Here's why satire works: when one's beliefs or positions are being assailed, they naturally become defensive and combative. When you agree with them, albeit facetiously, listing a bunch of hocus pocus with a straight face, it unnerves the reflexive mimer of the party line a little bit.

I was always suspicious of Hitchens (as I am most of the atheist celebrities). He certainly was smart and vastly well read, but I was never comfortable that he wasn't just getting off on posing as an intellectual. Never could resolve it. Part of that was the cultural difference. Anyone who ballyhoos themselves as an answer man is full of it. Says Einstein. If you get good with questions, then you might be legit, but spare us the answer men.

And I'm not claiming answers about origins, just questioning ancient wives tales about it.

Okay, so when CS Lewis (or whoever it was) came out with that proposition that either Jesus is what he says he was or a madman ... let's look at that a little.

First, we don't know what he said. We have writing decades later. Play a game of repeat the story and within 30 minutes the story is way, way off. So in 40 years how off is it?

And of course we know of enormous translation problems/unreliability. This appeal that he "must have been a madman" if he wasn't god, just kind of throws a bias into the whole thing. Completely disingenous and manipulative.

After having his arm twisted to convert for years at Oxford, he came up with that little gem. It's a con.

There was no IQ test 2000 years ago so the average IQ wasn't 100 ... it just wasn't.

The fact that some amazing literature was being written at the time, including in the Bible, by the ~ 1% literate, is no argument that the masses were educated. They were magic believing, superstition believing, ghost believing, witch believing ... which is EXACTLY WHAT THEY SOLD THEM IN THE BIBLE.

Is there a problem with a talking snake in the origin story? No? Then it must be because god said so. Is there a problem with 20 million killings in the Good Book? No? Then it must be because god said so. Is there a problem with a license to kill witches given in the Bible (used as a defense to slaughter "witches"?) No? It must be because god knows about witches. Is there a problem with giving license to abusive slavery? No? Really? Do you have any problem with bigotry toward women, homosexuals, and many others in the Bible? No? Must be that god is just perfectly aligned with brutal, ignorant, primitive man on this one, and I’ll go right along with him.

Is there a problem with giving “God said so” as a justification when we know that multitudes of god’s were fabricated? Each person gets to answer that question for themselves, and the answer reveals whether they have forfeited their own moral standards to an imaginary brutal tyrant, or whether they are active moral agents in this world. Faith in that god, one can make a great case, is effing evil.

Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered, IT KEEPS NO RECORD OF WRONGS.

Love killed 20 million people for doing wrong. Is this the doing of a god who is love, or a brutal storybook of mankind’s imaginings of god??

Wow. I feel like Doc Holliday right now.

Lady in philosophy class the other day after a presentation, raised her hand and said, "You can tell just by looking at a beautiful flower that there is a god." I said, #1, "Then does an ugly plant or animal mean there is no god." She fell dumbstruck silent, as if I had just said some brilliant philosophical point that was totally unexpected. I followed with, "And which god does a pretty flower prove?"

THE THING IS HELD IN HER MIND POETICALLY... and in 70 years she had never thought about it any more deeply than that ... which is one great way to believe it, I suppose. Poetry is great ... it's not where we learn about the nature of reality.

I get that it is low hanging, but it is also very powerful ... and REAL and visceral. All these high falutin' gimmicked up arguments - Onto, Kalam, Cosmo, Teleo, TAG - are fabricated and/or go way outside god's word to define things into being. With tricks. I'm a big believer in the Baroque ideal ... that the presence of so much darkness is what makes light so valuable. But 20 million killings and all the rest to heighten the darkness?? What is the value of human life, including your kids, under that system??

You're assuming that you've actually successfully done something satirical. You can argue from a strongman position obnoxiously and get the exact same results.

As I've noted before, satire usually requires someone to actually know the thing they're criticizing. You have yet to demonstrate you have anything beyond just a cursory knowledge of religion, and your posting has the appearance of being a satire of an anti-religious person (rooted deeply in the ignorance you portray) than anything remotely looking like a criticism of religion.

The 10+ posts in a row is a nice touch. Bravo.

They kept begging me for responses then they ***** when you respond. HE KEPT ASKING FOR RESPONSES TO MULTIPLE POSTS. I let it go for a while then decided to see where it led. One 2000 word post isn't very practical is it?

There is a tendency to think that if we are not religious, then we can opt out of this game with all the tragedy and suffering. Life was even more violent before humanity developed the religious instinct.

I think you should be clear that your protest is against existence itself with religion being a component of that. As far as I know, nobody who has fallen into some level of nihilism, which is understandable, and protested against existence has been successful in having their protests change the fabric of reality.

We either decide to take on some of the responsibility and work toward the good, become resentful victims who further push the world toward destruction, or unconsciously fluctuate somewhere in between. The question of whether or not existence is redeemable will always be an open question prior to making our decision.

Most people seem to never fully commit to a decision and fluctuate in the middle somewhere. They are quick to criticize everything around them, but instead of taking on responsibility, they rationalize their personal status quo by believing that they are already a good person and therefore not part of the problem. Don’t be one of those people.

LOL -- Look at you being "defensive and combative"...

This last sentence is a good description of christians. Could hardly be better. "By magic, I am supernaturally perfect while the rest of the heathen are fodder for hell." I think my description of a "Baroque philosophy" more than covers the rest of this (light needed precisely because the darkness is so prevalent).

Dude calls in show positing that men have one less rib than women even today because he just believes it. "Well, no," says the host, "have you heard of X-rays and you can count ribs with fingers?" The dude went totally silent, then tried to recover by totally changing the subject.

Point: the dude never thought about actually checking it, he was just operating on belief in spite of ALL evidence, not really disregarding evidence, but intentionally staying ignorant and trying to keep the whole thing on "do you believe or not" plane. That's the way religion works. The dude was 50 years old and it had not occurred to him to consider the evidence of X-rays, so virtuous and noble was his belief (I mean ignorance).

You earlier posed the question: "Why was an omniscient savior illiterate?" I showed that the NT narrative indicated that Jesus was literate based on his actually reading from the book of Isaiah in the synagogue. If Jesus never existed, then your claim that Jesus wasn't literate makes as much/ little sense as my claiming he was literate. In the actual narrative, even if Jesus was fictituous, the fictional Jesus is portrayed as literate, contra your claim otherwise.

By the way, thank you for engaging my responses.

Socrates has no paper trail, either. Was he illiterate? Aristotle has no paper trail, either. What we have attributed to Aristotle are basically lecture notes from his students. Was he illiterate?

What is this blather?????? What "dude" are you talking about?

In my opinion, you have yet to demonstrate that you have even the slightest clue about "the way religion works.". Different religions and different persons within those religions can and do "work" in different ways. In my opinion, your ignorance of "religion" is , well, mind-numbingly ignorant.

1. Sorry, I don't know where the 20 million people killed number comes from, but let's assume it's an accurate number.

2. The answer to your question: The deaths were the doing of God, who is love. Everyone dies at some point; the question is "when", not "if".

Everyone deserves death, but many will receive eternal life. Will you be one of the "multitudes" that will receive eternal life? I pray that you will be.

"If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." - Romans 10:9

Indeed, we are all sinners. But God's mercy abounds:

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. " - Romans 6:23

You mentioned witches a couple of times. There are still witches today, you know. Whole religion called Wiccah.

I'm not aware of talking snakes these days, but there are talking birds.
By the way, in Genesis the creature talking to Eve is identified as a "serpent.". Maybe a snake, maybe not.

Interesting that you are focused on the fact that the Bible is over 2000 years old. As recently as the middle of the 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead observed that the core of Western philosophy are merely "footnotes to Plato."

A book being ancient is not in and of itself a grounds for dismissing a text.I

Being a smart guy, you of course know that. But acknowledging that fact would force you to abandon what is perhaps your favorite talking point.

We're doing better.

The anecdote about the caller was on a religious talk show ... makes no difference who he was and I havne't the foggiest. BUT, it was a breathtaking demonstration of using religious belief in lieu of available evidence and not even realizing he was doing it. Right? I mean, there is one less rib in man, I believe it because of the Bible (notwithstanding whether this is an accurate reading of the Bible). It's his worthless frickin' belief about it. Then, "Whoops, I forgot about X-rays."

That's my reference to how religious thinking works.

I spelled out very clearly that it isn't the age of any doctrine that is the problem, but when it is considered inviolate and unchangeable dogma, it often gets obsolete except for "just believing it." Like the ribs. And the ark. And so much of it.

This thread keeps delivering.
What's the doc holliday reference about?

There used to be a time when people thought washing hands was useless: https://globalhandwashing.org/about-...f-handwashing/. religious "reasoning" works just like that.

~ ..."You're the only man that gives me hope ..." (in this thread, that is, LOL.) I figured I better put "~" in there, before I'm accused of false quoting. So, maybe I'm the first writer to put the "approximately equal to" sign in quotation marks.

I don't know if I'm delivering or tilting ... I've already said I tilted on this subject when the guy at the table pretty much said, "The quantum field? Oh yeah, Jesus did that."

When you have the ultimate pat answer like that it's an insult to open-minded investigation ... and is lauded as a virtue while in fact being highly immoral. IMO, of course.

I'm really not trying to be insulting to individuals in this thread. I am insulting to that kind of orientation toward understanding. That's what tilted me after the 400+ sources (so claimed) on the great mystery project. This dude knew all along, since he was five, with no questions, no verification, no actual credibility, with nothing read, not even the Bible (which so many of them are completely ignorant of). Pat hand for life.