I'm not necessarily happy with the chronology it follows as a direct analogy with historical evolution. Yes, unsuccessful mutations can be filtered out, but it is more likely that we started with a relatively small set of information which quickly expanded. Your analogy implies that we started with a very large set which was reduced through filtration to a smaller subset.

Okay, another version:
We start with a blank book; it has only a title. Copyists, copying this book, will make errors. After a while, the original book becomes unusable, so the new copyists have to make copies of previous copies. Normally their errors in copying go unnoticed. Sometimes they make the book noticeably worse, and those copies are disposed of.
However, very occasionally the book gets noticeably better. These copies are liked better, and so are copied more. Eventually, the older, not-so-good copies just disappear.

If you can get past the details (like how the book could change in "goodness"/"badness" were it a real book) I think it's an okay analogy.
Note: The previous note in parentheses does not refer to our books in the analogy. Our books are judged by, say, a large people with a variety of opinions, so many different types of books can "survive".

Kerm: I think my similar analogy will be more apt:

Evolution would be like you taking just a handful of letters, say 5 letters, and randomly assorting them for a few hundred million years until you get some valid words. Once you get some valid words you start randomly piecing those valid words together randomly for a few hundred more million years until you get some valid sentences. Once you've got a lot of valid words and sentences those can be arranged to form paragraphs. Every now and then though you may swap out a word or two at random. If this makes the sentence invalid may be thrown out. You can keep expanding this as long as you want. After a few billion years you have several books. Many of them contain similar sentences and they are all composed from the same set of words.

Words being the same base pairs of DNA.
Example of a very common "sentence" would be the FOXP2 gene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2). It is a DNA "sentence" a few thousand "words" long. It is found in EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL that we have decoded. Like my analogy, a few words vary from animal to animal. For example, in this few thousand "word" gene, the difference between it in humans and chimpanzees is something like 9 base pairs. Between humans and mice is a little over a dozen. The evidence for evolution is massive.

Edit: Calcdude posted another good analogy before this one. Mine doesn't take into account good or bad changes, merely changes over time. Combine our analogies and you're golden.

Okay... I see your point on teleology. I thought you were implying evolutionary design. But, now I believe I understand you meant intelligent design. My apologies.



Hmmm... Proof without proof... Interesting concept. Would that be called relativism?




Here are my exact words:

"Please don't knock anyone (I'm not saying you are) for believing that God created everything when your belief could be just as preposterous in another one's mind."

I never said they were equally ridiculous from one person's point of view. The intent of the sentence was to show that from each person's point of view, the other person's point of view was ridiculous. I guess there are people out there who think evolutionary design and intelligent design are both equally ridiculous -- but again, that was not my intent.

I'm gonna quote a hero of mine: "I believe there's a God, and I believe he's intelligent, but that doesn't mean it should be taught in science class."

A teleological argument for God is one that requires Him to exist as the only one capable of designing a specific thing (or class of things). It is most usually used (famously by William Paley) in defense of Intelligent Design/Creationism, though a similar argument is invoked by Muslims regarding the perfection of the poetic form of the Qur'an. Since most people who believe in Intelligent Design are either Christians or alien conspiracists, I guessed you were in the former category and thus that we were at least vaguely on the same side in this discussion as far belief in the existence of God (and specifically the Judeo-Christian God) is concerned, and thus intended my remarks as helpful critique rather than outright attack. Christians with a functional understanding of reason and science are all too rare, and our faith (if it is true) deserves our best as its representatives.


Relativism is the philosophy that there is no absolute truth, or in a weaker form, that we are unable to know it, and therefore all claims to the truth are equally valid (or invalid). While you did not such so many words, that philosophy (at least in the weaker form) is inherently present when you say that both parties are without proof and thus that the measure of truth is in the eye of the beholder. Such a thing is not valid a defense of your worldview (technically it could be called a sort of Tu quoque argument), but rather an argument that the other side is "at least as bad." My argument is that while we may not know the ultimate standard against which truth can be measured, that it does exist and that it can be iteratively approximated through the process of debate. Our job should then be to refine our beliefs to the closest approximation of Truth that we can.

Funnily enough, while making my dinner I thought of nearly the exact same analogy to improve upon my existing one, which I would hope means this is a moderately apt analogy.

Hmm, this makes me wonder why we are limiting our discussion to Modern religion and evolution. What about all the other theories/religions. There is Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Africal religion. I guess since Modern day religion is based off of those anyways we should include 'em as a factor in the discussion.

Why limit this discussion to Earthly religions? There's so much evidence that extra-terrestrials have visited us before, and even been a part of our history. It's entirely possible they're the ones who seeded Earth...

Scientolgy you is talking about?

Right, but just as modern scientists have disproven or refined earlier, naive scientific theories, followers of modern religions believe that their respective religions are the correct ones, at least for them as individuals. Hopefully that's accurate and objective.

This is pretty good way of putting it. Early religions (Norse/Greek/Roman/Celtic/whatever Pagan, early Vedic, Monotheistic, etc) have been refined by thousands of years of human experience and encounter with the divine into the forms we see today. There's no reason we can't talk about them, but they don't have the same impact on the modern world that Christianity or Islam or the Hindu religions have.


If by Earthly religions you mean religions that originated on Earth, I would say that we have no knowledge of religions that originated elsewhere, making it rather hard to talk about them.

You are likely reading this due to the fact that you are either.
a. Surprised to see this old thread revitalized.
b. Have not seen this thread yet and are surprised such has been bumped.
c. You want to continue a discussion that took place on IRC.

If you are in situation a you are probably rolling your eyes figuratively or maybe even actually doing such however the bumping of this thread was by request in favor of creating a new thread. Even though the argument I am about to present after the background and this preface does deviate ever so slightly it is relevant to this topic and does make referring to past arguments easier and it helps keep all religious arguments in one place.

Since event c is the most unlikely here is some background and what motivated the bump. We (the people who were on IRC at the time) were discussing various sources of news when a member made what appeared to be a satire impression of a religious based news medium. The mock religious based news medium was apparently posing a question to their readers "would Jesus be opposed to CIA torturing?". I quickly jumped in and made the claim that "Jesus" never existed and therefore it would be impossible for him to oppose him due to the fact that he never existed. I choice to not mention the obvious fact that there was no CIA when Jesus supposedly existed due to the fact that I knew that argument would not hold up well as they could make the claim that he will somehow "raise from the dead". Only by agreeing Jesus never existed can I say for certainty that it is impossible to answer the question. However I do really hold that viewpoint and I am not doing this for the sole purpose of answering the CIA torture question. When I made my claim it triggered a bit of a reaction that I did not expect but quickly died down. Later in the day I returned to cemetech only to find out that I "won" somehow yes the probability of that being a joke is high however none the less the discussion picked up from there. Again by the same suggester would made the claim that these kind of discussions are unsuitable for IRC discussion suggested that I take this to the forum so that is what I am doing now.

So now to the point: I will be starting with my argument and I admit while reading this thread I saw a few disappointing moments, I hope to avoid these so please forgive me if I trigger any emotional responses, I hope to stay on solely logical arguments and avoid emotion all together. This is of course a recommendation only in order to keep us sane.

What I did not see in any of these 19 pages is the question of Jesus's existence. That is no one wanted to stand up to the very foundation of Christian religion. So clearly this is a big deal to do in the eyes of some (I feel that this is not a big deal at all) and I feel that it deserves a good justification which is:

1. The lack of evidence during the time period in which "Jesus Christ" supposedly existed.

2. The so called evidence (written excerpts) that differ in content. What I mean by this compare Paul with Mark. Notice the drastic change in content. Also if he really were very important why was nothing written down during the time in which he supposedly lived. Many historical figures even of less significance during the same time period have written first hand accounts of their existence.

3. Roman's role in the creation of Jesus Christ. Rome you see was generally tolerant of religion and really for the most part had the goal of keeping as many gods feasible on their side. This is incomparable with Judaism's monotheist belief and as such caused conflict with Rome when they conquered them. They ended up creating a kind of "Red herring" one that is compatible with their existing religion in order to control the people.

4. The reuse of aspects from other religions. If "Jesus" were so great of a person and real, why is that there is such overlap with other religions and actually lets ask the question "why isn't everyone a Christian?". To answer this rhetorical question lets use some syllogism. I have personally witness church full of people praying for the conversion of the world, this taking place in a Roman Catholic church. "Jesus" claims that prayer is 100% effective.

By the way on a sidenote speaking of Matthew he is a clear fraud this article does a good job of exposing him as such http://www.holybooks.info/matthew.html
You see if Jesus were real and his claim about prayer were true, the prayer for the conversion of the world would work, however they do not work. I remain an atheist. One who actually is proud to be one and who accepts reason and science over religion and just to let everyone know there are people in this world who actually do not know they can become an atheist. I do not mean this in a literal sense, instead I mean they think they cannot do it, maybe they think someone will react poorly, disciplinary actions, whatever the case may be what you will find is that is just your imagination and it will not happen to you. Your imagination may have also made god possible for you and by deciding to question that fake being you are a step in the right direction. Don't stop there. You can do it! You can become an atheist.

If anyone has anything to ask or discuss in more in more detail please do so here. I will be glad to answer questions and/or respond to arguments.

I'm pleasantly surprised by this post. Carry on.

First and foremost, by "evidence during the time period" I assume you mean a historical record. I can't imagine you would be talking about any other type of evidence. And to counter this, I would say that there are many historical records of Jesus' existence. First and foremost, the Bible itself is a historical record. The four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are all historical records of Jesus' life. Aside from the Bible, which will obviously be dismissed by some, there are non-biblical records of Jesus Christ's life, or existence at least, ironically often written by people who were hostile towards Christians. Many records, including three of the gospels, mention the darkness that occurred when Jesus was crucified. This is mentioned in the bible in Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, and Luke 23:44-45. This period of darkness was mentioned by several other ancient writers, among them Thallus (a secular historian whose works are lost but often quoted), Cornelius Tacitus (a Roman historian who mentions the crucifixion as well), and Phlegon of Tralles in his work The Olympiades. While it is true that these records are (mostly) mentioning the darkness that happened that day, there are records also of Jesus Christ's existance. The writings of a Thallus (previously mentioned) and Phlegon are referenced by Julius Africanas who quoted them around 220AD and mention the existance of Jesus Christ. Josephus, a Jewish writer acknowledged the existance of a wise man called Jesus, although he did not claim that he had any divine authority. Many ancient Jewish documents mention the existance of Jesus, one of them below:
"It was taught: On the day before the Passover they hanged Jesus. A herald went before him for forty days (proclaiming), "He will be stoned, because he practiced magic and enticed Israel to go astray. Let anyone who knows anything in his favor come forward and plead for him." But nothing was found in his favor, and they hanged him on the day before the Passover." (b. Sanhedrin 43a)

With many non-biblical sources mentioning the existance of Jesus, and no possible way to prove the contrary, I would say there is plenty of evidence for the existance of at least a wise man Jesus Christ who was executed.


I'm not sure how to further address this point, nor do I know exactly what you mean by "compare Paul with Mark." Regardless, you seem to have excluded all FOUR gospels from being "written first hand accounts" and so there is not much more I can say here that I have not already said.


I'm not quite sure what you mean by this point, but I would have to completely disagree with your statement "Rome you see was generally tolerant of religion". Rather than elaborate on this point, however, I would like to direct you to somewhat-neutral Wikipedia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Christian_policies_in_the_Roman_Empire) and most certainly secular National Geographic (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/timeline_09.html) articles that detail the persecutions Christians faced in this time.


Since you have taken the liberty to outsource opinionated articles, so will I. I would like to direct you to https://answersingenesis.org/jesus-christ/jesus-is-god/seeds-of-dissent/ for more on related matters.

I would also like to point out that this side note argues that Jesus does not exist because he allegedly said something incorrect. I will not interpret this verse or others like it right now, the article above should do a good job of that.


In addition, I seem to recall ProgrammerNerd saying he would leave emotion out of this as much as possible, which he clearly did not do in this post.

This is nice and all, but shouldn't you people be applying for college or something? It's that time of year!

My take on everything- What is the alternative? If one does believe, and ends up being correct in the end, then what does that mean for the opposite side? Just a thought...

Well, if I'm correct in my representations of everyone: it means for the Christian that all non-Christians will be in hell, for the atheist it means all atheists and non-atheists will have the same fate.

What about people who are calculatorians?

My 2 cents:
1) The historical Jesus will most likely never be known. Religious interpretation has erased the real Jesus and replaced Him with a more sanitized version.
2) Just because you don't believe in the Bible's stories does not mean that one should not believe in the good news. Take the Bible, and use its good teachings to make your life better.