... against Carrier on Theism and Christianity

Quick Rebuttals to Common Christian Claims
Science For the Win | Ajoutée le 22 nov. 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30zjpw8Fbpg

I

1:09 "in infinite number of points on your fingernail"

Geometry is infinitely divisible into the smaller. There is an infinity of potential points.

A body is sth actually existing. A plane (bent or flat) is a limit of a body. A line is a limit of a plane. A point is a limit of a line.

When you say "on" your fingernail, you have pinpointed we are already talking of the plane where the fingernail meets the air or whatever else, and yes, you can divide that fingernail with an infinity of different lines, even if two possibilities are one nanometre apart, you can still insert two more between them as possibilities and same for the points dividing any of them. That doesn't make your fingernail infinite.

This means, there is not a positive and actual infinity (even in geometry, let alone arithmetic) to be deduced from the infinite divisibility of space. Which, by the way, is contradicted by Quantum theory, if you believe that.

1:13 "you are looking at an actual infinity right now"

No, at a potential one. Points don't exist until they are marked off by sth.

1:24 "if you have an infinite string of pearls"

You don't, noone ever saw one.

There are better arguments for leprechauns than for infinite series of pearls. Some people have claimed to see leprechauns. None claim to have adequately observed the whole of an "infinite string of pearls".

Dee Bunker

So a book with stories of a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, a virgin birth and zombies must be true?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Have you heard of the logical fallacy called "false dichotomy"?

The argument hear had a bearing on general theism, not on certain specific and controversial claims of the Bible. These specifically Christian and controversial claims of the Bible cannot be construed as proving general Theism is even less likely, like you tried to.

Next question is, how unlikely are they, but that would be one to pose logically either separately or even more ideally after settling in favour of general Theistic metaphysics of the world we live in.

II

3:23 "That's the universe we see"

You are speaking from things like ends of visible universe being on each side 13.8 billion light years away, right?

Because, that is not a direct observation, it is a deduction. One premiss of which is Heliocentrism on the scale of the Solar System, each year it is we who move, so each year we see alpha Centauri, 61 Cygni and some more from slightly different angles.

If it is sun moving, it is actually a problem of determining that alpha Centauri is 4 light years away.

If instead sphere of fix stars exists, each star is moved in time with the sun but not necessarily in pace with him, by its angel, the movements show other kinds of life than our biological one and the universe perhaps only one light day away on each end centres in daily motion around Earth showing a design for Earth, the only inert body in the middle of all Heavens, actually carrying biological life.

Some maths:

New blog on the kid : Stellar Radiuses (If Sphere of Fix Stars is One Light Day Up)
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2018/02/stellar-radiuses-if-sphere-of-fix-stars.html

Dee Bunker

So a book with stories of a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, a virgin birth and zombies must be true?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

See other subthread on which you made same false dichotomy.

Dee Bunker

+Hans-Georg Lundahl, The title of this video is "Quick Rebuttals to Common Christian Claims". So your claim that "The argument hear had a bearing on general theism, not on certain specific and controversial claims of the Bible"--is incorrect. The specific and controversial claims of the Bible are the foundation of Christianity. Regardless of how many points can be on your fingernail, you have ZERO evidence for the virgin birth, Jesus being God or the son of God, Jesus healing the blind using magic saliva, killing 2,000 pigs by hurling demons into them, killing a fig tree with magic, or rising bodily into outer space. These absurd claims are made in a book of ancient fairy tales that also has stories about a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, the sun standing still in the sky for a full day, a woman turned into a pillar of salt, giant, angels mating with humans, a man living inside a fish for 3 days, etc. Your 'straw man' representations of Dr. Carrier's points can't overcome the obvious BS claims in your fake holy book.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"So your claim that "The argument hear had a bearing on general theism, not on certain specific and controversial claims of the Bible"--is incorrect."

No, the first few arguments actually are about general theism. Things a Platonist, Jew or Muslim would agree with Christians on.

While Christianity as a whole religion is indeed based on the Catholic Church and its Bible (or Orthodox Church and its Bible, certainly not Lutheran Church and its Bible), we Christians are occasionally also philosophers. One statement in the Bible is that general Theism is accessible to non-Christians through philosophy.

Romans 1: [18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: [19] Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. [20] For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. [21] Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.

St Paul is here adressing general Theism as accessible and even accessed by Pagans before he came to preach.

Now, one point about general Theism is, Oceanic current is moved West by winds (or sth) which are moved West by Heavens above (including Moon, Sun, Stars) and these cannot be moved by more and more movers further and further out. Infinite regress about movers is excluded.

Here we were arguing on Carrier arguing against this.

I take talking snakes and zombies over Baron Munchhausen in credibility any day. You know he claimed he and his horse were down in a bog and he pulled himself up by the poly tail men wore back then and the horse with him?

That is about the level of Carrier's cosmology. Munchhausen.

This is a thing which general Theism suffices to prove - even before Christianity takes over with preaching the rest of the Gospel.

"Regardless of how many points can be on your fingernail"

Only as many each time as are actually delimited by some fact.

"you have ZERO evidence for the virgin birth, Jesus being God or the son of God, Jesus healing the blind using magic saliva, killing 2,000 pigs by hurling demons into them, killing a fig tree with magic, or rising bodily into outer space."

Except it is precisely evidence we believe these things on.

Carrier has zero evidence (literally, I'll come back to his "ex nihilo onus merdae fit" another day or time) for a Munchhausen universe. We have some, contested, but still some, evidence for the things you enumerated.

Not sure each demon of the legion had a pig of its own, they had shared one man at Gadara all of them, so if there were no legion numbered pig herds around, they would probably have shared pigs as well.

"These absurd claims are made in a book of ancient fairy tales"

Afanasiev? No. Grimm brothers? No. Perrault? No. Arabian Nights? No.
Red fairy book? No. Blue fairy book? No. ...

"that also has stories about a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, the sun standing still in the sky for a full day, a woman turned into a pillar of salt, giant, angels mating with humans, a man living inside a fish for 3 days, etc."

Oh, you meant the Bible? It was not published ever as a fairy tale collection.

Btw, on one item you risk misrepresenting it, since Jonah was alive before and after he was swallowed by the whale, but not necessarily during the time he was in it - he can have been resurrected.

Dee Bunker

Calling something a fallacy doesn't make it a fallacy. You have presented no evidence for the fairy tale claims in your absurd holy book. "At least 11 of the 27 New Testament books are forgeries...Many of the New Testament’s forgeries were manufactured by early Christian leaders trying to settle theological feuds." Dr. Bart Ehrman, http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/13/half-of-new-testament-forged-bible-scholar-says/ [not linking]

Dee Bunker

added

+Hans-Georg Lundahl, Beneath your intellectual arguments for some vague deity is your defense of a book of absurd fairy tells that tells fanatics to MURDER CHILDREN AND INFANTS because some authority figure tells them that a deity said so: "This is what the Lord Almighty says...Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:2-3). Your fake holy book tells gullible fanatics that they can DRINK DEADLY POISON without harm: "And these signs will accompany those who believe...when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all" (Mark 16:17-18). These are lies that result in the deaths of innocent people: "A preacher and another leader...died early yesterday after drinking strychnine at a service" http://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/10/archives/2-drink-strychnine-at-service-and-die-in-display-of-faith.html And again, you have ZERO evidence for tales of a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, a virgin birth, or a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

A godless universe is based on fallacies, whether atheists accept that or not.

Bart Ehrman has no evidence for his claim.

His reason is, these eleven books do contain material to settle theological feuds, but that doesn't make them forgeries if original apostles or men trusted by them did write to settle the feuds.

So, as long as he cannot prove the authorships are fake, he has no argument from this reason that the books are forgeries.

You claim to be too sophisticated for walking dead, and now you fall for Bart after previously allowing Carrier to fall for Munchhausen.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

added too

"Beneath your intellectual arguments for some vague deity is your defense of a book"

Sounds like Freudian analysis, I don't do that kind of superstition.

"of absurd fairy tells that tells fanatics to MURDER CHILDREN AND INFANTS because some authority figure tells them that a deity said so: "This is what the Lord Almighty says...Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:2-3)."

The book doesn't tell anyone to do so, since the situation in which Saul was told to do so with Amalekites is past.

"your fake holy book tells gullible fanatics that they can DRINK DEADLY POISON without harm: "And these signs will accompany those who believe...when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all" (Mark 16:17-18)."

Actually St Benedict of Nursia verified the promise, he started his drinking of a poisoned cup by a sign of the cross and it burst. Note, the Greek form for "drink" is not aoristic but presentive tense of some sort, meaning "start to drink" also counts.

"These are lies that result in the deaths of innocent people: "A preacher and another leader...died early yesterday after drinking strychnine at a service" http://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/10/archives/2-drink-strychnine-at-service-and-die-in-display-of-faith.html"

I don't call him innocent, Christ did not say it would happen with poisons knowingly and voluntarily taken for showing off.

"And again, you have ZERO evidence for tales of a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, a virgin birth, or a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father."

Except tradition, in this case of the Catholic Church and involving the Bible. Tradition is THE trump argument in history.

Dee Bunker

Hans-Georg Lundahl, You said, "A godless universe is based on fallacies". You mean fallacies like witches being responsible for illness, crop failures and bad weather, and that we should murder them like the bible says? "Do not allow a sorceress to live" (Ex. 22:18). "A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them" (Lev. 20:27). It's not like promoting a fake book of ancient mythology as the truth hurts anyone, right? "More than 2,000 people accussed of being witches have been killed in India over the past 15 years in poor, remote areas of the northeast. The victims, nearly all of them women, have been swept up in modern-day witch hunts, often accused by a neighbor or family member who might blame devious sorcery for a bad harvest or an unexplained illness." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/world/asia/india-assam-state-witch-hunts.html

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"You mean fallacies like witches being responsible for illness, crop failures and bad weather, and that we should murder them like the bible says?"

Have you heard of biological warfare?

Demons can be involves in such things too. A man can carry bacteria and a demon can carry bacteria.

In other words, witches existing and communicating with demons is not a fallacy.

However, the Bible does not say we should hunt out witches operating secretly with no spontaneous admissions of guilt. One witch is mentioned, living in Endor and specialising in necromancy.

If you do specialise in necromancy, you do deserve death. The witch in Endor was operating openly.

However, the Bible does also not say that everyone and everywhere deserving death needs to be killed.

Exodus 18:22 is from a civil code valid from entry of Holy Land to the time of Christ.

In the New Covenant, other civil codes, notably based on Christianised Rome, are possible and even preferrable.

In one of the versions, witches are only killed if their witchcraft actually kills someone.

In Leviticus 20:27 we are explicitly seeing a mention of stoning. While every sin in OT which was punishable by death (note, some have changed appearances or gravity because of other circumstance, like Sunday has replaced the Sabbath and in OT the Sabbath keeping was also a prophecy about Christ in the grave, so breaking the Sabbath would have been a graver sin than breaking the Sunday now), while every such sin deserves death if still as grave, it doesn't mean death penalty need be applied in New Covenant too. This is the time of grace, which you are trying to end.

Stoning is a sure sign we are talking of OT civil law.

"It's not like promoting a fake book of ancient mythology as the truth hurts anyone, right?"

I am not sure of your grammar but somewhat of your meaning.

The Bible is not a fake book of ancient mythology and it is not requiring witches to be killed in Christian countries.

""More than 2,000 people accussed of being witches have been killed in India over the past 15 years in poor, remote areas of the northeast. The victims, nearly all of them women, have been swept up in modern-day witch hunts, often accused by a neighbor or family member who might blame devious sorcery for a bad harvest or an unexplained illness.""

I am not sure whether there are witches in India or not behind the bad harvest. Or, in a sense, there are, each Hindoo priest and each Muslim Mollah in a sense is, and God is punishing Assam for not being Christian or all India for two child policy.

The worst witch in India is perhaps Indhira Gandhi who made the two child policy continue after Nehru. And her successors to this day.

No, I actually meant fallacies like those used for accepting a Munchhausen universe.

Dee Bunker

+Hans-Georg Lundahl, Or did you mean "a Munchhausen universe" such as one inhabited by a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, a virgin birth, resurrections from the dead, a man living inside a fish for 3 days, the sun standing still in the sky for a full day, a woman turned into a pillar of salt, and other fairy tale claims in your fake book of ancient mythology? Or did you mean a universe where illness is caused by demon possession, the world is flat and rests on pillars, and invisible people beings like angels and gods exist?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

None of what you present qualifies as Munchhausen. Your own view does.

"Or did you mean "a Munchhausen universe" such as one inhabited by a talking snake, talking donkey,"

By Munchhausen I mean a total lack of causal proportion to observed effect, like Munchhausen pulling himself with his horse up from a swamp by pulling his pony tail.

Two animals that talk are nothing like this if there are invisible people doing the talking for them, a fallen angel in the case of the snake and a good angel in the case of the donkey.

"900-year-old men,"

Formerly, before our lifespans were shortened, yes.

"a virgin birth, resurrections from the dead,"

With God nothing is impossible.

"a man living inside a fish for 3 days,"

You would not classify the whale as a fish, even if Biblical writers and common speech does, also, I already told you that we don't know if the Ghepetto scenario is the correct understanding. Nowhere in the Bible does it say Jona was alive during the three days, it could be another case of death and resurrection.

"the sun standing still in the sky for a full day,"

God usually turns the whole heavens (beneath the Empyrean one, from the sphere of fix stars down) around Earth, East to West.

An angel usually takes the Sun back along the ecliptic plane making a full circle from West to East in a year, and another one takes the Moon back along ecliptic plane in a Month.

So, concrete movement of Sun and Moon across the sky depends on three freewilled agents moving big things about. If all three stop, the result is, the Sun and Moon stop moving across the sky.

"a woman turned into a pillar of salt,"

Yes. Not sure if it means her body was transsubstantiated into salt or rather that it was totally covered with salt, but either one it was.

"and other fairy tale claims in your fake book of ancient mythology?"

You "live in a Munchhausen universe" if you think there will be a time when Afanasieff or Grimm brothers will be mistaken for history.

"Or did you mean a universe where illness is caused by demon possession,"

Demonic possession does not equal the addition of bacterial illness, and bacteria can be brought by demonic means (without possession) as well as by human ones.

Demonic possession does equal a demon taking control of someone's limbs or mouth, or forcing the person to live through the demon's own anguish of Hell fire.

"the world is flat"

Sayz zo where, exactly?

"and rests on pillars,"

Continental plates do have a kind of pillars going down into the magma, as far as I have heard.

"and invisible people beings like angels and gods exist?"

Invisible people like God, like angels and like your own soul (except it is not a separate person from your body, however it enables you to things your body without a soul could not - like think).

Either the world is understandable as we see it if we admit that "invisible people" exist, and we believe more than we see, or the world pretends to be understandable with some things we see (like everyday evidence of Geocentrism) taken as illusions, and we believe less than we see. But, this latter view will involve Munchhausen "causalities".

Precisely as with the Bible, Catholics believe more than is in it in so many words, and Protestants less than is in it.

Dee Bunker

Hans, You defended the bible's claim of 900-year-old men by saying, ""900-year-old men, Formerly, before our lifespans were shortened, yes." And your evidence for this is...what? Nothing. All you have are fairy tale CLAIMS from a book with a talking snake, talking donkey, etc. Claims aren't evidence. I can claim that you're a child molester, but does that make it true? While you ponder this, don't go drinking any deadly poison just because the forged ending of Mark claims that Jesus said so: "And these signs will accompany those who believe...when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all" (Mark 16:17-18).

Hans, You said, "None of what you present qualifies as Munchhausen." According to whom? You? "The fictional Baron's exploits, narrated in the first person, focus on his impossible achievements as a sportsman, soldier, and traveller, for instance riding on a cannonball, fighting a forty-foot crocodile, and travelling to the Moon. Intentionally comedic, the stories play on the absurdity and inconsistency of Munchausen's claims" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Munchausen The absurd claims of your fake holy book are certainly in the same genre. And you still have provided no evidence for stories of a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, a virgin birth or zombies. Nor have you rationalized why it's okay to murder children and infants based on some man's claim that God said so. Nor have your explained away the bible's orders to murder gays, witches, women who aren't virgins on their wedding night, or people who pick up sticks on the Sabbath. If your fake holy book just contained absurd stories, it would be laughable but harmless. But your fake holy book causes real harm.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

It is sad that, having as empty a life as you have outside your very negative relation with Christianity, as I feel somewhat inclined to conclude, but then I am biassed against you, you have not taken the chance to actually read Baron Munchhausen and see what I am referring to.

I was, once again, referring to an episode which was not there in the enumeration by wiki that you quoted, one which would involve "circular causality".

Munchhausen rides down into a bog. He doesn't want his horse to drown in mud and doesn't want to drown in mud himself. He tighten's his knees around his horse, puts his hand behind his neck, pulls the ponytail upward and in doing so succeeds in pulling up both himself and his horse from the bog.

The part about pulling his horse up with him, like the riding on the cannon ball and switching to another cannnon ball in mid air just involves superpowers. That is not the main problem. The main problem is, the reason why you could pull someone up from a bog by his ponytail is, you are not yourself knees deep in the bog. So, the method chosen has no bearing on the situation.

Your moralising crap of Bible hatred can wait to another time, it is really not the least appropriate under a discussion of the general claim "there is a God" such as my initial comment. I have atheists making that kind of moralising in somewhat more coherent and detailed ways than you and prefer to answer them. Dillahunty is even backing down from part of it. God for him (or at least he was).

"And your evidence for this is...what? Nothing. All you have are fairy tale CLAIMS from a book with a talking snake, talking donkey, etc. Claims aren't evidence."

Claims are evidence of either truth or fraud or mistake.

Unlike a fairy tale, a claim doesn't come from impulses outside these three. I know the truth and state it, I don't know the truth and state my erroneous belief, or I know the truth and choose to state sth else for some reason.

Now, if you think the claim of a man being 900 years old is not the truth, then it is incumbent on you to show how it could plausibly be either a mistake or a lie.

Saing the claim is in a book you choose to classify as "fairy tales" is not a solution, that is you either being mistaken about categories of texts (fairy tales don't come with truth claims) or deliberately obfuscating the issue.

"I can claim that you're a child molester, but does that make it true?"

No, I think you might want to try that in court if you dared to show your real name if you had a case, but as long as you don't, your claims - if you did any behind my back - are not credible.

As for this, it does not count as a claim, since you took it as a hypothesis for arguments' sake.

"While you ponder this,"

What is there to ponder?

"don't go drinking any deadly poison just because the forged ending of Mark claims that Jesus said so: "And these signs will accompany those who believe...when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all" (Mark 16:17-18)."

As already stated, He never said He would do it for anyone trying it just to show off. The ending is not forged, but unlike "fairy tale" forgery is a definite alternative to truth, so, you might try to argue who would forge that and for what reasons and who would have been able to oppose the forgery by exact knowledge and didn't and for what reasons.

Dee Bunker

+Hans, Oh, so you cannot provide evidence for your fairy-tale claims, so you have to stoop to personal attacks, that I must have an "empty life". LOL! Yes, that's why countries with high numbers of atheists and low levels of religiosity are so miserable:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/20/happiest-country-world-united-nations/99280014/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/top-10/2016-worlds-happiest-countries/
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

Clearly the reverse is true. Also, the most violent cities in the world are those with majority Christian populations:
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-violent-cities-in-the-world-2017-4
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/50-most-violent-cities-venezuela-mexico-honduras-el-salvador-brazil-a7904726.html

Clearly, Christianity doesn't contribute to human happiness, and is a source of violence. Your fake holy book makes the world worse.

+Hans, Unable to defend your absurd fairy tale claims of the bible, you move on to "Your moralising crap of Bible hatred"...Yes, I hate books that tell people to MURDER CHILDREN AND INFANTS: "This is what the Lord Almighty says...Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:2-3) "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (Numbers 31: 17-18)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

"so you have to stoop to personal attacks, that I must have an "empty life"."

I think I said sth about "I guess" and "I am biassed against you" which is a far cry from me saying you "must" have one.

// www.usatoday.com, www.nationalgeographic.com, World_Happiness_Report //

Relying on those fairy tales for grown ups (who have lost childlikeness but not childishness) actually argues even more you have an empty life outside your hateful relation to Christianity.

"Clearly the reverse is true. Also, the most violent cities in the world are those with majority Christian populations:"

How many of these are dechristianised? Who are the modern élites? Are you aware that Mexico, while not eradicating a personal attachment to Catholicism has had secularised régimes since 1917?

Are you aware Venezuela has been so un-Catholic as to have Catholics sink to 73 % of the population?

In El Salvador it is only 50 % Catholics and in Brazil 61 %.

Mexico is the most Catholic of the countries, but Mexico City is probably the least Catholic big city.

"Clearly, Christianity doesn't contribute to human happiness, and is a source of violence. Your fake holy book makes the world worse."

OK, you think you are entitled to talk, when Karl Marx' and Engels' collected woorks have been making the world a worse place since 1917, if not before.

"Yes, I hate books that tell people to MURDER CHILDREN AND INFANTS: "This is what the Lord Almighty says...Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:2-3) "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (Numbers 31: 17-18)"

Who right now is being told he is to murder children and infants?

Christians? No. We are usually able to read, if we have read these things, and when being able to read we know these orders were given in another time, before Christ told His disciples to make disciples of all nations (no word about excepting some nations and killing them off instead).

So, who? Clearly people who are telling girls they have a right to abort, but no right to be married mothers before 18.

So, all my "problems" about credibility of Bible in the intellectual sphere are so vanished you take to moralising and to moralising with lies?

Dee Bunker

+Hans, The bible says that fanatics should murder children and infants if some guy claims that God wants them to: "This is what the Lord Almighty says...Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1 Samuel 15:2-3). I mean, if a book says so that has stories of a talking snake, talking donkey, 900-year-old men, a virgin birth and zombies--it must be true, right?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The Bible doesn't say anyone should murder.

The Bible does say ethnic cleansing is a no no for any nation, see Matthew 28.

III

3:54 I am going through AronRa's defense of Evolution.

While Kent Hovind butchered some of the points he should have made, my comments on that event make a few other ones, and which two atheists have had some trouble defending:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : XII comments and some debates on Kent Hovind / AronRa, first half hour
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/03/xii-comments-and-some-debates-on-kent.html

Since AronRa on it mentions his "tree of life" series, which I was unaware of, I have started that one, as usually commenting:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Beginning AronRa's Series, Third Video ending with a Digression
http://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/03/beginning-aronras-series-third-video.html

IV

4:36 "the earlier life was a much simpler molecule"

The viability of a much simpler molecule as life in any environment and especially a Miller Urey one has been contested.

So far not very effectively defended, unless you count the blustering of rhetoric.

(To which I would assign "so we don't have a trouble explaining that" and similar words of high sound and little factual content).

V

4:57 You sure got that one right.

If God is God, he needs no Teilhard de Chardin scenario to create.

VI

5:21 "this slow evolution over time is exactly what atheism predicts"

Er, no ... unless you ditch the "one answer on one question" definition and agree you are into Western Atheism which by now is Evolutionist.

Democritus and Lucrece, with Epicure between, said that the universe was basically eternal and that different atom structures accounted for different types of bodies, including very fine and small atoms for sentient ones, this having always been the same and therefore these bodies having always been the same.

Man evolving up and devolving down culturally and loss and regain of human speech being even one of the possible conditions, due to which man's historic attention span is limited to after the last great cataclysm ...

That kind of history vs historiography, eternal vs very short, would predict random discoveries of random quite forgotten civilisations with no cultural connection to our own and no limit back in time.

Instead, Göbekli Tepe has cultural connections to both Australia and Easter Island, Mohenjo Daro has cultural connections to later cultures in India, notably that idol which seems to sit in a yoga position. Olmeks have cultural connections to Tolteks and these to Aztaks and Maya.

Also, as I noted under AronRa's and Kent's video (Non sequitur show), pine trees and elephants being both eucaryotes points to a common origin, whether a common designer or a common ancestor. This is inconsistent with the eternal roughly speaking fixism of species Democritism would predict, not to mention that Lucrece as a Geocentric assigns the spheres of sun, moon and other planets as well as sphere of fix stars to diverse levels of density of matter, but the speed of turbulence to the same factors, and therefore would make it impossible for men to walk on the moon.

VII

5:21 bis "but it is not what the God hypothesis predicts"

And neither is it what we in brute raw data find, you have to make quite a lot of analyses which could have gone systematically wrong on more than one level before you get to that slow evolution, procaryotes for a billion years, one celled eucaryotes for another two billion years and so on.

One of the key ingredients in this analysis is the dates ...

VIII

5:33 "sperm is not conscious, neither is the egg"

So, the valid options if consciousness only comes from consciousness are:

• you are wrong on that particular, we've just forgotten how we felt as sperm and as egg
• souls unite to the united fertilised egg on conception or later up to birth and so there are a few - by now it would be a few billion, right? - eternal souls which return and return to rebirth after rebirth, we've just forgotten how we felt in previous lives
• after each fertilised egg forming from an egg and a sperm, for each human instance, God creates a soul immediately.

6:03 "consciousness comes from brain ... take a part of the brain out and you have lost part of your consciousness"

There can be functions of the brain in connecting consciousness to body other than just that of being an origin, so, you have not proven consciusness originates in the brain.

6:26 "that's producing consciousness"

Not really proven, no. That it helps in this life to regulate consciousness, yes.

But that it produces it, no.

The things that can be cut out from the brain and correspondingly lost for consciousness are things to be conscious about or types of attention. It is not consciousness itself, the fact that it for instance is red I sea, not just a point of the spectrum I analyse as a camera. Sure, you can cut out of someone's brain that red looks red, but that means the brain has lost capacity to process those parts of the spectrum as a colour - the man who goes through such a loss (let's hope not in human experimentation, but because there was a brain tumour) will know what he has lost.

He may be or not be capable of imagining red from memories of red, according to how the part affects it, but he will know that red is something he used to be able to differentiate and relate to. Blood and roses used to have a colour.

6:50 "if you had a soul, you wouldn't need the brain"

Angels presumably do not need any kind of brains and God certainly doesn't need to have a brain to have consciousness.

Men don't just have consciousness, but consciousness interacting with a material body - an angel could directly see whatever it chose to set its attention on, by reason, but man gets his sight by photons or electromagnetic waves in the aether or whatever light is, and therefore has consciousness interacting passively with the body to get the overview.

An angel also can move whatever material object it choses to move (except if a higher ranking angel or God says "no"). No muscles, no never system, no brain needed.

That is simply the power an angel normally has.

However, man moves according to deciding to move his own body, whether a finger or a leg or whatever, and overrides gravity and friction only so much as material type energy, accessible to the body through nutrition, allows. And allows by supplying forces of the material type in opposite directions.

This means human consciousness interacts actively with the body to have an impact.

Whether you do or do not agree on my angelology is not the point. The point is, man being both physical and conscious may have a need for a special and energyconsuming organ to keep both parts together. So, the brain has a function also on the Theistic view. Carrier stands refuted, convicted of a non sequitur.

7:25 On the atheistic view, only an extremely complex organ of material type could produce something "as complex" as consciousness.

Carrier, in our experience, consciousness as such is not complex.

Take maths. A computer can process a calculation in seconds which for me would take hours or even days or even then not get finished - because the calculation is complex.

But it is I and not the computer who can tell that two plus two equal four, not just because I am somehow hardwired to count that way, but also because of a non-mathematical syllogism on definitions.

"two more than two is one more than one more than two"
"anything more than one more than two is the same more than three" (probatio minoris : three is by definition one more than two)
"so two more than two is one more than three"
"one more than three is four" (probatio minoris = definition, not just builds on it)
"so, two more than two is four"

IX

7:52 while it is an objective fact about traffic systems that they won't work if too many people at too high speeds arrive on any side they want, you still are presuming as an objective moral value that a traffic system working is preferrable to a traffic system not working.

I would certainly not have it as a basic moral value, there are situations in which causing a traffic jam or preventing traffic from starting is preferrable, but the fact that a traffic system of the kind where cars is allowed only works with sided streets still leaves which side cars run a non-basic value, a construct only value.

8:00 No, traffic systems neither evolved nor emerged.

Traffic systems were decided. After cars had caused the first grave accident, simply banning cars would have been an option.

Allowing cars to produce more accidents unchecked, by no speed limits and no sided driving would have been possible, but it would have been an immoral option.

8:22 You may or you may not want to live in the murder capital.

But you cannot disagree that some do want to live in it, because they like murdering and get a kick of adrenaline out of the risk of being murdered.

So, the fact remains that morality is an objective standard by which these people stand condemned, not just a subjective standard of the guys who dislike the hazard and the killing scenes.

And on your view, living in Marseille of all cities in France or Mexico City of all cities in the world, and preferring less murder, wouldn't that be a case of being ill adapted?

I think, in order to show it is not, you would need an appeal to objective morals - not just decisions (the murderers who seem to run certain cities also decide things) and still less to what emerges or evolves (that is not true even about the sided and speed limited driving).

8:44 The trouble with your reasoning about everyone contributing to the society he wants is, some people a bit less than a century ago regarded Jews and Gipsies as litter.

They acted on an impulse to have a Jew free and Gipsy free society. I guess you know which guys I refer to.

I have been unjustly compared to them because I am an Austrofascist. Not same thing, it means I don't want Jews to be allowed to run business in ways that will hurt their Christian neighbours economically and socially, but apart from that, they remain owners of their business, it is not boycotted unless doing a scam and they are not put in camps. Austrofascists also put some guys in prison because they did not agree that dislike of Jews should be limited in expression ... some of them emigrated across a North border of Austria and some of these were among the culprits in Nuremberg.

So, supposing your foundation of morality is "we have to contribute to the society we want to live in" that is not a recipe for a valid objective morality - unless you consider National Socialism as one, which I do not.

It is a hotbed for the kind of persecutions and conflicts we have seen during the century after Darwin and some more. Some states in Canada had progressive morality on similar lines involving "I want to see less Esquimaux, less Injuns, less Québecquois" and they agreed to contribute to that society. It lasted to 1970's. The decade when "even" progressives had to face they had been acting like Nazis in some places.

No suprise to me, since Nazis were progressives.

9:03 Compassion as a source of pleasure is not unknown to Nazis.

It is just that they had compassion for victims of Commies and Capitalists and since they saw Jews involved on both thought they could have the pleasure of compassion without giving Jews the advantage of getting compassion.

Arguably, some of them led fairly pleasant lives. Some also had compassion to Jews, the Goerings seem to have had compassion with every Jew they personally knew ... and that means, they helped some to escape.

So, the pleasures of compassion are not a valid foundation of objective morality, unless you are willing to count National Socialism as one.

9:08 "this is the nature of social animals"

You know that Horst Wessel lied was sung by people with a high degree of indulgence in their nature as "social animals" and that they felt a high degree of compassion to Horst Wessel, him having composed it?

By the way, it seems his father and maternal family were Lutheran pastors, according to wiki.

It also seems, he deserved some compassion for being murdered by probable instigation of a landlady who couldn't get him out but wanted to. This murder occurred in 1930, before there was any National Socialist tyranny in the government.

And it seems the landlady was also acting on impulse as a social animal since she was involved in a rival faction of Socialism, being the widow of and talking to members of RFB, Roter Frontkämpferbund translating to "Alliance of Red Front-Fighters".

Neither Horst Wessel nor his killer Albrecht Höhler were living empty lives, they were both very engaged in indulging their nature as social animals, with compassion for some and corresponding loathing for others (general compassion for everyone without making any difference is hardly an option, especially not if you want to make a difference for a better society). And these men, acting on what you describe as what morality is all about, actually made Germany for some time a murder capital of Europe, along with neighbours to the East.

X

9:36 "well yeah, that's because most of those scholars concur that these were visions and hallucinations"

Empty Grave a hallucination by women who were on very womanly business of catching up with "semi-embalming" (or whatever you like to call the bringing of myrrh)?

The meeting at Lake Genesareth a hallucination by fishermen who were on their very manly business of fishing?

And what about the fact that there is no valid explanation for collective hallucinations?

You bring up St Paul, but his vision was not the start of Christianity. His vision was after he had already persecuted Christians. And his vision was validated by Christians who were already such.

9:38 "and Paul himself is our only eyewitness source"

If you went on like that about Moonlanding, you'd be stamped as a kook.

If you said how many and under what circumstances there are eyewitnesses for people actually dying in gas chambers, in France you would be sued for holocaust denial.

The tradition of Christianity is better attested than either of these contemporary facts.

9:44 False equivalence.

The vision given to St Paul was after Ascension, and it made him a mystic ... very different from the experience of getting a forty day long (or max forty day long) crash course on OT exegesis by the man who had been their professor for 3 and a half years.

So, no the experience on Damascus is not an equivalent with the first reports of Christ resurrecting, neither on account of this, nor on account of the appearances of Risen Jesus prior to Ascension being to collectives, not to solitary men seeing what others did not see.

9:53 You are aware that the latter part of Acts involves its author being the witness to later carreer of St Paul?

You are aware that if St Paul had just hallucinated, it is not the least likely he could have raised from the dead the boy who fell asleep while he was preaching and fell from the window?

You are also aware that same Luke who wrote latter part of Acts as an eyewitness interviewed eyewitnesses to the resurrection when writing his Gospel?

It seems, you take one particular item from the Christian documentation as fully certain when it suits your agenda of stamping it as hallucination, and then you take the rest, equally well (or on your view ill) documented whatever in it would have corrected your conclusion and you stamp it as later mythologising.

Either you accept the documentation or you don't.

If you don't, you don't just pick and choose from the offered documentation, you explain how people came to make a movement whose real beginnings need to be reconstructed and whose documentation about the beginnings is self delusional, not just on some one point, like Freemasons in 1717 pretending to have existed since Nimrod and Solomon and Hiram Abiff and involving Jacques Molay (the latter not necessarily self delusional, Templars could have wrought their kind of non-dogmatic spirituality before them), but on point after point not just inventing what was not there but ignoring what on your view had to be there.

10:03 "We have lots of Pagan eyewitness accounts who also saw gods, had visions."

If Mary had trusted Gabriel without an ensuing pregnancy and without meeting Elisabeth, and if Paul had trusted the vision without being healed from blindness by Ananias and if those two visions had been all Christianity were about, we would have a fair equivalence to the Pagan visions.

Even Mohammed and Joseph Smith go well beyond that and the eyewitness accounts for Christianity involves things that by their nature cannot be hallucinations, since they are very material miracles.

Mohammed never healed a leper. Nor do Muslims claim he did.

Joseph Smith never showed golden plates in Nephitic to linguistic scholars, nor do Mormons claim he showed them even to anyone.

Christians claim there are eyewitness accounts of Jesus actually spitting on the ground, making mud, putting it on the eyes of a blind man and he saw.

Your cavalier pretense that such "pretended" eyewitness accounts came far later doesn't make such accounts equivalents of Mohammed, Joseph Smith or someone seeing a snake shaped god talking.

Also, I don't think you can show any Pagan claiming to have witnessed a linguistic miracle of someone speaking in several languages at once.

Even Joseph Smith didn't show the golden plates in Nephitic to people.

"We should see few people like Paul"

His story implies there were many Christians before him.

THAT story implies many of them converted without needing a special vision.