Discussions with an Atheist – Part 9

Hope your trip was good sorry to hear about the burn though I like to rant so i just type and i’m again busy with moving, school, work, etc..so might take longer than before sorry. But a lot of good videos on I tunes or YouTube featuring: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, and Chris Hitchens. They bring up good points that are current and tested, biased? yes! but at least there biases comes from studies that can be reconstructed by anyone who has time and the resources.

You are basing your answers on writings/scriptures that have no validity…granted the outliers would skew the data for life span but for total amount of the human population and amount of disease, illness, etc. would have made these stats still unlikely…plus the whole biblical theology is nothing more than stories that have been reiterated….you say you know the age of these people, yet these people also believed in some of the most ridiculous things that even a child would not believe in today if they were informed properly witches, ghosts,etc.

Back then did they know about bacteria or viral infections? or was it bad spirits? Again for the not recording immediately you even did this experiment in boy scouts did you not? did the story in your case get skewed? and if not it can not be taken as fact since there has to be a statistical significance of (your choice) p>.01 or even better p>.001 to support/reject either the null or research hyp. (depending on what is being studied and which test is being used) N of 1 phenomenon!! 16-69 yrs is a fairly large gap in terms of human years so the likeliness of that 69 is highly unlikely still, but then take into account the error of the “creation” of earth being dated at 10,000 approx yrs ago…or is it 6,000 yrs….something along those ludicrous lines by creationists, but the real estimate is closer to 4,600,000,000 yrs via testable radio carbon dating, potasium-argon dating, Uranium-thorium dating, dendrochronology, etc.

Jones town massacre….hmmm one person making many believe his story…sounds like religion or any other endeavor with false stories and no hard evidence doesn’t it? Or any other religion that is in practice or ever was practiced…Power of suggestion is related to the social interaction theory…someone is suggested/told something by someone else (crack head) and are wanting acceptance or approval from the social stigma or even mass social acceptance from your “in-group” so they conform accordingly to become a part of the group…a majority of the human species wants to be accepted by a group or belong, to be loved, to be a “brother” (fictive kin) “sister”, etc.

The bible, army regimes, gangs, cults or any social groups seeking to ban together traditionally high jack these terms meant for survival of close relatives (you would want to save a family member supposedly before a stranger) this effectively makes that person seem like kin but it’s a fictive kin since they have no genetic traits to you (hopefully there isn’t just in case for inbreeding purposes). There might have been no reported mass hallucinations but you cannot say there wasn’t (back then information was recorded as meticulously as is now), but again with social acceptance people will conform nicely just to fit in. All in all the bible is not in it’s original writings (when ever that happened) and has been reiterated to suit the purposes of those using it, others religions have had to use some of the christian based faith stories and reiterated it to suit there purpose. The bible cannot be taken seriously as fact, literature maybe (english classes).

But a question for you Carl, as Dr. Dawkins would ask “if you were born in Norway in the times of the vikings would you have believed in Votan? or 2010 CE in India with Brahma? there is no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god in which the sheerest accident you were brought up and the only thing you were introduced to as a susceptible minded child”

Hey Friend – Glad to see your response. Thought I would stick with the previous format, so that an old man like me can keep his scattered thoughts in order.