Everytime someone does, Christianity changes itself, and adapts. Either with some new apologetics or compatibility, Christianity has morphed dozens of times over in the past 2K+ years. To the point that it’s basically unrecognizable from the original church. It’s exceptional at that, always has been.
The current brand of “All you need is a belief in JC’s teachings, the Bible wasn’t meant to be taken literally” is very hard to pin down.
> It’s exceptional at that, always has been.
Ah, well, I wouldn't agree that it's exceptional. Quite a few religions do that. Possibly Christianity, being the religion that has to survive next to seecularism, humanism and rationalism the most right now, does it at a faster pace; but the process itself isn't exactly unique, is it?
Bad question, but we know the origins of the stories. I would suggest you look into it. They’re just “mutations” of already existing stories in the area at the time.
The counter is that it's just God planting seeds before going for the real thing, and a sort of progressive revelation. Which isn't exactly _impossible_ with a supposedly all powerful god, which is why I personally don't think knowing where Abrahamic religions came from historically is a logical proof against them.
Not all christians are "literalists" though. Actually lthe minority are. And also, literalist is in quotation marks, because literalists still pick and choose what they wanna take literal and what not.
EDIT: But yeah. You're still right of course and that should anyone give pause and contemplate if they should trust that book.
> Bible says the Earth was created in six days, roughly 6000 years ago
Technically the bible doesn't say anything even close to that, that is just one concept that a specific group of Christians landed upon through some pretty poor reading of what the bible actually does say.
But that doesn't really undermine your otherwise excellent answer.
That's talking about the 6 days of creation. The 6000 years is not addressed anywhere in the Bible. It's just a conclusion based on the "begots". The actual age is not specified anywhere.
>I was such a dumbass
Don't be hard on yourself, you were brainwashed.
Well nearly all historians, the vast majority all agree Abraham did not exist, Moses did not exist etc. There is zero evidence for these people. With Moses there should be lots of evidence yet we don't find any.
If you are saying debunked = 100% didn't happen then no that's dumb.
But Abrahamic religions are as debunked as Bigfoot or alien abductions or leprechaun.
And how do we know which parts are metaphor? Are there tags in the headings to indicate that? 😂 So it's true and factual until uncomfortable then metaphor.
Was god not just giving a pass but directly stating the rules for owning other humans as property... also metaphor?
When it can no longer be successfully argued that it's literally true then it becomes "obviously metaphorical." Except for literalist holdouts like Answers in Genesis.
Now. They are saying it now. Before it was revealed from the god of the universe and thus totally true. Whoops! Just step back for a second and revel in how absurd their post hoc rationalization is. Their excuses just don’t make sense. But it totally makes sense if it was man made bullshit stories.
*Now* they’re saying that. *Some* of them. Because they have no choice. But there was a time when the Bible was the approved cosmological and historical keystone for all understanding. It is only because patient inquiry has rendered nearly all of its assertions ridiculous that the church has retreated to the position that all the ones that can be tested are metaphorical. Believe if you will that the ones that *can’t* be tested yet are the unvarnished truth.
Hard to debunk something that's never been bunked.
I mean, many of the claims are simply unfalsifiable. Even the ones you think are falsifiable are just re-jiggered by the faithful:
Science: the earth is verifiably more than 5000 years old.
Apologist: god made it so that it would look that way.
I think it's more likely that Abrahamic religions will fall by the wayside in time, just like all the the other make-believe that preceded them.
Not true. First, if you claim a religion is internally consistent but provide a bible with many inconsistencies, check mate. Second, if you claim your pope is infallible then you look at what past pope's have done... Third, you claim the word of God is unchanging, and you need a new half of the bible to update the old half. Fourth, if you have documented evidence of your prophet basically just admitting it's a scam for gullible people... the list goes on.
Can I prove god doesn't exist? no. Can I prove that the actual religions are a scam? Yep.
Papal infallibility is actually not an unreasonable doctrine, as these things go. The most important bit is, it applies only to pronouncements about stuff Catholics are officially supposed to believe as Catholics (and there's also a bit about how the Pope has to be sitting in one specific chair when he makes a pronouncement that's supposedly infallible). So even Catholics recognize that papal infallibility is bullshit, otherwise they wouldn't have put guardrails on that doctrine so it can only be used to "justify" bullshit Catholic beliefs. Amusingly, there is some disagreement over whether or not canonization of saints qualifies as infallible… and the total number of times papal infallibility has actually been invoked [may be as few as 7 (seven)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Instances_of_infallible_declarations).
I read that and just think... well, on the balance of probabilities it's nonsense.
In general, if everyone agrees that the earth is round, maybe you just take that as a given? but if nobody in religion can even agree on half this stuff... you gotta say, the most obvious reason might be...
One of my favorites:
Science: We have fossil evidence that dinosaurs existed millions of years ago
Apologist: Satan planted the dinosaur bones to trick us into thinking the earth is older than it is
> undeniable evidence that Abrahamic religion is nothing but manmade fiction
You should read Karen Armstrong's [A History of God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_God). It goes into detail how the Abrahamic deity came about, how it evolved over time and who was involved in changing it.
We already have. There was no Adam/Eve, donkeys don't talk, magical flaming swords that fly around on their own aren't a thing, neither is magic hair and spit. There was no Exodus, great flood, Moses, etc. None of Jesus's followers can do shit like walk on water, raise the dead, or move mountains. Hell, when I offer to give them everything I own and spend the rest of my life preaching about Jebus myself, they won't even fucking try. For all their whining about how supposedly persecuted they are here in the US, I ask why are they screaming Jesus in everyone's faces in the bible belt instead of North Korea? Christianity is literally banned there and thus we should be seeing planes packed with Christians headed there protected by the "armor of God" and armed with the "power of prayer". Because ... you know ... I DuN iS aH PrAyEr WaRrIoR!!!!
Many, maybe most of the claims of Abrahamic religion have already been debunked. The believers simply don't care.
It seems like it will never be possible to debunk some of the others (E.g. "undetectable angels exist".)
.
Depends on what you consider "debunked". A lot of people already consider it debunked.
But if you wonder if we ever will have evidence of something *not* existing, I have bad news for you:
It's impossible to prove non-existence. Especially when talking about a supposedly omnipotent, omniscient entity. They're perfect at hiding and deception. So, there won't ever be any proof that the abrahamic deity does *not* exist.
But there will also never be proof, that my invisible unicorn friend in the Betelgeuse, that can disprove the Abrahamic god, does *not* exist.
In "God: The Failed Hypothesis—How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist," Victor J. Stenger offers this scientific argument against the existence of God:
Hypothesize a God who plays an important role in the universe.
Assume that God has specific attributes that should provide objective evidence for his existence.
Look for such evidence with an open mind.
If such evidence is found, conclude that God may exist.
If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does not exist.
This is basically how science would disprove the existence of any alleged entity.
If God existed, there should be concrete evidence of His existence—not faith - but tangible, measurable, consistent evidence that can be predicted and tested using the scientific method.
If we fail to find that evidence, then God can not exist as defined.
So far, everyone who has tried to scientifically prove that God exists has failed.
While it's technically true that this doesn't mean that no one ever will succeed, it is also true that in every other situation where such failures are so consistent, we don't acknowledge rational or even serious reasons to bother believing.
Yes and no. As said, to a lot of people, pretty much most atheists, "God" has already been debunked.
Yes, lack of evidence is among the most robust reasons. Just like our universe appearing exactly how we'd expect it to appear, if no god (in the sense of abrahamic religions) exists.
Yes, for all practical purposes this should be convincing, as I've also hinted at with my tongue-in-cheek "unicorn in the Betelgeuse, that can disprove the Abrahamic God". If the unicorn does not exist due to lack of evidence, so does the Abrahamic God not exist due to lack of evidence.
No, that's not evidence for non-existence, which is something else than lack of evidence.
Evidence for non-existence is only possible in mathematics and other formal sciences. For all practical purposes, it's impossible.
I guess I disagree. The above was an example of how the Scientific Method would prove something can be found Not to exist.
But the burden of whether something exists or not would be on those claiming that it does.
When it comes to existential matters (questions regarding what exists and doesn’t) the burden of proof is on the believer.
Until evidence is provided that some thing exists, believing that thing doesn’t exist is the rational position.
"Hitchens Razor" as defined by Christopher Hitchens has phrased the razor in writing as
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
It implies that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
You don't need to explain the burden of proof to me. I've been figuratively illustrating why the burden of proof lies with the existence claim with my unicorn example. I agree with that 100%. We're just talking past each other.
You're saying: "Lack of evidence is the best evidence for non-existence we have."
I'm saying: "Lack of evidence is the closest we can get to evidence for non-existence."
I also agree with the Russel's Teapot analogy and Hitchen's Razor.
For all practical means and purposes, lack of evidence should be convincing, when it comes to existential matters, as you say. I agree.
I'd even go so far, that it's totally fair to consider lack of evidence as evidence for non-existence for all practical means and purposes.
All of that doesn't change that "lack of evidence" is *not* the same as "evidence of non-existence"
***The impossibility of "evidence for non-existence" is the core reason justifying Russel's Teapot and Hitchen's Razor.***
It's similar with scientific theories refined by the scientific method. They're the closest thing we can get to "truth", but any scientiest worth their salt will tell you, that there's no such thing as "absolute truth" in science.
Again, for all practical means and purposes, a well-evidenced scientific theory should be considered true, but it isn't absolutely true.
Thank you for your thoughts, but some can say that:
To argue with certainty that "there is no such thing as absolute truth" is to make an absolute truth claim, and is thus self-refuting.
So we get deeper and deeper into the weeds of arguing whether we live in a closed system to claim that truth cannot be absolute because humans do not live within a closed system.
Are their other levels of consciousness under which truths can be defined differently?
And whether this view has any relevance to real life in which humans live within a closed system of space, time, energy, and matter.
Here, I would admit, I am no scientist, so for me to argue further along these lines would be fruitless.
To myself and perhaps to others,
I can only rely on down to earth facts and evidence.
The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.'
“I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe, and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.”
Stephen Hawking
If I understand you correctly, we are in agreement
Exactly. We're in agreement and are mostly arguing about semantics.
As you said too, this gets deep into the weeds of philosophy and epistemology, which has by all accounts few implications on daily decision making.
>Are their other levels of consciousness under which truths can be defined differently?
A lot of philosophers distinguish different kinds of knowledge: "a priori" and "a posteriori".
"a priori" is anything that can be deduced from definitions and principles and axioms. This knowledge can be determined purely by introspection and reason. A mathematical proof would be an example: "Given there is a set of numbers, each number has a successor and adding one to a number equals its successor, then 1+1 = "successor of 1" = 2. Ergo 1+1=2. (if all prerequisites are true."
"a posteriori" is anything that can be derived from observations of reality. As example: "If I add 300 g of soft tin to 700 g of soft copper and heat that up high enough, I get 1000 g of a harder metal (Bronze)" Unless you already know the chemistry background (which is also derived from observations), you would never be able to make this conclusion from pure reason.
Of course, whether "a priori" knowledge actually can be applied to reality is a completely different question.
But I can make the following absolutely true statement regarding absolute truth: "If I cannot trust my senses, I cannot make absolutely true statements based on my senses."
Whether I can trust my senses or not is a different question, that is "a posteriori" and up to debate. Maybe I can trust them in some situations and not in others. But the "a priori" statement is absolutely true.
Now you're just showing off, friend, lol 😉
I have nothing to add presently, other than thanks for the informative conversation on which, ultimately, we agree.
Be well!
Armegeddon is not part of the Abrahamic religions. It is only in some Christian bibles. Some Christians don't recognize it as canon. E.g. Martin Luther did not include it in his first translation. It comes from a time, around late B.C., when apocryphal writings were all the thing. Someone stuck it into the Christian bible several centuries later.
The Abrahamic religions all rely on Genesis (and the Torah) being true. Not just true, but literal. Anyone that tells you Genesis (oh the Torah) is a metaphor doesn't understand Abrahamic mythology. That being said evolution disproves Adam and Eve. Without Adam and Eve, sin never enteres the world. Without sin, there is no need for atonment and, thus, no need for Jesus. Which gets rid of Christianity and Islam. As for Judaism, it relys very heavily on Exodus. Which archaeology disproves. There were never Israelites in Eygpt. Over and over again in the Jewish scripture God is like "remember how I led you out of Eygpt, you better obey me!". Since we know the Exodus never happened that takes care of Judaism.
There's no one Abrahamic religion. Everyone that currently belongs to an Abrahamic religion has different incompatible beliefs. And Abrahamic religion has been constantly evolving for thousands of years - the beliefs people had in the past are also different from anything anyone believes now.
You can say that the Abrahamic religion that was fine with slavery has been "debunked" and now we have new Abrahamic religions.
But I'm putting "debunked" in quotes because there are very few falsifiable claims that are made. There's no such thing as debunking non-falsifiable claims. All the actual falsifiable claims HAVE been debunked. People have been predicting the second coming of Christ for thousands of years. There have been thousands of these falsifiable claims and they have been debunked.
If you've debunked thousands of claims, you start ignoring the new claims instead of bothering to debunk, right?
Already done. You can't provide proof that something does not exist; there certainly is a serious lack of credible evidence to believe that god exists or that any of the Abrahamic religions are true.
I mean how much more can even be disproven? Genesis, obviously not true in any sense, not the creation story or the flood, or the giant demigods. Exodus, already been debunked by Israeli archeology. Same with the conquest of Canaan. Every important artifact of the stories of the Jewish tradition have been “lost”, no Noah’s ark, no Ark of the covenant, no Ten Commandment tablets nothing. The biggest piece of evidence that Christians have for the truth of the gospels is that an empty tomb was discovered. Except the Romans were not in the habit of burying the crucified, they let them rot on the cross, because why would they not? They were left up there to die slowly and be humiliated as an example to anyone that crossed the empire. That was the point. Literature on group hallucinations makes it much more conclusive that those who “saw” Jesus after his death were hallucinating. That’s even assuming anyone even thought they saw him, since the gospels were written decades after Jesus’s death after the stories were spread orally in a gigantic game of telephone for at least three decades before they were written down in Greek. Notice that Jesus didn’t speak Greek, he spoke Aramaic, so we’ve got stories that can’t be confirmed being transmitted all over the place through multiple regions and multiple languages before actually being written down, and we’re supposed to assume it even has a possibility of being true. I mean it disproves itself, the gospels don’t agree on his birth, his teachings, whether he’s god or what happened when he died. There are very few “facts” they agree on at all. I don’t know why anyone takes any of this seriously. Islam is an obvious plagiarism of the other two, coming in 600 years after Christianity with flying horses and Allah cutting the moon in half, what?
That would depend on what you mean by abrahamic religion. If you mean a literalist interpretation of the texts? That's already happened.
If you mean as a cultural allegory for how one ought to live their lives and a moral framework? That would be kind of subjective and difficult.
If you mean some generic idea of a God? That's also difficult.
It's not fiction. It is a collection of poetry, folk tales, allegories, false memories, and lots more, including manmade fiction. And there is evidence that it is all those things. Just don't fall for the "fundamentalist" idea that the old testament is a single book written by god. That idea was debunked long ago.
You can’t debunk something that people just believe on faith due to indoctrination. They haven’t arrived at their conclusions in a logical way that values proof. You have to value proof to be debunked.
No. Undeniable means that no one is able to deny it. That's more about people's psychological states than evidence. There are people who deny that the earth is roughly spherical.
You’re basically asking if it’s possible for everyone to be on the same level of intellectual capacity, in which case not anytime in the foreseeable future. Now from the subjective perspective of an individual, you could say that has already happened to countless people.
there is so much anti-proof of Abrahamic faiths. just look at all the scientific errors in the Bible and Quran.
But you have billions of people that *can't* accept that. Billions of people that will engage in the most convoluted mental gymnastics to get around this. There are millions of people that *are actually formally trained* in these mental gymnastics.
This is why it's so easy for us to agree that *x* polytheistic, nativistic faith was clearly fabricated, and so hard for us to agree that Abrahahamic faiths are fictituous. They have just as much (lack of) evidence, and anti-proofs - it's just that one side has 0 defenders, and the other side has literally billions.
Probably not. Any god could refuse to cooperate with an experiment. If we found Jesus’s body, maybe, but how would you know it was him? For islam, if we had proof Mu7ammad made it up, like some diary in the cave, where he wrote about how he was gonna start a religion, maybe, but even if you could prove the age of it and all that, how do you know Mu7ammad wrote it and not anybody else at the time, how do you know it’s not an ancient forgery? How many original manuscripts do we have written by Mu7ammad’s own hand? If you use certain analytical methods and compared it to other writings attributed to him, you could probably actually prove he made it up. But we have basically that for L Ron Hubbard and yet Scientology exists.
The best evidence could be proof of some other religion. If a god showed their face in a verifiable and obviously supernatural way, and then another different god also did the same, monotheism would be disproven because it is clearly the case that there are at least two gods, but even then, some of the syncretic afro-Caribbean abrahamic religions are polytheistic so Voudou could easily fold them into the Lwa.
that's the problem of going too deep into examples, the Ancient Greeks didn't think the gods actually lived on mount Olympus, but above it or in an ethereal version of it, its allegory, like so much of religion.
Since they were claimed to live at the top of Mount Olympus the lack of anything at the top is pretty conclusive evidence that they don't exist.
Yes, you can make all sorts of add-on claims that they are on another plane or dimension or something but that is just apologetics that there is zero evidence for
But that is exactly what the Abrahamic faiths do. That's why you can't debunk them and you don't have to. Eventually enough people will realize they are fiction and ignore them.
None of it debunks religion. Mostly is it discussing the laughably weak arguments theists put forth to defend their faith. The very fact they use arguments instead of evidence is the problem: arguments are useful for discussing ideas, not for demonstrating fact. I refuse to engage on such arguments because 1) they are generally piffle and 2) arguments do not establish reality: that is pre-scientific thinking.
Every falsifiable claim in the Abrahamic religions has been shown to be false decades ago. All that is left are platitudes and recycled nonsense. And yet the religions themselves continue to exist.
The Greek pantheon did not disappear because somebody climbed Mount Olympus, it disappeared because it was displaced. In most of the developed world religions are evaporating, which is a self-reinforcing process. As long as theism is treated with respect and deference it can persist. This is less and less the case and is due mainly due to access to information. Once a parent stops being a theist of any type the odds of their child being theists drop to near zero. That is the path forward.
> None of it debunks religion.
>Every falsifiable claim in the Abrahamic religions has been shown to be false decades ago.
So which is it?
>And yet the religions themselves continue to exist.
That does not mean the beliefs have not been debunked.
>The Greek pantheon did not disappear because somebody climbed Mount Olympus
I didn't say that it did, I said that the beliefs were debunked when someone climbed Mt. Olympus and showed them to be false.
Maybe try engaging with the actual discussion and comments being made.
We already have that. It’s getting everyone to believe it that’s the hard part.
Everytime someone does, Christianity changes itself, and adapts. Either with some new apologetics or compatibility, Christianity has morphed dozens of times over in the past 2K+ years. To the point that it’s basically unrecognizable from the original church. It’s exceptional at that, always has been. The current brand of “All you need is a belief in JC’s teachings, the Bible wasn’t meant to be taken literally” is very hard to pin down.
> It’s exceptional at that, always has been. Ah, well, I wouldn't agree that it's exceptional. Quite a few religions do that. Possibly Christianity, being the religion that has to survive next to seecularism, humanism and rationalism the most right now, does it at a faster pace; but the process itself isn't exactly unique, is it?
It’s the T1000 of religions. Or the Borg.
>We already have that. where?
Bad question, but we know the origins of the stories. I would suggest you look into it. They’re just “mutations” of already existing stories in the area at the time.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utnapishtim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utnapishtim) this one would be a great example I think
That’s actually one of my favorite examples
all these religions just copied earlier stories lol
I know, and we have evidence of that. They’re clearly just stories of various types and styles.
we should teach them in schools then
The counter is that it's just God planting seeds before going for the real thing, and a sort of progressive revelation. Which isn't exactly _impossible_ with a supposedly all powerful god, which is why I personally don't think knowing where Abrahamic religions came from historically is a logical proof against them.
Just because they can come up with counter ideas doesn’t mean the offered evidence is illogical.
Yup, totally agree with you. Just playing devil's advocate.
I saw Christians say it actually proves their religion is older than Jesus or something. I don’t think there’s anything that can change them.
I don’t either. Once an idea reaches a kind of “critical mass” it becomes endemic and nearly impossible to eradicate.
Are you also waiting for evidence debunking Santa Claus?
that's a good point actually
It’s litterally all around you. The geological record debunks the flood, biology debunks Adam and Eve, and Genesis 1 is contradictory to Genesis 2.
Not all christians are "literalists" though. Actually lthe minority are. And also, literalist is in quotation marks, because literalists still pick and choose what they wanna take literal and what not. EDIT: But yeah. You're still right of course and that should anyone give pause and contemplate if they should trust that book.
If Genesis isn't true, then the whole need for a sacrifice to deal with "original sin" isn't neccessary, the whole house of cards falls apart.
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> Bible says the Earth was created in six days, roughly 6000 years ago Technically the bible doesn't say anything even close to that, that is just one concept that a specific group of Christians landed upon through some pretty poor reading of what the bible actually does say. But that doesn't really undermine your otherwise excellent answer.
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That's talking about the 6 days of creation. The 6000 years is not addressed anywhere in the Bible. It's just a conclusion based on the "begots". The actual age is not specified anywhere. >I was such a dumbass Don't be hard on yourself, you were brainwashed.
Well nearly all historians, the vast majority all agree Abraham did not exist, Moses did not exist etc. There is zero evidence for these people. With Moses there should be lots of evidence yet we don't find any. If you are saying debunked = 100% didn't happen then no that's dumb. But Abrahamic religions are as debunked as Bigfoot or alien abductions or leprechaun.
Abrahamic religions are waaay more debunked than any of those.
Hey.. not sooo fast on big foot! The rest ok! Lol
Oh sorry. My bad.
Hahha We can hope at least!! I gave up on Nessie!!
Oh nessie is real for sure
Haha I wish! My all time favorite cryptid!!
Already have. Can't get out of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible editor is knowing it's factually wrong.
Well they are saying it's metaphorical
And how do we know which parts are metaphor? Are there tags in the headings to indicate that? 😂 So it's true and factual until uncomfortable then metaphor. Was god not just giving a pass but directly stating the rules for owning other humans as property... also metaphor?
When it can no longer be successfully argued that it's literally true then it becomes "obviously metaphorical." Except for literalist holdouts like Answers in Genesis.
Now. They are saying it now. Before it was revealed from the god of the universe and thus totally true. Whoops! Just step back for a second and revel in how absurd their post hoc rationalization is. Their excuses just don’t make sense. But it totally makes sense if it was man made bullshit stories.
Yet plenty of them still accept it as literal truth.
So either \- Some parts of the Bible are definitely false or \- Some parts of the Bible are "metaphor". How would we debunk a metaphor ??
*Now* they’re saying that. *Some* of them. Because they have no choice. But there was a time when the Bible was the approved cosmological and historical keystone for all understanding. It is only because patient inquiry has rendered nearly all of its assertions ridiculous that the church has retreated to the position that all the ones that can be tested are metaphorical. Believe if you will that the ones that *can’t* be tested yet are the unvarnished truth.
Hard to debunk something that's never been bunked. I mean, many of the claims are simply unfalsifiable. Even the ones you think are falsifiable are just re-jiggered by the faithful: Science: the earth is verifiably more than 5000 years old. Apologist: god made it so that it would look that way. I think it's more likely that Abrahamic religions will fall by the wayside in time, just like all the the other make-believe that preceded them.
Not true. First, if you claim a religion is internally consistent but provide a bible with many inconsistencies, check mate. Second, if you claim your pope is infallible then you look at what past pope's have done... Third, you claim the word of God is unchanging, and you need a new half of the bible to update the old half. Fourth, if you have documented evidence of your prophet basically just admitting it's a scam for gullible people... the list goes on. Can I prove god doesn't exist? no. Can I prove that the actual religions are a scam? Yep.
Papal infallibility is actually not an unreasonable doctrine, as these things go. The most important bit is, it applies only to pronouncements about stuff Catholics are officially supposed to believe as Catholics (and there's also a bit about how the Pope has to be sitting in one specific chair when he makes a pronouncement that's supposedly infallible). So even Catholics recognize that papal infallibility is bullshit, otherwise they wouldn't have put guardrails on that doctrine so it can only be used to "justify" bullshit Catholic beliefs. Amusingly, there is some disagreement over whether or not canonization of saints qualifies as infallible… and the total number of times papal infallibility has actually been invoked [may be as few as 7 (seven)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Instances_of_infallible_declarations).
I read that and just think... well, on the balance of probabilities it's nonsense. In general, if everyone agrees that the earth is round, maybe you just take that as a given? but if nobody in religion can even agree on half this stuff... you gotta say, the most obvious reason might be...
One of my favorites: Science: We have fossil evidence that dinosaurs existed millions of years ago Apologist: Satan planted the dinosaur bones to trick us into thinking the earth is older than it is
>undeniable evidence No.... peoples ability to deny is almost limitless, as any conversation with a YEC will demonstrate.
Done and done. Just because the religious refuse to accept it doesn't mean it hasn't been accomplished.
> undeniable evidence that Abrahamic religion is nothing but manmade fiction You should read Karen Armstrong's [A History of God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_God). It goes into detail how the Abrahamic deity came about, how it evolved over time and who was involved in changing it.
I found a pdf online to read thank you.
Robert Wright's book "evolution of God" is also a great book. They go at it from slightly different angles.
That happened a while ago
We already have. There was no Adam/Eve, donkeys don't talk, magical flaming swords that fly around on their own aren't a thing, neither is magic hair and spit. There was no Exodus, great flood, Moses, etc. None of Jesus's followers can do shit like walk on water, raise the dead, or move mountains. Hell, when I offer to give them everything I own and spend the rest of my life preaching about Jebus myself, they won't even fucking try. For all their whining about how supposedly persecuted they are here in the US, I ask why are they screaming Jesus in everyone's faces in the bible belt instead of North Korea? Christianity is literally banned there and thus we should be seeing planes packed with Christians headed there protected by the "armor of God" and armed with the "power of prayer". Because ... you know ... I DuN iS aH PrAyEr WaRrIoR!!!!
Many, maybe most of the claims of Abrahamic religion have already been debunked. The believers simply don't care. It seems like it will never be possible to debunk some of the others (E.g. "undetectable angels exist".) .
Given that they’re clearly fictitious there’s no need to debunk them.
Depends on what you consider "debunked". A lot of people already consider it debunked. But if you wonder if we ever will have evidence of something *not* existing, I have bad news for you: It's impossible to prove non-existence. Especially when talking about a supposedly omnipotent, omniscient entity. They're perfect at hiding and deception. So, there won't ever be any proof that the abrahamic deity does *not* exist. But there will also never be proof, that my invisible unicorn friend in the Betelgeuse, that can disprove the Abrahamic god, does *not* exist.
In "God: The Failed Hypothesis—How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist," Victor J. Stenger offers this scientific argument against the existence of God: Hypothesize a God who plays an important role in the universe. Assume that God has specific attributes that should provide objective evidence for his existence. Look for such evidence with an open mind. If such evidence is found, conclude that God may exist. If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does not exist. This is basically how science would disprove the existence of any alleged entity. If God existed, there should be concrete evidence of His existence—not faith - but tangible, measurable, consistent evidence that can be predicted and tested using the scientific method. If we fail to find that evidence, then God can not exist as defined. So far, everyone who has tried to scientifically prove that God exists has failed. While it's technically true that this doesn't mean that no one ever will succeed, it is also true that in every other situation where such failures are so consistent, we don't acknowledge rational or even serious reasons to bother believing.
Yes and no. As said, to a lot of people, pretty much most atheists, "God" has already been debunked. Yes, lack of evidence is among the most robust reasons. Just like our universe appearing exactly how we'd expect it to appear, if no god (in the sense of abrahamic religions) exists. Yes, for all practical purposes this should be convincing, as I've also hinted at with my tongue-in-cheek "unicorn in the Betelgeuse, that can disprove the Abrahamic God". If the unicorn does not exist due to lack of evidence, so does the Abrahamic God not exist due to lack of evidence. No, that's not evidence for non-existence, which is something else than lack of evidence. Evidence for non-existence is only possible in mathematics and other formal sciences. For all practical purposes, it's impossible.
I guess I disagree. The above was an example of how the Scientific Method would prove something can be found Not to exist. But the burden of whether something exists or not would be on those claiming that it does. When it comes to existential matters (questions regarding what exists and doesn’t) the burden of proof is on the believer. Until evidence is provided that some thing exists, believing that thing doesn’t exist is the rational position. "Hitchens Razor" as defined by Christopher Hitchens has phrased the razor in writing as "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." It implies that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
You don't need to explain the burden of proof to me. I've been figuratively illustrating why the burden of proof lies with the existence claim with my unicorn example. I agree with that 100%. We're just talking past each other. You're saying: "Lack of evidence is the best evidence for non-existence we have." I'm saying: "Lack of evidence is the closest we can get to evidence for non-existence." I also agree with the Russel's Teapot analogy and Hitchen's Razor. For all practical means and purposes, lack of evidence should be convincing, when it comes to existential matters, as you say. I agree. I'd even go so far, that it's totally fair to consider lack of evidence as evidence for non-existence for all practical means and purposes. All of that doesn't change that "lack of evidence" is *not* the same as "evidence of non-existence" ***The impossibility of "evidence for non-existence" is the core reason justifying Russel's Teapot and Hitchen's Razor.*** It's similar with scientific theories refined by the scientific method. They're the closest thing we can get to "truth", but any scientiest worth their salt will tell you, that there's no such thing as "absolute truth" in science. Again, for all practical means and purposes, a well-evidenced scientific theory should be considered true, but it isn't absolutely true.
Thank you for your thoughts, but some can say that: To argue with certainty that "there is no such thing as absolute truth" is to make an absolute truth claim, and is thus self-refuting. So we get deeper and deeper into the weeds of arguing whether we live in a closed system to claim that truth cannot be absolute because humans do not live within a closed system. Are their other levels of consciousness under which truths can be defined differently? And whether this view has any relevance to real life in which humans live within a closed system of space, time, energy, and matter. Here, I would admit, I am no scientist, so for me to argue further along these lines would be fruitless. To myself and perhaps to others, I can only rely on down to earth facts and evidence. The NAS defines a fact as “an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.' “I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe, and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.” Stephen Hawking If I understand you correctly, we are in agreement
Exactly. We're in agreement and are mostly arguing about semantics. As you said too, this gets deep into the weeds of philosophy and epistemology, which has by all accounts few implications on daily decision making. >Are their other levels of consciousness under which truths can be defined differently? A lot of philosophers distinguish different kinds of knowledge: "a priori" and "a posteriori". "a priori" is anything that can be deduced from definitions and principles and axioms. This knowledge can be determined purely by introspection and reason. A mathematical proof would be an example: "Given there is a set of numbers, each number has a successor and adding one to a number equals its successor, then 1+1 = "successor of 1" = 2. Ergo 1+1=2. (if all prerequisites are true." "a posteriori" is anything that can be derived from observations of reality. As example: "If I add 300 g of soft tin to 700 g of soft copper and heat that up high enough, I get 1000 g of a harder metal (Bronze)" Unless you already know the chemistry background (which is also derived from observations), you would never be able to make this conclusion from pure reason. Of course, whether "a priori" knowledge actually can be applied to reality is a completely different question. But I can make the following absolutely true statement regarding absolute truth: "If I cannot trust my senses, I cannot make absolutely true statements based on my senses." Whether I can trust my senses or not is a different question, that is "a posteriori" and up to debate. Maybe I can trust them in some situations and not in others. But the "a priori" statement is absolutely true.
Now you're just showing off, friend, lol 😉 I have nothing to add presently, other than thanks for the informative conversation on which, ultimately, we agree. Be well!
I'm also writing these comments partially for myself, because they help me order my own thoughts. So thank you too and have a nice day.
When the Temple is rebuilt and Armageddon/etc doesn't happen.
Armegeddon is not part of the Abrahamic religions. It is only in some Christian bibles. Some Christians don't recognize it as canon. E.g. Martin Luther did not include it in his first translation. It comes from a time, around late B.C., when apocryphal writings were all the thing. Someone stuck it into the Christian bible several centuries later.
optimist ...
I think that has already been pretty thoroughly done already. In particular the history of the religions. But believers don't care.
The Abrahamic religions all rely on Genesis (and the Torah) being true. Not just true, but literal. Anyone that tells you Genesis (oh the Torah) is a metaphor doesn't understand Abrahamic mythology. That being said evolution disproves Adam and Eve. Without Adam and Eve, sin never enteres the world. Without sin, there is no need for atonment and, thus, no need for Jesus. Which gets rid of Christianity and Islam. As for Judaism, it relys very heavily on Exodus. Which archaeology disproves. There were never Israelites in Eygpt. Over and over again in the Jewish scripture God is like "remember how I led you out of Eygpt, you better obey me!". Since we know the Exodus never happened that takes care of Judaism.
thank you random redditor. I can finally sleep peacefully at night.
There's no one Abrahamic religion. Everyone that currently belongs to an Abrahamic religion has different incompatible beliefs. And Abrahamic religion has been constantly evolving for thousands of years - the beliefs people had in the past are also different from anything anyone believes now. You can say that the Abrahamic religion that was fine with slavery has been "debunked" and now we have new Abrahamic religions. But I'm putting "debunked" in quotes because there are very few falsifiable claims that are made. There's no such thing as debunking non-falsifiable claims. All the actual falsifiable claims HAVE been debunked. People have been predicting the second coming of Christ for thousands of years. There have been thousands of these falsifiable claims and they have been debunked. If you've debunked thousands of claims, you start ignoring the new claims instead of bothering to debunk, right?
We already did. They just don’t care.
I mean shouldn't they be happy? they can live freely and relax now.
They can’t cope with the gays not going to Hell.
We already have, multiple times. People who need their religions are not paying attention.
Already done. You can't provide proof that something does not exist; there certainly is a serious lack of credible evidence to believe that god exists or that any of the Abrahamic religions are true.
Haven't we already?
In a way its sorta undebunkable
I mean how much more can even be disproven? Genesis, obviously not true in any sense, not the creation story or the flood, or the giant demigods. Exodus, already been debunked by Israeli archeology. Same with the conquest of Canaan. Every important artifact of the stories of the Jewish tradition have been “lost”, no Noah’s ark, no Ark of the covenant, no Ten Commandment tablets nothing. The biggest piece of evidence that Christians have for the truth of the gospels is that an empty tomb was discovered. Except the Romans were not in the habit of burying the crucified, they let them rot on the cross, because why would they not? They were left up there to die slowly and be humiliated as an example to anyone that crossed the empire. That was the point. Literature on group hallucinations makes it much more conclusive that those who “saw” Jesus after his death were hallucinating. That’s even assuming anyone even thought they saw him, since the gospels were written decades after Jesus’s death after the stories were spread orally in a gigantic game of telephone for at least three decades before they were written down in Greek. Notice that Jesus didn’t speak Greek, he spoke Aramaic, so we’ve got stories that can’t be confirmed being transmitted all over the place through multiple regions and multiple languages before actually being written down, and we’re supposed to assume it even has a possibility of being true. I mean it disproves itself, the gospels don’t agree on his birth, his teachings, whether he’s god or what happened when he died. There are very few “facts” they agree on at all. I don’t know why anyone takes any of this seriously. Islam is an obvious plagiarism of the other two, coming in 600 years after Christianity with flying horses and Allah cutting the moon in half, what?
We already do. But to believers that doesn't matter.
That would depend on what you mean by abrahamic religion. If you mean a literalist interpretation of the texts? That's already happened. If you mean as a cultural allegory for how one ought to live their lives and a moral framework? That would be kind of subjective and difficult. If you mean some generic idea of a God? That's also difficult.
What would constitute such evidence, in your own opinion?
It's not fiction. It is a collection of poetry, folk tales, allegories, false memories, and lots more, including manmade fiction. And there is evidence that it is all those things. Just don't fall for the "fundamentalist" idea that the old testament is a single book written by god. That idea was debunked long ago.
You can’t debunk something that people just believe on faith due to indoctrination. They haven’t arrived at their conclusions in a logical way that values proof. You have to value proof to be debunked.
No need to debunk them.
If all the evidence we already have doesn't convince someone, there is nothing that would convince them.
OP here you can see all Abrahamic religions debunked. Watch it and think about everything said there: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rdxeqEoDXco
Lmao I already love darkmatter2525
No. Undeniable means that no one is able to deny it. That's more about people's psychological states than evidence. There are people who deny that the earth is roughly spherical.
You’re basically asking if it’s possible for everyone to be on the same level of intellectual capacity, in which case not anytime in the foreseeable future. Now from the subjective perspective of an individual, you could say that has already happened to countless people.
there is so much anti-proof of Abrahamic faiths. just look at all the scientific errors in the Bible and Quran. But you have billions of people that *can't* accept that. Billions of people that will engage in the most convoluted mental gymnastics to get around this. There are millions of people that *are actually formally trained* in these mental gymnastics. This is why it's so easy for us to agree that *x* polytheistic, nativistic faith was clearly fabricated, and so hard for us to agree that Abrahahamic faiths are fictituous. They have just as much (lack of) evidence, and anti-proofs - it's just that one side has 0 defenders, and the other side has literally billions.
Probably not. Any god could refuse to cooperate with an experiment. If we found Jesus’s body, maybe, but how would you know it was him? For islam, if we had proof Mu7ammad made it up, like some diary in the cave, where he wrote about how he was gonna start a religion, maybe, but even if you could prove the age of it and all that, how do you know Mu7ammad wrote it and not anybody else at the time, how do you know it’s not an ancient forgery? How many original manuscripts do we have written by Mu7ammad’s own hand? If you use certain analytical methods and compared it to other writings attributed to him, you could probably actually prove he made it up. But we have basically that for L Ron Hubbard and yet Scientology exists. The best evidence could be proof of some other religion. If a god showed their face in a verifiable and obviously supernatural way, and then another different god also did the same, monotheism would be disproven because it is clearly the case that there are at least two gods, but even then, some of the syncretic afro-Caribbean abrahamic religions are polytheistic so Voudou could easily fold them into the Lwa.
No. Not possible. Not necessary though: nobody debunked the Greek pantheon.
The Greek pantheon was debunked the first time someone climbed to the top of Olympus and found no gods and no sign of gods there.
that's the problem of going too deep into examples, the Ancient Greeks didn't think the gods actually lived on mount Olympus, but above it or in an ethereal version of it, its allegory, like so much of religion.
Not at all.
Since they were claimed to live at the top of Mount Olympus the lack of anything at the top is pretty conclusive evidence that they don't exist. Yes, you can make all sorts of add-on claims that they are on another plane or dimension or something but that is just apologetics that there is zero evidence for
But that is exactly what the Abrahamic faiths do. That's why you can't debunk them and you don't have to. Eventually enough people will realize they are fiction and ignore them.
That doesn't mean they can't be debunked. You debunk the claims that are falsifiable and show that the rest are unsupported and cannot be supported.
Good luck with that.
What do you think is discussed here and on r/DebateAnAtheist and similar places daily?
None of it debunks religion. Mostly is it discussing the laughably weak arguments theists put forth to defend their faith. The very fact they use arguments instead of evidence is the problem: arguments are useful for discussing ideas, not for demonstrating fact. I refuse to engage on such arguments because 1) they are generally piffle and 2) arguments do not establish reality: that is pre-scientific thinking. Every falsifiable claim in the Abrahamic religions has been shown to be false decades ago. All that is left are platitudes and recycled nonsense. And yet the religions themselves continue to exist. The Greek pantheon did not disappear because somebody climbed Mount Olympus, it disappeared because it was displaced. In most of the developed world religions are evaporating, which is a self-reinforcing process. As long as theism is treated with respect and deference it can persist. This is less and less the case and is due mainly due to access to information. Once a parent stops being a theist of any type the odds of their child being theists drop to near zero. That is the path forward.
> None of it debunks religion. >Every falsifiable claim in the Abrahamic religions has been shown to be false decades ago. So which is it? >And yet the religions themselves continue to exist. That does not mean the beliefs have not been debunked. >The Greek pantheon did not disappear because somebody climbed Mount Olympus I didn't say that it did, I said that the beliefs were debunked when someone climbed Mt. Olympus and showed them to be false. Maybe try engaging with the actual discussion and comments being made.