Richard Carrier on Being Agnostic or Atheist.
What do you think?
There was me thinking it Isaac Azimov that said "The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible"? Maybe it was a tilt to Mark Twain. Anyway, it's the sentiment that...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 18 minutes ago
A note about appeals to AI: I see Thomist combox guys doing the same thing. They are starting to paste in text from Gemini or whatever in their attempts to defend Thomism against skeptical comments.
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 22 minutes ago
It is for some, but some groups urge members to delve deeply into the Word, etc etc. And it's pretty common for evangelical Protestants, at any rate, to change churches when their own...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 24 minutes ago
To say that "people" don't "need" something that literally every known ethnic group of people have created for themselves is something of a reach....
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 39 minutes ago
"religion is a solution to a problem it invented"
Am not sure who said that, but it seems apt.
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 2 hours ago
The enormous contradiction would have been if Jesus and Paul had not called for such goodwill between members of the group. Even the leader of a gang of bank robbers wants...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 2 hours ago
That's the beauty of the Rorschach test, limitless interpretations. It's hard to know what meaning to attribute to the story. One possibility may be that this has significance with...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 3 hours ago
I'm not sure who "promised" that AI would be great from the get-go.
The cited paragraphs don't say AI would be great from the get-go. The OP is...
Debunking Christianity: Why Do Christians Keep on Being Christian? · 3 hours ago
Daniel, I think Dennett's idea was that religion is not necessary for what believers claim it is necessary for. We can get over the fear of death without needing to posit faeries. Me and you...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 6 hours ago
Good point. It's also, as I noted above, this bias people have which somehow gives more credence to ancient claims than modern ones. For some reason people are skeptical of modern miracle...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 6 hours ago
People have this sense that if something is ancient and has been relatively cherished by many people it's more worthy of attention. We should call it "ancient bias". It's...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 6 hours ago
Maybe some of you who were Christians can chime in on this, but is it not standard for Christians to leave Bible interpretation and cover-to-cover reading to their priests, pastors, teachers etc?
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 9 hours ago
That's an interesting story but it's already being outpaced by events. E.g.:
One of the original promises of AI was that it could serve as a superintelligent robot librarian....
Debunking Christianity: Why Do Christians Keep on Being Christian? · 11 hours ago
Also, it's very rare to encounter anyone who doesn't believe at least one other thing as ridiculous as what the street preacher is selling. So even if "very few people" would...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 11 hours ago
36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. 37 The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab[g]; he is the father of the Moabites of today. 38 The younger...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 11 hours ago
I never cease to be amazed at the fact that the vast majority of churches are filled with middle aged and elderly people who, despite having become Christians more than 20 years...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 11 hours ago
And I'm surprised that Dennett would have ignored terror management theory (Wikipedia link). One of the downsides of having...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 11 hours ago
Religion is like any other vice: you need it until you manage to quit it.
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 12 hours ago
If you were to encounter the street preacher at age 4, and enough times, you might be more receptive. I trust that answers the question you raise. It's not so much that "people" are...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 12 hours ago
It's fun to ask Gemini (link) about what happens to the angular momentum when a vast spinning galaxy collapses into a black hole. Short...
Debunking Christianity: Why Do Christians Keep on Being Christian? · 12 hours ago
The best cure for misattributed quotations is critical thinking, combined with a decent search game, and a working relationship with an AI LLM. See for example this chat where I ask Gemini
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 12 hours ago
If you were to encounter a street preacher standing on a corner saying things similar to what Paul supposedly said, very few people would believe what they heard. So, that raises the question of...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 19 hours ago
To add to my post, just as love in religious texts is usually reserved for the in-group, so is the anger at, even hatred of, the "sinner", concern for repentance and moral correction. The...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 19 hours ago
As Daniel Dennett used to say: "Religion is a crutch that people don't need."
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 20 hours ago
Preachers love to quote the occasional feel-good texts that we find in his letters, e.g. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not...
Debunking Christianity: The Best Cure for Christianity Is Reading the Bible, Essay No. 1 · 21 hours ago