death of this body, such as for instance in the seemingly genocidal biblical Flood == when someone tries to claim it's actually amounting to a "genocide" (or whatever instance given, even that there is any human mortality at all (that anyone is mortal makes all death then genocide it would seem)...)

Consider:

Suppose Ralph accuses Peter of killing Jane and her child, and indeed they are departed, passed away....

Ok.

But...then, later in time, we discover to our surprise that actually Jane and her child are perfectly fine and living in Australia (* note below)...

Well, it would have to be that Peter didn't actually kill them.

Ergo, Ralph was mistaken to begin with.

----------
(*) The victims of the biblical Flood, and by extension all the dead in some manner, are simply transported to a new location according to the common bible -- akin to the British "transportation" of criminals to Australia in the 19th century. (BBC Two - History File, Britain 1750-1900 - Part 1, Transportation of British criminals to Australia)

i.e. -- "18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built...."

Of course, being still alive in the essential (potentially eternal) way, they were not truly killed in a final sense, that is, in the sense of the word 'genocide' which has the sense of meaning of a real final death.

Luke 8:52 Meanwhile, everyone was weeping and mourning for her. But Jesus said, "Stop weeping; she is not dead but asleep."

Not that all people would believe that! -->
Luke 8:53 And they laughed at Him, knowing that she was dead.

Some won't believe until that final end when they face the reality.

Pathetic defense.

Next time you are on trial for murder, tell the judge that there's no such thing as "murder" or "killing" or "death". Tell him that instead, you just send the victim (which by extension isn't a victim either) to a "better place" of "eternal bliss" and that you should go free instead and perhaps even be rewarded for your "heroic deed".
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
I didn't deny what genocide is.

Instead, you only engage in special pleading and make up "special rules" for your god where if it is your god that commits / orders genocide, then we aren't allowed to call it genocide. Somehow. For some reason.

Special pleading.

However, @halbhh brought up an important part,


Yeah, as soon as I saw that post, I just knew that you'ld get a hard one from it.
However, it's pure moral bankruptcy off course.

It's the "william lame craig" defense. He defended god's orders of mass slaughtering babies and toddlers (pure infanticide) by making the pathetic argument that "they are all in heaven now", as if god / the israelites did these babies a favor by brutally slaughtering them.


There's no point in having a conversation about anything concerning morals or ethics with minds like that.

You boys have completely sacrificed your moral compass just to be a sycophant to an idea.
Moral bankruptcy to boot!

no ad hoc nonsense here.
I don't explain away facts.

There is nothing but ad hoc nonsense here.
 

thomas t

non-denominational Christian
Thanks for proving my point. Turning something objectively awful and horrible and attempting to twist it into something defensible. It's not. Self-defense or not, those little ones are innocent, and clearly by the violence we still see in the Middle East today this endless cycle of killing and revenge has gotten that place absolutely nowhere.
Look when I go to the toilet, I do something abhorrent, awful, just terrible. It smells.
And when I am angry because someone beat me, I also say abhorrent things.
Both is understandable.
As a human being you just cannot refrain from being angry.
Even if you say you would remain fair in a situation in which they slaughter your child, make you watch and afterwards blind you... then I can perfectly understand people that have the wish to abandon fairness.

You can't understand. I can.
Yes I know slaughtering children is wrong.
Yet being angry is not. And when you're subjected to violence, it is only understandable when someone gets angry and says things that normally they wouldn't say.

I don't appreciate you assuming how I would act.
I didn't assume anything, it was an honest question.
That doesn't really state much,
it says 'because of the expected time of hardship'. That's much.
Even if it's not about persecution, it's about poverty, and Paul advises everyone to remain unmarried while in poverty.
I can understand that.
I would also remain unmarried in that situation.
It is not "horrible", "unexcusable" "defending the undefensible"... I just find it trustworthy and honest by Paul to issue such an advice.
It's not only Paul that does so, I think.
If you can't provide, don't start a family.
This is smart, as I see it!
Here in Germany, for instance, I really have trouble getting a wife, they all criticise my financial background at the moment.
I'm a musician. I am happy and I praise the Lord, but the women I dated want more.
That's how it is. At least in Germany.



That has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 1 Timothy 2:12 [...]
in equality, Shadow.
so the women at church need to say what they want in exchange. If they can't speak up at church then they can be the church elders and speak in the backoffice.
From my experience, women are rare that want to be church elders, though. They know that the church board would count one person, if only women are admitted. So they don't say anything when there are more men than women in the curch board.

Bible verses can only be true all at the same time, I think.
You can cite these verses a hundred times... and yet they won't undo Galatians 3:28, equality.

Anyway: when the woman is happy at church, she is happy.
From my experience in the churches: they often do criticise machos and these things.
However, they are far more likely to exerce ciriticism when the pastor does not have time for them. This is the standard issue to face when it comes to what women typically complain about in the churches.

This is at least from my experience.

Does it matter? The point is, you get it right this life or you are punished in some way (the Bible is inconsistent about how), and punished for all eternity. Forever and ever, all because you failed to get it right during your 70-80 years or so.
well that's your assumption. You have nothing to show that after these 70-80 years they won't commit a punishable sin anymore.
 

Altfish

Veteran Member
Sounds good in theory. Trouble is - students, beginning with universities and working
its way down the food chain, teach kids all sorts of things that shouldn't be in class
rooms and lecture halls - the entire panoply of postmodernist, woke, political agitation
and anti-religion.
It's better than having teachers, priests, rabbis, vicars, imans, etc indoctrinating children in one faith only.

Anyway, what is wrong with 'woke', I've adopted that title, it means only good things to me. It's just a right wing made up word - a word they use when they can't think of a good arguement.
 

PruePhillip

Well-Known Member
It's better than having teachers, priests, rabbis, vicars, imans, etc indoctrinating children in one faith only.

Anyway, what is wrong with 'woke', I've adopted that title, it means only good things to me. It's just a right wing made up word - a word they use when they can't think of a good arguement.

You see the return of racism to American politics? That's woke for you.
And the global narrative that any problem in the world is likely a result of
white supremacist, colonial, imperial, Fascist, Capitalist and Patriarchal
Americans - that anti-intellectualism is more woke.
The disappearance of books, the banning of speakers, 'safe spaces'
with puppies, triggered snowflakes? That's woke - and most of the world
laughs with me at the sheer inanity of it all.
 

thomas t

non-denominational Christian
Apologetics is my bread and butter (spiritually), even if people say it is illegitimate.
I'm entitled to my opinion.
Mark's Jesus is just an ordinary Jew. There was nothing special about his birth, nothing to tip off his family that God had somehow chosen him (Mark 3:19-21).
no no, please.
His family thought he was nothing special.
That does not make it so.
People saying something does not make it right.
His family was wrong, simply.
Or, If you're going to assert something special about Jesus, don't make stuff up.
ok.
Now, when you claim contradiction, please provide the evidence that my scenario cannot be true.

If a question in the Bible sounds zero ambiguous to you... why would he have asked a question in the first place.
Jesus did not exclusively speak in question mode.
He never said "Am I the way, the truth and the life perhaps?" and he never said: "How can you say I am (or not) the way, the truth and the life?"
Jesus simply announced he is... and when someone else told him, he agreed.

However, even if you say the question was unambiguous...
then the onus is still on you to prove the contradiction that you claim.
So let's assume Jesus was not David's son,
as you infer from Mark.
Now: where do the other Bible passages say he was?
All the rest of the passages merely state he was David's seed, as I see it. Prove me wrong if you can.
If you want to claim a discrepancy between Mark and the rest, go ahead and show that the Bible actually means son when it says "seed".

Ancient Hebrew does know a word for "son" and another word for "seed". So why interchange them?
Are we all "sons" of Adam... or "sons" of Noah, according tot he Bible?

---------------------
Genesis does not rule out that the two names for God as used in its first chapters cannot apply to Jesus.
There are quite a couple of names that God has in Hebrew.
In my opinion, some apply to Jesus... and only some of them apply to God the father.
 
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thomas t

non-denominational Christian
Instead, you only engage in special pleading and make up "special rules" for your god where if it is your god that commits / orders genocide, then we aren't allowed to call it genocide. Somehow. For some reason.

Special pleading.
nowhere in the thread did I claim that you are not entitled to call that genocide.
Don't put words in my mouth.

However there is a difference between God killing people... and humans killing humans, though.
God created humans.
And he assures that they go on living after death in my view.
It's the "william lame craig" defense. He defended god's orders of mass slaughtering babies and toddlers (pure infanticide) by making the pathetic argument that "they are all in heaven now", as if god / the israelites did these babies a favor by brutally slaughtering them.
Well, I don't use his arguments then.
I say, it's maybe better to order to kill them than to let them face certain starvation in absence of their parents who could feed them.


There's no point in having a conversation about anything concerning morals or ethics with minds like that.

You boys have completely sacrificed your moral compass
This is getting personal.
Of course there is point in having a debate with me.
Drop out if you want.

There is nothing but ad hoc nonsense here.
There was no nonsense at all in what I said.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
However there is a difference between God killing people... and humans killing humans, though.
God created humans.

Special pleading.

I say, it's maybe better to order to kill them than to let them face certain starvation in absence of their parents who could feed them.

Imagine the world's reaction if the US army would order to kill all children of ISIS fighters in Syria, with that as an excuse.


Moral bankruptcy to boot!
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I'm entitled to my opinion.
No argument about that. But you're the one who's raised the topic.
no no, please.
His family thought he was nothing special.
And, expressly, his mom. Clearly the angels who visited the Mary of Matthew and the Mary of Luke never went near the mother of Mark's Jesus.
People saying something does not make it right.
His family was wrong, simply.
The passage in Mark is very clear. All his family thought he was nuts. A much more likely answer is that the authors of Matthew and of Luke didn't agree with Mark's version, didn't think it made Jesus special enough so they invented their own bells and whistles. Examples of manifest invention in Matthew include his "genealogy" of Jesus, his invention of the unhistorical "taxation census" and his unhistorical "massacre of the innocents".
Now, when you claim contradiction, please provide the evidence that my scenario cannot be true.
Sorry, which scenario, specifically? Or have I answered that already? The contradictions I think I specifically referred to were between the three basic models of Jesus (ordinary Jew, divine insemination, demiurge) and between Genesis 1's attribution of the creation of the world to the Jewish God, and Paul's and John's attribution to the creation of the world to Jesus, (I gave you the references above, but I can repeat them if that's more convenient.)
.He never said "Am I the way, the truth and the life perhaps?" and he never said: "How can you say I am (or not) the way, the truth and the life?"
Jesus simply announced he is... and when someone else told him, he agreed.
It's important to specify which of the NT's five main versions of Jesus said what. Paul's Jesus says virtually nothing, John's Jesus says a great deall that the others don't, and so on.
So let's assume Jesus was not David's son,
as you infer from Mark.
Now: where do the other Bible passages say he was?
Paul Romans 1:3, Matthew and Luke with their strange genealogies that contradict their claim that Jesus is God's literal son, and John 7:42.
All the rest of the passages merely state he was David's seed, as I see it.
What does "David's seed" mean if not "descended from David"?

Regardless, Paul says in Romans 1:3 "the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh."

The genealogies of Matthew and of Luke pretend to trace Jesus' ancestry to David,

John 7:42 says "Has not the scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?"
Genesis does not rule out that the two names for God as used in its first chapters cannot apply to Jesus.
No, the God of Genesis is the Jewish god. All five versions of Jesus expressly deny they're God and never once claim to be God, and the Trinity doctrine wasn't invented until the fourth century CE and the churches themselves admit it's incoherent, a nonsense ... or as they prefer to put it, "a mystery in the strict sense".
 

thomas t

non-denominational Christian
Special pleading.
Actually, it's not I think.
I was pointing out differences between the two.
Imagine the world's reaction if the US army would order to kill all children of ISIS fighters in Syria, with that as an excuse.


Moral bankruptcy to boot!
The situation is not the same.
These children might get some foster parents somewhere, I think.
No need to kill them to save them from starvation, which seems to be a more horrible death than a sudden one, I think.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Actually, it's not I think.

You make up special rules that only apply to your special "moral agent".
That's special pleading by definition.

The situation is not the same.

It is the exact same.

These children might get some foster parents somewhere, I think.
No need to kill them to save them from starvation, which seems to be a more horrible death than a sudden one, I think.

Your god could have ordered the same.
With his magical superpowers, he even could have provided a boatload of food. Or should I say "mana". :rolleyes:


Also, as an alternative, he also could have NOT ordered the genocide of their parents...
 

thomas t

non-denominational Christian
@blü 2 , your "contradictions" aren't any, I think.
Here's my viewpoint:
1) Yes, the Bible says Jesus is among the descendants of David. But that doesn't necesarrily mean son. Not every descendant is a son naturally.
2) the genealogies don't contradict the claim that Jesus is God's literal son. If you claim otherwise... you didn't present any scripture here, it's an empty claim.
3) Yes, Jesus was a Jew. You say that some Biblical authors claim, he was an ordinary Jew. He is a Jew. That does not necessarily mean that the authors claimed him to be ordinary.

So, that does not a present a contradiction to the fact that Mary was inseminated by an angel.
Humans can be ordinary Jews.
4) Even if Mary thought Jesus was quite ordinary... Mary is not the one who determines who Jesus really is. Several times she was quite stunned by Jesus. That's nothing. Let her be stunned as much as she wants.
5) You say the churches do not understand the concept of trinity. Maybe. That doesn't make it false.
6) unhistorical (meaning events that aren't corroborated by other sources) does not mean made up.
 

thomas t

non-denominational Christian
You make up special rules that only apply to your special "moral agent".
That's special pleading by definition.



It is the exact same.



Your god could have ordered the same.
With his magical superpowers, he even could have provided a boatload of food. Or should I say "mana". :rolleyes:


Also, as an alternative, he also could have NOT ordered the genocide of their parents...
No, I don't make up special rules, so there is no special pleading.
No, situations have changed.
No foster parents back then. Today maybe.
It's as simple as that.
When you put a boatload of food in front of newborns and toddlers, they won't be able to eat.
Pour as much mana as you want over their face, they won't be able to do anything with that.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
No, I don't make up special rules, so there is no special pleading.

You literally did, there's no way around that.

No, situations have changed.
No foster parents back then. Today maybe.
It's as simple as that.
When you put a boatload of food in front of newborns and toddlers, they won't be able to eat.
Pour as much mana as you want over their face, they won't be able to do anything with that.

And yet, they could keep the virgin girls. :rolleyes:
 
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