Common Atheists' Myths

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/atheists_myths.html ^

[truthfinder9]

Introduction

I know that Christians are supposed to be the ones who believe a lot of myths. However, the vast majority of atheists believe myths such as religion is the primary cause of wars, and the vast amount of atrocities have been caused by religious people, the Bible has been vastly changed over the centuries, Paul invented Christianity, and the list goes on and on. Find your favorite myth below and read the article so that you won't embarrass yourself in the future.

Atheists' Myths

• Atheists have Proven God Does Not Exist. Right? - Only if that god is not the God of the Bible
• Religion is the Cause of All (Most) of the World's Problems - Religion is not even close to being the leading cause suffering in the world. In fact, atheists have been responsible for most of it within the last 100 years.
• Are Most Wars the Result of Religious Belief? - Religion is implicated in less than 7% of all wars over the entire written history of mankind.
• Is Christianity a Made-up Myth Written by the Disciples? - Now really - would the disciples write about all their shortcomings, make the Christian church into a female, design heaven with no sex in it, and say that they were going to be married to Jesus in heaven? I don't know about you guys, but this is not what I would have written if I had made up the Bible!
• Paul Invented Christianity? Is the Founder of the Christian Religion Paul of Tarsus or Jesus of Nazareth? All Paul's core teachings were also taught by Jesus and the disciples, and are even found in the Old Testament.
• Misquoting Jesus: Does Bart Erhman Prove the New Testament is Corrupt? - Contrary to Erhman's claims, the New Testament canon was established in the early second century, and scribal errors/changes did not affect any significant Christian doctrine.
• The Christian Church Was Never Really Persecuted - Were all the reported persecutions of Christians were made up by the Christian church?
• The Bible Has Been Changed Over the Centuries From the Original? - Sorry, the manuscript evidence doesn't support this idea at all.
• Jesus Christ as God and the Trinity Was Not Invented Until the Fourth Century? Contrary to the claims of The Da Vinci Code, even secular sources indicate that Christians worshipped Jesus Christ as God no later than 113 A.D.
• This Joyful Eastertide: A Critical Review of The Empty Tomb (2006) - Has the resurrection been proven false? )
• The Universe Just Happened Without Any Need For a Designer - For all those who expect to win at lotto!
• There is No Evidence For the Fine Tuning of the Universe - The cosmological constant (dark energy) shows this belief to be false
• "The Lost Tomb of Jesus": Have the Bones of Jesus Christ Been Found? Only if Jesus had his ossuary inscribed when He was 2 years old!
• Omnipotence is Logically Impossible? Atheists attempt to define God out of existence through illogical arguments
• The Universe is Eternal - Contrary to atheist's claims, the majority of scientists state as fact that the universe had a beginning.
• Only Stupid People Believe in God - A large number of famous scientists believed in God, many being devout Christians
• The Roman Catholic Church's Condom Policy is Responsible For the Spread of HIV and the AIDS Crisis in Africa - Actually, HIV infection rates are lower in Catholic-dominated countries!
• The Myth of the Flat Earth by Jeffrey Burton Russell - The "history" that Christians taught a flat earth was not invented until the 19th century. (off site)
• People are Basically Good - Proof to the Contrary
• Jesus didn't really die on the Cross? - The old swoon theory doesn't hold up to historical/medical reality.
• Hitler was a Christian? - This seems like a no brainer, but there are free-thinkers who think he was. (off site)
• Jesus and Adolf Hitler - The new (and improved?) German Jesus (off site)
• Are Atheists and Theists Morally Equivalent? Aren't atheists morally superior to theists?
• Atheism Doesn't Lead to Immoral Behavior - Or Does It? In theory it doesn't, but in practice...
• Atheism and Humanism Provide Hope for the Future - The ultimate "hope" of atheism is eternal entropy as the universe loses all ability to perform work, and all life, consciousness, and knowledge is eternally destroyed.
• The Bible Teaches a Flat Earth Covered by a Solid Dome
• Teaching Religion to Children is a Form of Child Abuse? Dawkins's hypothesis is falsified.
• BLOODLINE: Serious Documentary or Hollywood Hoax? - by Gordon Franz MA
• Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 1: A deeply religious non believer - Deception, lies, and misrepresentations.
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 2: The God Hypothesis - Failure to support debunked assertions, quoting out-of-context, and a desire to escape moral accountability.
  • Debunking Dawkins: The God Delusion Chapter 4: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God - Richard Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 argument is shown to be formally fallacious.
• The Universe Just Created Itself Out of Nothing - Why Stephen Hawking is wrong about God not creating the universe.
• Book Review: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris - Sam Harris claims that science can determine human values, but just resorts to ranting about religion.

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

More Answers

• Answers for Atheists and Agnostics
  • Criticisms of God's Character from Atheists and Agnostics
  • Criticisms of God on the Basis of the Existence of Evil and Suffering
  • Religion is Stupid
  • Bad Christians
  • Bible and Science Criticisms
  • Answers to Bible Contradictions
  • Skeptics' Objections to Christianity
  • No Evidence of the Supernatural?

[Notary Sojac]

In David’s sin there were many things which led up to that.. where He could have stopped the path he was on. In the end it cost two people their very life’s

And every inch of that path, and every atom of the consequences, was known to God in advance, right?

[Logic n' Reason]

If the entity created time (which is highly plausible if God as Omnipotent Creator is true), he could have excluded himself from being subject to the realm of time.

Time is relative (Einstein - ain't it superb that the "entity" provided man with the power to think!!??)

Perhaps this "entity" existed in "an alternate place" where the "time" there and the "time" here didn't match up??

Many many mysteries yet to solve.

But using "he" in your statement is a bit too "anthropomorphic" for my taste!!

[Notary Sojac]

To this particular atheist, the big bang theory of the universe is starting to suggest that there is a creator.

But the history of the universe and of humanity suggests that said creator put the clockwork in motion and is now observing the results purely for amusement.

"Rebellion" against such a being would be pointless, so I am one of the "cool with it" atheists you describe. Believe as you wish, I don't object in the least.

[fml]

Interesting, unfortunately none of your links go anywhere.

This is the kind of information I always pass onto my now adult children...you can never get enough positive re-enforcement

[Reeses]

To this particular atheist, the big bang theory of the universe is starting to suggest that there is a creator.

An he entertains himself playing with very high power explosives.

[Notary Sojac]

Are you interested in being pinged to discussions of atheism on FR? I am trying to put together such a list.

My intent is never to belittle the faith of others, nor to advocate that American culture be secularized. I am not a militant hater of God or of believers.

But when someone posts here to the effect that atheism is incompatible with conservatism, or that atheism is destructive to America, I take issue and don't hesitate to challenge.

[James C. Bennett]

In David’s sin there were many things which led up to that.. where He could have stopped the path he was on. In the end it cost two people their very life’s and positioned others to be part of the deception...who were also impacted. Let’s not forget the wife of the man David had killed...and what that ment to a woman in that time. The list can go on but look closer at this...and how God views sin.

The problem, Caww, is that again and again, the area of contention concerns justice - what did the child suffer for?

http://www.apologeticspress.com/articles/3400

The argument isn't whether a giver of life taking back what it gave, is unfair. Rather, the argument is about the child that was agonised until death for absolutely no fault of its own. Is mere death the same as suffering + death? No.

Even Jesus' death wouldn't have been the same without the suffering element. What did the child suffer for? Was that justice? No.

The apologist misses this completely, and provides support to the argument that it take superstition for reasonable people to justify evil. If killing children in the name of preventing them from committing sin later on is a justification, it is of the vilest of all possible human acts one can indulge in.

[James C. Bennett]

This statement is false.

Read what I wrote, again:

Another problem is that you can’t have an entity create something without the entity itself being under the realm of time. Without time, eternity and an instant are one and the same, and all that happened and all that will happen, have already happened.

If a said entity has a definite moment when it creates something, then that entity, out of all eternity, underwent something that caused it to create - and that cause puts the entity under the bounds of time.

In other words, who created the creator? If no one, then why did the creator create only at a particular moment out of an infinite sea of time called eternity?

You said:

"If the entity created time (which is highly plausible if God as Omnipotent Creator is true), he could have excluded himself from being subject to the realm of time."

The idea is absurd. Suppose you have an entity lying outside the realm of time. What would it mean for that entity? It would mean that there is no concept of 'time' for anything that the said entity does. In other words, whatever it did, and whatever it planned to do, and whatever it is doing, has already been done, or not been done at all, but not both. Since this presents an absurdity, any entity that performs time-dependent actions (creation at a particular moment in a span of infinite time) is under the realm of time. The entity is already under the realm of time when creation itself is purportedly an act that not only spans a certain length of time, but also requires recuperation on the part of the creator, after the act. If you need to rest, it is to allow time-dependent factors to re-establish equilibrium.

The only other "explanation" that people resort to solve the conundrum is to brazenly state "but humans are bound by the dimensions of time and cannot think outside of it".

[James C. Bennett]

To this particular atheist, the big bang theory of the universe is starting to suggest that there is a creator.

Did you read about the recent article on the "echoes" of a prior universe whose signature cannot be explained by the Big Bang model?

Scientists find first evidence that many universes exist

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.html

December 17, 2010 by Lisa Zyga

The signatures of a bubble collision: A collision (top left) induces a temperature modulation in the CMB temperature map (top right). The “blob” associated with the collision is identified by a large needlet response (bottom left), and the presence of an edge is determined by a large response from the edge detection algorithm (bottom right). Image credit: Feeney, et al.

(PhysOrg.com) -- By looking far out into space and observing what’s going on there, scientists have been led to theorize that it all started with a Big Bang, immediately followed by a brief period of super-accelerated expansion called inflation. Perhaps this was the beginning of everything, but lately a few scientists have been wondering if something could have come before that, setting up the initial conditions for the birth of our universe.

In the most recent study on pre-Big Bang science posted at arXiv.org, a team of researchers from the UK, Canada, and the US, Stephen M. Feeney, et al, have revealed that they have discovered four statistically unlikely circular patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The researchers think that these marks could be “bruises” that our universe has incurred from being bumped four times by other universes. If they turn out to be correct, it would be the first evidence that universes other than ours do exist.

The idea that there are many other universes out there is not new, as scientists have previously suggested that we live in a “multiverse” consisting of an infinite number of universes. The multiverse concept stems from the idea of eternal inflation, in which the inflationary period that our universe went through right after the Big Bang was just one of many inflationary periods that different parts of space were and are still undergoing. When one part of space undergoes one of these dramatic growth spurts, it balloons into its own universe with its own physical properties. As its name suggests, eternal inflation occurs an infinite number of times, creating an infinite number of universes, resulting in the multiverse.

These infinite universes are sometimes called bubble universes even though they are irregular-shaped, not round. The bubble universes can move around and occasionally collide with other bubble universes. As Feeney, et al., explain in their paper, these collisions produce inhomogeneities in the inner-bubble cosmology, which could appear in the CMB. The scientists developed an algorithm to search for bubble collisions in the CMB with specific properties, which led them to find the four circular patterns.

Still, the scientists acknowledge that it is rather easy to find a variety of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB. The researchers emphasize that more work is needed to confirm this claim, which could come in short time from the Planck satellite, which has a resolution three times better than that of WMAP (where the current data comes from), as well as an order of magnitude greater sensitivity. Nevertheless, they hope that the search for bubble collisions could provide some insight into the history of our universe, whether or not the collisions turn out to be real.

“The conclusive non-detection of a bubble collision can be used to place stringent limits on theories giving rise to eternal inflation; however, if a bubble collision is verified by future data, then we will gain an insight not only into our own universe but a multiverse beyond,” the researchers write in their study.

This is the second study in the past month that has used CMB data to search for what could have occurred before the Big Bang. In the first study, Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan found concentric circles with lower-than-average temperature variation in the CMB, which could be evidence for a cyclic cosmology in which Big Bangs occur over and over.

More information: Stephen M. Feeney, Matthew C. Johnson, Daniel J. Mortlock, and Hiranya V. Peiris. "First Observational Tests of Eternal Inflation." arXiv:1012.1995v1 [astro-ph.CO]

© 2010 PhysOrg.com

[caww]

Ok then...are you certain the child suffered?

[caww]

Of course.

[James C. Bennett]

Ok then...are you certain the child suffered?

Any sickness that results in seven days of illness, followed by death, is going to cause the innocent victim, suffering.

2: Samuel 15-24

15 And Nathan departed unto his house. And the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick.

16 David therefore besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night upon the earth.

17 And the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to raise him up from the earth: but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them.

18 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead: for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice: how will he then vex himself, if we tell him that the child is dead?

19 But when David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that the child was dead: therefore David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? And they said, He is dead.

20Then David arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the LORD, and worshipped: then he came to his own house; and when he required, they set bread before him, and he did eat.

21 Then said his servants unto him, What thing is this that thou hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child, while it was alive; but when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread.

22 And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?

23 But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

24 And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her: and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon: and the LORD loved him.

[kosta50]

Really? of the 10 Commandants, numbers 5-10 deal with how man should relate to man - which of these do the Japanese reject? None. They acknowledge all of these because they intrinsic to every man's heart

Raise a human being from infancy in your back yard, give him water and food and shelter and let him fend for himself. He will lack all social normals of modesty, morals, language, reading and writing skills, etc. He will have no clue where he is, how he came about, or anything we know; he will be a beast.

There is nothing intrinsic in our nature that even approaches the Ten Commandments. Everything we know has to be taught. And the society, as a communal consensus, dictates what is being taught as good and what as bad.

For exmaple, Islam teachs that mercy killing of one's daughter is an "honorable" thing to do for a father. Judaism taught, with the authority of God's own words, that a disrespectful child is to be stoned to death.

The only reason the last five commandments are kept is because it has to do with property and rights, strictly societal values. Commandments 5 to 10 simply reflect universal societal )materialistic) values, and the Japanese share them with us, but they see them as necessary for a functioning society, and not something intrinsically moral any more than the speeding laws. The Japanese society functions on the concept of empowerment, nor intrinsic morality.

Besides, why only the Ten when, as a believer, you must believe that God wrote 613 of them in all and dictated them verbatim to Moses?

How did Christians decide the rest weren't divine enough for them to follow?

It was Christianity, based on Christian morals, which led the fight to abolish slavery in every western society

Oh, rubbish. It was humanism and the Age of Enlightenment that contributed to the elimination of slavery, not Christianity. Christianity had no problems with slavery because it biblically sanctioned.

Polygamy has immoral since Adam and Eve and this was reiterated in the 10 Commandments and the teachings of Jesus. It was always immoral

Really? Then why is is allowed in the Bible (along with slavery)? And where is it "reiterated" in the Ten Commandments? And where did Jesus say one can't have more than one wife?

That's why God finally wiped out Israel and the Jews spent 70 years in Bablylonian captivity

They were worshiping idols (that's the only thing that would make the Old Testament God "lose" it); that's why, not because they were practicing polygamy or slavery.

I do have hard evidence. Although every epistemology must start with certain unprovable axioms, (even empiricism) even these can be corroborated by human experience itself

Epistemology, empiricism? Philosophy doesn't run the world. It's hot air unless it can be tested against the real world, regardless how you "feel" about it.

As for empiricism, human experience, like human memory is about as unreliable as it gets.

The evidence is there for anyone who truly wants to look at and for it

What evidence? Your axiomatic a priori assumptions based on how the world "feels" to you?

[kosta50]

If someone chooses not to believe 2+2=4 that doesn't make it false

Because it can be demonstrated that in the real world 2+2=4. That's the only reason we know it's true. If I say the stove top is hot, and you don't believe me, touch it! And you will know.

You can't "prove" the entire creation wasn't created 5 minutes ago with everyone's memories created as the now are

That's right. I can't prove it and neither can you prove that the world was created, let alone by something you call God.

We can't "prove" any of the basic axioms of logic or the basic axioms of Euclidian geometry. But we accept them as true.

Because they can be shown to be true physically (on on paper, geometry). Otherwise they are theorem.

[kosta50]

What did the child suffer for? Was that justice? No

Only someone who thinks it's "just" to kill one's own children so they don't commit sin, or for someone who kills his own daughter for having shamed the family (mercy killing) can a sadistic killing of David's innocent son be justice.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

If atheism is true then there is no such thing as "moral standards" because there is no objective basis for morals or "right and wrong". There is only personal preference and social convention, both of which are relative and purely subjective. Without God the normative becomes the personal.

Exactly right!

WHY I BELIEVE IN GOD
by Cornelius Van Til

And here's Greg Bahnsen proving that...

"The proof of the Christian worldview is that, without it, you couldn't prove anything"

[circlecity]

"That's right. I can't prove it and neither can you prove that the world was created, let alone by something you call God."

Of course I can. It's been established for some time now. The Hoyle eternal steady state theory of the universe was rejected over 50 years ago. Science has established that the universe had a beginning. Whether one calls it the "big bang" or whater we know the Universe had a beginning and no modern theory of physics or cosmology can get around the singularity. Further we know that whatever begins to exist has a creator. The universe began to exist thus it had a creator. That creator is God. The Kalaam cosmological argument is irrufutable proof of the existance of God. Backed up by the best modern science has to offer.

[circlecity]

"Raise a human being from infancy in your back yard, give him water and food and shelter and let him fend for himself. He will lack all social normals of modesty, morals, language, reading and writing skills, etc. He will have no clue where he is, how he came about, or anything we know; he will be a beast."

That's nonsense. Please provide a single shred of evidence to prove this. Fraiser's "Golden Bough" found this not to be the case over 100 years ago. Basic moral values are innate - a society's socialization process is what works to suppress them. Thus, the muslim example is islamic society teaching to suppress the innate moral prohibition against killing one's sisters. The rest of the world which hasn't suppressed this basic self evident virtue sees this for the evil it is and condemns it, as do many many other muslims who have not relinquished their basic God given morality. If this were not the case nobody would care that muslims slaughter their wives and sisters.

"Besides, why only the Ten when, as a believer, you must believe that God wrote 613 of them in all and dictated them verbatim to Moses? How did Christians decide the rest weren't divine enough for them to follow?"

Because God in the person of Jesus explicitly repealed the ceremonial, dietary and theocratic Mosaic laws. It's called the new covenant. Jesus also retained the moral laws. Have you even read the Bible?

And where did Jesus say one can't have more than one wife?"

You have got to be kidding. Have you even read the Bible? In Matthew 19 Jesus specifically says marriage is one man and one woman. Adultery is always condemned by God in the Bible and never condoned. Further he sees polygamy as a form of adultery. David and Solomon were punished for their adultery/polygamy. And this most certainly was one of the reasons for the Babylonian exile. IN fact, adultery was so repugnant to God that he constantly used it as a metaphor for idolatry. To chase after other God was to go "whoring". He even made Hosea marry a prostitute to personify the adultery/idolatry link. He always condemned adultery and polygamy as the same thing. Again, he people didn't live up to his commands, as shown many times in scripture, and were punished for it.

"Epistemology, empiricism? Philosophy doesn't run the world. It's hot air unless it can be tested against the real world, regardless how you "feel" about it"

Do you even know what these words mean? Epistemology and philosophy are nothing but attempts to logically quantify real world observations. The scientific method is based on the logic which underlies them. Empiricism is the belief that the only things we can know are those thing we can observe and quantify with our five senses - this is very "real world" although not the exclusive real world. Empiricism and human experience are not synonymous, you need to learn the meanings of the terms I am using if you are going to maintain any credibility trying to respond to them.

[James C. Bennett]

For what it’s worth:

Stenger has argued that quantum mechanics disconfirms the first premise of the argument, that is, that something can not come into being from nothing. He postulates that such naturally occurring quantum events are exceptions to this premise, like the Casimir effect and radioactive decay.

Ghazali thought that it is at least theoretically possible for there to be an infinite regress, and that there is nothing that necessitates a first-cause simply by pure deductive reason. He thus undermines one of the essential premises of the first-cause argument.

Muhammad Iqbal also rejects the argument stating, “Logically speaking, then, the movement from the finite to the infinite as embodied in the cosmological argument is quite illegitimate; and the argument fails in toto.” For Iqbal the concept of the first uncaused cause is absurd, he continues: “It is, however, obvious that a finite effect can give only a finite cause, or at most an infinite series of such causes. To finish the series at a certain point, and to elevate one member of the series to the dignity of an un-caused first cause, is to set at naught the very law of causation on which the whole argument proceeds.”

Kant for example also rejects any cosmological proof on the grounds that it is nothing more than an ontological proof in disguise. He argued that any necessary object’s essence must involve existence, hence reason alone can define such a being, and the argument becomes quite similar to the ontological one in form, devoid of any empirical premises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument

Discuss!

[HarleyD]

There is nothing intrinsic in our nature that even approaches the Ten Commandments. Everything we know has to be taught.

I'd be interested in you providing a reference to a society that accepts murder, stealing or lying as a norm. I believe there has been numerous non-Christian studies showing there are basic moral values.

But I am curious. The Eastern Orthodox teaches that homosexuality is sinful. I would assume they believe murder is sinful. Now the question is how did they arrived at this conclusion besides social values? According to you they are taught it by the society which surrounds them. In which case means that it isn't sinful at all except by that society. So then are they teaching something as sinful when it really isn't sin at all? Are you saying that sin is not universal? This would present a problem for Eastern Orthodox.