{"id":7189,"date":"2017-04-18T13:41:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T17:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kyroot.com\/?page_id=7189"},"modified":"2018-05-20T07:19:37","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T11:19:37","slug":"1551-1600","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kyroot.com\/?page_id=7189","title":{"rendered":"1551-1600"},"content":{"rendered":"

(1551) Betty Crocker<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you tell Christians that Jesus probably didn’t exist, they might make the claim that “most New Testament scholars confirm that Jesus existed and that if Jesus didn’t exist then we would know about it.”<\/p>\n

You then have to remind them, or more to the point, argue with them, that New Testament scholars are using the New Testament as their source (which is fallacious, circular reasoning), that the few extra-biblical sources they reference are weak and apparent forgeries, and that they are mostly practicing Christians with their jobs and careers on the line. But you could also tell them that even in this day and age, there exists widespread belief in people who never lived. \u00a0A great example….Betty Crocker.<\/p>\n

In Dr. Richard Carrier’s book\u00a0On The Historicity Of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason For Doubt<\/em>; (Chapter 6, page 235) he writes:<\/p>\n

“In 1945 Betty Crocker was rated in a national survey as the second most admired woman in America, and to this day a street is named after her in Golden Valley, Minnesota, where she still lives. Her father was William Crocker, a successful corporate executive in the food industry, and she started her career answering letters on cooking questions for her father’s company, then acquired her own national radio show where she delivered cooking advice for twenty-four years. Later she had her own television show, while making appearances on other TV shows and in TV commercials to promote her products. I ve seen actual video tapes of her cooking and speaking, and her picture still adorns various General Mills baking products. She has also published several cookbooks, and now has her own Website. All that is 100 percent true. And yet she doesn\u2019t exist. She was never born, never lived, never spoke, never appeared on TV, and never wrote a word. Others simply wrote or appeared in her name. Welcome to the world of the mythical corporate mascot.”<\/p>\n

Jesus might very well be an ancient version of Betty Crocker. If something of this nature happened in the 20th\u00a0Century, then it is even more likely to have happened in the <\/a>1st.<\/p>\n

(1552) Script mining versus prophecy fulfillment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christian apologists as well as their non-critical fans often trot out the claim that Jesus fulfilled 350+ prophecies from the Old Testament. This is used as a proof that Jesus was the messiah foretold many centuries earlier. And it is undeniable that there are many parallels between the reported deeds, actions, and sayings of Jesus and what is written in the Old Testament.<\/p>\n

This would seem to offer some evidence for the messianic status of Jesus, as well as his alleged divinity. However, there is a much simpler and more plausible explanation for the existence of these parallel stories. The writers of the gospels mined the Old Testament scriptures for ideas, themes, quotes, and so forth to embellish and legitimize their writings. This is not unusual- Joseph Smith, in the 19th Century, copied large portions of the Book of Isaiah while developing the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n

Script mining and plagiarism are age-old methods used by authors seeking inspiration. It started as soon as the first person wrote something after reading what something else had written. It was employed generously by the Old Testament-literate gospel authors, and now, centuries later, it has been conveniently misinterpreted by Christians as a sign of prophecy <\/a>fulfillment.<\/p>\n

(1553) The strongest argument<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead of laboring over scriptural research, church history, archaeology, and relevant scientific information, perhaps the best way to test the authenticity of Christianity is to observe the world in which we live. Does it seem consistent with the claims of Christianity? As an extension to Reason #2<\/a>, the following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/infidels.org\/kiosk\/article\/to-pray-or-to-sacrifice-a-goat-820.html<\/a><\/p>\n

When you wake up tomorrow morning and leave your house, take a quick look skyward before you get into your car to drive off. Can you really imagine, for instance, seeing Jesus descending from the heavens\u2014perhaps casting a luminous specter over the local Dairy Queen\u2014ready to separate the righteous from the wicked? Is that the kind of world in which we live? Or do we live in the more prosaic, albeit still amazing, world that science has illuminated for us? Do we live in a world rife with miracles and prodigies and magic and supernaturalism? Or do we live in a world that, although deeply mysterious due to our continuing ignorance, operates according to a comprehensible natural order that allows for no convenient, anomalous miracles?<\/p>\n

This is a subtle but eminently powerful argument against the truth of Christianity. And it is probably the strongest argument.\u00a0 The incriminating evidence is available to everyone every minute of every day. And it is screaming loud and clear- THE WORLD WE LIVE IN IS NOT THE WORLD OF <\/a>CHRISTIANITY.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(1554) God flunks the design of the human eye<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christians who claim that the human eye is evidence for intelligent design, preferably by their imagined deity, are barking up the wrong tree. They are trotting out an example that is a major embarrassment to their cause. The following is taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/infidels.org\/kiosk\/article\/using-intelligent-design-to-show-that-there-is-no-god-the-creator-915.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Believers in Intelligent Design claim that the human eye is too complicated to have evolved from anything simpler. They say that if it had evolved there would, for example, be some creatures that had only half an eye, which, so they say, would be useless because it wouldn’t work. They argue that only a complete eye, such as the human eye, can be of any use.<\/p>\n

Evolutionists have answered these claims by arguing that the human eye could have evolved. Beginning with a light sensitive patch of skin, plus a few million years of evolution, a working human eye–or something very similar–could result. And even though the intermediate results might not have been very good, they would have been better than nothing.<\/p>\n

In fact, even half an eye is useful; it is better than no eye at all. Having half an eye is a better survival strategy than not being able to sense light at all. Being able to detect the difference between light and shadow would increase a creature’s awareness of its surroundings and of approaching dangers. Since it would aid survival, that is all that evolution needs to eventually produce a human eye.<\/p>\n

Believers in Intelligent Design assume that features such as the human eye are perfect for the job they do. This must be so, they say, because they were created that way. However, the human eye is not perfect. It does a good-enough job to be extremely useful, but it is\u00a0very\u00a0far from being perfect.<\/p>\n

Professor Greg Downey of Macquarie University, in a lecture on the evolution of the human eye, made the comment that if a first year engineering student handed up a plan for the human eye as a design for an organ of seeing s\/he would be immediately failed and told to redo it properly. If a first year engineering student could do better, what does that say about the creator? (This question will be discussed in more detail below.)<\/p>\n

One of the worst design faults in the human eye is the way in which information from the light sensitive cells of the retina are passed to the brain. The output of the light sensitive cells is actually taken from the front, in the direction from which the light is coming and entering the cell. This means that the connection from the light sensitive cell to the nerve cell partly blocks off the cells in the retina, reducing its efficiency and sensitivity. Worse, those nerves then pass across the front of the retina, again blocking off some of its sensitivity. All the nerve cells exit the eyeball through one fairly large opening. This means that part of the retina has no light sensitive cells, thus producing a blind spot. We don’t usually notice this blind spot because the brain fills in the gap by extrapolating from the data coming from other nerves. But it is there, and its existence can easily be shown by a simple experiment that can be found in any book that discusses the eye and vision.<\/p>\n

I have no reticence in saying that any competent designer of the human eye would have avoided these problems by taking the nerves out of the back of the light sensitive cells in the retina. No exit hole for the nerves would then be necessary and there would be no blind spot in a person’s vision, and no loss of sensitivity due to the nerves blocking off some of the retina. It seems safe to say that the human eye was not designed by a creator with the engineering competence of a first year engineering student In fact I would go so far as to say that the designer was completely incompetent, yet this is the incompetent design that believers in Intelligent Design want to lay in the hands of their God, the alleged Creator of humankind.<\/p>\n

The manner in which the human eye is constructed is the expected outcome of an unguided evolutionary process. It indicates not only that the human eye evolved over time but also that a perfect creator was not guiding the proceedings.\u00a0 Both of these conclusions emphatically suggest that Christianity is a <\/a>myth.<\/p>\n

(1555) A universe of false beliefs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christianity was born and thrived in a world of alternative facts and false beliefs. Reality was no barrier to the development of dogma that incorporated all sorts of supernatural shenanigans. Whenever it seems unlikely that people could be so easily duped into accepting fakery, it is instructive to see how much foolishness still exists today. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/godlessmama.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a modified and updated version of a similar list I posted in\u00a0February 2016<\/a>. \u00a0The bad news for some people will be that they see some of their closely held beliefs being contradicted here. \u00a0For my part the bad news is that the list is not only still relevant but required an update. \u00a0Still, there are some things that simply must be said (and more than once, apparently).<\/p>\n