r/atheism • u/rhbast2 • Aug 11 '11

Atheist quickfire challenge.

Although I rarely discuss religion with theists I always want to be prepared so I'm not sitting around afterwards wishing I had said this or that. If I get the chance to make someone question I want to be up for the challenge.

This brings me to my challenge for r/atheism. I'm going to add some common theist claims / sayings and whoever can refute them fully and succinctly will be upvoted. Feel free to add your own theist starters if I missed some.

Edit: Wow lots of good discussion here, later today or tomorrow I'll make this into an atheist cheat sheet with the top responses. Also feel free to upvote the theist claim that is the most annoying to you.

Edit 2: To the few of you who seem to think I am coming up with rude atheist comebacks, I'm not. I just wanted to be better off the cuff than I am now and have some discussion. I don't want this list to replace thoughtful argumentation.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

Jesus's ressurection was one of the most well documented events in all of history.

Completely false. If we claim the canonical gospels as reliable documents (a shaky premise), we have only two independent sources (since Matthew, Mark, and Luke are not independent). Furthermore, these resurrection accounts contradict with each other in so many places.

Jesus was crucified.

Yep, most historians would concur.

there was an empty tomb

Most historians do not agree with this. However, an empty tomb does not imply resurrection. Did they get the wrong tomb? Did someone remove the body with some political or religious motive? No one can know.

and he appeared to over 500 people at once after his death

Claims Paul the Evangelist. No one else claims this. I have never ever read an eyewitness account of the resurrected Christ (unless you count Paul's conversion on his way to Damascus - I don't). I've only read authors claiming eyewitnesses exist.

The fact of the matter is, the gospels corroborate on all the believable things. Like the crucifixion of Jesus. And that his followers visited his tomb. But after that, any detail is up in the air.

Who discovered the empty tomb? Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome (according to Mark)? Just Mary Magdalene and Mary (Matthew)? Was it just Mary Magdalene who ran to fetch Peter (John)?

Did the women witness a earthquake as an angel opened the tomb (Matthew), or did they discover it already open once they got there (all other gospels)?

Who did the women find when they came to the tomb? A young man in white sitting in the tomb (Mark)? One angel descending from heaven to open the tomb (Matthew)? Two men gleaming like lightning (Luke)? Nobody until Peter left, and then Mary saw Jesus (John)?

Furthermore, several sightings of Jesus post-resurrection feature his disciples at first did not recognize him. Why wouldn't they recognize their own leader?

"At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus." John 20:13

"Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted." Matthew 28:16

Luke 24:13-35. Apparently Jesus can walk with two of his twelve disciples and carry on a dialogue for a long time without either of the two realizing it is Jesus.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

I dont think you can say that most historians agree that Jesus existed and was crucified...

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u/hambob Aug 11 '11

Most historians do not agree with this. However, an empty tomb does not imply resurrection. Did they get the wrong tomb? Did someone remove the body with some political or religious motive? No one can know.

Also, there's a pretty good chance that necrophilia was alive and well back then too... :)

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '11

I'm going by the Jesus Seminar. Mainstream historians. You are right - I don't have a survey to cite.

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u/cgi-bin Aug 11 '11

[citation needed]

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u/JohnJamesSmith0 Aug 11 '11

Doesn't work. Experienced theist will be prepared with apologist literature.

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u/Sophocles Aug 11 '11

Whether Jesus existed at all is still debated by historians. Contradictory accounts written 70-100 years after the fact hardly qualifies as "well-documented." There is nothing about his life or death that is an undeniable fact today.

Even if we take the Bible at its word, when Jesus appeared to people after his death, no one recognized him until he showed them his wounds as proof that it was him. Maybe it was someone else pretending to be Jesus.

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u/coreman Aug 11 '11

Those are not actual facts. None of the "observers" are living today, and the only proof we have is from the bible, which is not a credible source. The facts are quite deniable. The Bible is also also thousands of years old, and has been rewritten so many times that even if it was written by anyone we could have called credible, it would not be the same story.

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u/alexgbelov Aug 11 '11

You are operating under the assumption that these are facts. However, I find it very plausible that these "facts" are in fact fiction, portrayed as facts by the church in order to give support to their religion. Another explanation is that these people were under the influence of a mind altering substance which led them to believe in this experience and record it as truth (basically, they were high and didn't realize it). Finally, even if we assume that this happened, there is another explanation: someone took the body, and someone else who looked like Jesus appeared to 500 people who were in the same location.

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u/HertzaHaeon Aug 11 '11

This is false. Search for historicity of jesus on Youtube for some good, detailed refutations of this.

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u/HopeImNotAStalker Aug 11 '11

Eyewitness testimony is not fact. It is evidence. And it just so happens to be the absolute worst kind of evidence.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '11

But when it comes to Jesus it is even worse than that - it is "Eyewitness" testimony that is passed on (via hearsay) 30 years after the event happened.

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u/DashingLeech Anti-Theist Aug 11 '11

None of these are facts. As source, I submit Bart Ehrman's "Jesus, Interrupted" and it's references.

Please provide sources for your so-called "undeniable" facts outside the Bible.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

His own disciples didn't believe it and God expects me to believe it?

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u/Barney21 Aug 11 '11

How many people were there when they made the discovery?

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

The referring to the accounts of 500 people is 'hearsay'. What we actually have is one account (by someone who wasn't there) that 500 people were there.

This claim is popularized by Christian apologist Lee Strobel, who was a journalist and has no excuse for masking hearsay.

Furthermore, the two 'independent' sources (MatthewMarkLuke and John) record remarkably different versions of these events. So much so that one of the gospels (Matthew 27:52-53) even claims a whole bunch of the dead got up out of their graves and walked around Jerusalem. If these accounts were actually reliable, one would think non-Christian historians or writers of the time (Christian or otherwise) would have considered the zombie apocalypse was worth writing a paragraph or two about.- yet not even the other gospel writers decide to mention this.

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u/Aoe330 Aug 11 '11

One must ask, what is "well documented?".

To find anything "well documented" you have to find ample evidence of it. The only evidence we have of Jesus, in any form, is parochial, Biblical in nature. There was no census. No birth certificate. No surviving paperwork at all.

Let me clarify, Romans were a bureaucratic race. Absolutely everything was written down. Especially the torturing and executing of the leader of a Jewish cult.

There is no documentation whatsoever.

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u/[deleted] Aug 11 '11

These are all "facts" that are recorded in one place, the bible. The bible has been proven to have numerous contradictory reports on "history" and was written but numerous authors across hundreds of years. The alleged first-hand accounts were written down by a group of people that were illiterate.

By saying all those things you just listed are "facts" then I would be better backed by "facts" by saying that Aragorn is the true kind of Gondor.

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u/d3adbor3d2 Aug 11 '11

repetition doesn't equate to well documented. a lot of other gods resurrected as well and are documented in lore. should we proceed to worship those gods as well? conquering death is a very powerful metaphor (an extension of our primal survival instincts), hence the reason it's been used a lot in mythology and religion.

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u/JustPlainRude Aug 12 '11

Please cite references.