- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51043210
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I love dropping that on theists, especially the ones who go down the line of “Well the Bible proves the history… We found Jericho!”
And I’m like “Yeah, and New York is real so Spider-Man must be real too!”
Thousands of years from now, someone is going to uncover an old Warner Brothers warehouse and will be convinced we made all these Batman and Superman statues because we worshipped them.
Whereas others will roll their eyes and say that the statues are clearly dildoes.
Our descendants will clearly have superior anal capabilities
I recently stumbled upon Professor Dave Explains https://youtu.be/xsEKgpWYSgs
I didn’t even know the extend of the anti science / creation / conspiracy theory bullshit out there.
It honestly shook me to see these adults talking about fairytales as if they were real… From ancient aliens to flat earth to bigfoot there are fucking adults that believe this shit.
It’s no wonder our society is going to shit, because for every Dave trying to explain science there is 20 Joe Rogan’s spreading bullshit to the masses.
I used to believe when I was younger (thankfully stopped believing relatively early on) and in retrospect… yeah, it’s so fucking obvious that no god exists.
This post is so true. The only source is a book, literally nothing else. What makes it trustworthy? The fact that it’s thousands of years old and is still relevant? And literally nothing else? Also ignoring the obvious that any god existing is dumb as hell.
It’s all just a big “Trust me bro”. Perhaps some of the biggest lies in history…
Imagine accidentally creating a religion by lying that you didn’t have sex when you are pregnant.
And then having that act plagarized by a bunch of other later religions, including Christianity.
The fact it’s so old makes it even funnier because it was clearly written by people who were considered smart at the time (maybe?) but clearly didn’t know dick all about how anything worked. Yet there’s still Bible literalists today, though even the ones that take it as metaphorical are IMO just in denial.
Even the philosophical stuff is undermined by the indoctrination shit, which is evident in the religious people who think there’s no reason to not do evil shit if religion is false. About a third of the ten commandments boil down to “respect mah authoriteh”.
(Allah / Jahwe / God are all just different names for the same deity. Which makes a whole lot of shit in this world more “fun”)
Go Spidergod.
One will find many Peter Parkers in New York City. We cannot be certain which Peter Parker was Spider-Man, but we cannot exclude Spider-Man as an option.
We can find many contemporary, non-Marvel sources for Spider-Man. This means that even those not part of Marvel were well aware of Spider-Man. This means Spider-Man was likely a real living person.
Spider-Man appears in various government records. Those have all disappeared due to tampering in 2025 alongside other government data, but those records were described in records from other authors within a few hundred years of that time.
You really want that poor unlucky bastard to be real? I mean, his life is pretty much just pain.
Which one are we talking about here? /s
deleted by creator
That’s a great question, isn’t it?
At least he has super powers… I don’t
Would you tell us if you did?
…
Touché…
There was a time in my childhood, when I wanted fiction to be real, and really hated fiction that I didn’t like because it meant those bad things will be real. I thought religion was like a tale that adults also believed in.
I got somewhat more open to religion during my teen years, as far-right orgs tried to (ideologically) groom me, and of course it involved me getting bombarded with “if you’re atheist, you’ll be sad and suicidal” type bullshit.
TIL atheists have no idea what “proof” is.
noun
- evidence sufficient to establish a thing as true, or to produce belief in its truth
Key being evidence.
“Faith; defined as the ability to believe what you know isn’t true.” - Roj Blake.
Picking up a copy of Julius Caeser, by Shakespeare
Seems made up to me. I guess he wasn’t real.
Flips on the movie Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter
Also a fictitious person.
In fact, as I’m working my way through these books and beginning to question whether any President has ever existed.
This is not an argument in good faith. This is not a level comparison.
Just because a clearly (that is, without serious challenge) fictionalized account exists doesn’t mean we should ignore the mountains of separate, unchallenged, easily verifiable, unbiased evidence that an historical account is beyond likely. No such body of “evidence” exists for Jesus, as defined by mainstream Christians; the same as for God, Yahwey, Allah, or Odin.
we should ignore the mountains of separate, unchallenged, easily verifiable, unbiased evidence that an historical account is beyond likely
There’s no separate, unchallenged easily verifiable evidence that contradicts the claim that a Jewish Rabbi lead a mass movement of ecumenical reformists in the 1st century AD.
No such body of “evidence” exists for Jesus
We have an abundance of accounts, many of them from the Roman scholars of the era, describing the movement and its members and their beliefs and activities.
Then we have a litany of Gospels, of which the nascent church had to scrub down precisely because so many of them were believed heretical a century later.
I’m a bit tired of hearing “Nothing exists” when what you’re really saying is “I don’t personal accept any of the testimony because I don’t like the people saying it”.
There’s no separate, unchallenged easily verifiable evidence that contradicts the claim that a Jewish Rabbi lead a mass movement of ecumenical reformists in the 1st century AD.
This is not necessary. For one, the burden of proof is on whomever makes the extraordinary claim, not whomever wishes to contradict or refute it. Second, no one is challenging the idea that there was a movement started sometime around then, somewhere around there. That is not an extraordinary claim - miracles and magic, however, are pretty extraordinary.
We have an abundance of accounts, many of them from the Roman scholars of the era, describing the movement and its members and their beliefs and activities.
No one is suggesting that Christianity doesn’t exist. The claim is that miracles and magic were happening, and OP is challenging that claim.
Then we have a litany of Gospels, of which the nascent church had to scrub down precisely because so many of them were believed heretical a century later.
Why were some of these writings accepted and some weren’t? Could it be because many of the rejected texts were contradictory, and thus - especially if taken with the canonized text - were ultimately unreliable at best, and outright fiction at worst? What was the methodology for determining which of them were true, and which weren’t?
I’m a bit tired of hearing “Nothing exists” when what you’re really saying is “I don’t personal accept any of the testimony because I don’t like the people saying it”.
That is not at all what I’m saying, and I dare you to show me where I did
In this case, I’m not addressing Christians at all - I’m only concerned with the evidence, like OP. If the evidence that someone 2000 years ago was tossing around miracles and magic comes from a single, curated collection of scripts with dubious provenance that were hand-copied multiple times over centuries, translated & transliterated (many times inaccurately), with little additions and likely edits & deletions along the way, you’re going to have to come up with something a little less biased to convince me. That’s the whole point OP is making.
the burden of proof is on whomever makes the extraordinary claim
Christianity and it’s attendant liturgical documents and period artifacts and accumulated oral history are the proof.
Why were some of these writings accepted and some weren’t?
Ask the folks who made the decision, assuming you believe the Council of Nicea was real.
I’m not addressing Christians at all
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You’re not concerned with evidence if you’re reflexively denying it.
Christianity and it’s attendant liturgical documents and period artifacts and accumulated oral history are the proof.
The fact that Christians exist, and the fact that they have written about their beliefs, are proof that their beliefs are true and based on facts? You don’t see a problem with that argument?
Counterpoint: Hindus exist, and have written about their beliefs (for longer than Christians have). Ipso facto, Hinduism is the one true, correct religion and is based on facts.
I’m not addressing Christians at all
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You’re not concerned with evidence if you’re reflexively denying it.
Wait, do you really think that atheists deny that Christians exist? Do you actually think that’s what we’re talking about? That’s a whole new one. Otherwise you’re committing a major strawman fallacy. I don’t even know how to respond to that. It’s utterly batshit.
The fact that Christians exist, and the fact that they have written about their beliefs, are proof that their beliefs are true and based on facts?
Unless you want to asset they emerged as a Jewish sect ex nihlio, they better be based on some set of facts.
Hinduism is the one true, correct religion
There is a vast gulf between asserting Hinduism is a “True Religion” and dismissing the Upanishads as counterfeit documents with no sincere authorship.
Wait, do you really think that atheists deny that Christians exist?
Atheists generally don’t reject the historical existence of the Christian faith’s founder.
Ok, I think I understand what the problem is here. You took my original comment
No such body of “evidence” exists for Jesus
and ran with that, and completely ignored the qualifying phrase that followed it
as defined by mainstream Christians
that is, that he was god and did miracles and magic and was born from a virgin impregnated by god.
You are completely focused on my apparent assertion that Jesus never existed, and have totally ignored the entire point of the original post, and my original response to you, to focus on something I never actually asserted. So go re-read my original response, and let’s clear this up.
I am not claiming, and have never claimed that there definitely was never a Jewish Rabbi that was called Jesus who started a whole new religion in the middle east.
I frankly don’t give a shit if he was in fact 1 real person, or a post-hoc fictional man based on multiple people, or just made up whole-cloth. It doesn’t really matter. What matters, especially in the context of this post, is that I am asserting that there was not a man who was a god, or did any miracles or magic, or died and came back to life 2 days later and then went to heaven. That is not based on fact.
Just because Spider-Man 616 isn’t real, doesn’t mean Spider-Man 199999 is real
This, but I’m denying the existence of Thomas Jefferson by pointing to two different fictional depictions.
Unfortunately there really are people who lack the critical thinking skills to recognize that historical evidence and the scientific method are valid methods of understanding truth in the world and they instead wallow in their baseless preconceived notions
I think there’s a certain political spin to “Jesus isn’t even real!” that - taken to it’s logical conclusion - leads us to believe virtually nobody existed prior to that advent of photography.
It’s sort of the skeptic’s answer to Pascal’s Wager. Don’t believe in anything, because there’s no material cost either way.
lol no. Photographs can easily be faked, especially with modern technology. Defer to those who have applied the scientific method, who have done solid research, and even do those things yourself to cross-reference; you should really know scientific literacy by now.
“Guy who does actual literal magic” is never real. “Guy who alone violently killed numerous women in London 1888-1891” (AKA Jack the Ripper), as a counterexample, is plausible but (as far as I know) has yet to be proven or disproven by historical evidence or other scientific means as to if it was one killer or multiple killers. “Guy whom historians generally agree did XYZ and had such and such characteristics based on their study of historical evidence and use of the scientific method” is virtually guaranteed to be real within a level of approximation (as in, even if we don’t know John Doe’s middle name was Jack, John Jack Doe still existed but only slightly different from how we know him).
taken to it’s logical conclusion - leads us to believe virtually nobody existed prior to that advent of photography.
That has the logical weight of Last Thursdayism or The Truman Show Delusion. Like technically it’s possible, but there are way more assumptions being made about what it obscured than there are assumptions being made about what is observed.
“Guy who does actual literal magic” is never real.
Sure. But a person doesn’t cease to exist because they’ve been canonized by the Vatican, either. The post-mortem mythology built up around a person isn’t evidence of their absence. The leap from “Jesus didn’t literally bring a guy three-days-dead back to the land of the living” to “No popular rabbi evangelizing a reformist vision of the Jewish faith existed in Jerusalem two thousand years ago” is enormous.
Hell, even the character Spiderman has its roots in the daredevils of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, famous for free climbing across New York real estate. To hold up a copy of the latest Tom Holland movie and say “This is absurd! He’s literally doing wizard magic! Nobody has ever dressed as a spider and climbed up the side of a building!” Like, obviously false.
That has the logical weight of Last Thursdayism or The Truman Show Delusion.
An even more extreme take, sure. But when you’re dealing with historical events that are thousands of years old, its a game you kinda-sorta have to play. Otherwise, you don’t know where Greek History ends and Mythology begins.
Is there perhaps some other sources than Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter that point to him being a real person?
Sources that may be contemporary to when he was alive.
Except the authors openly acknowledged that those are fictitious works, and there aren’t large groups of people trying to force the world into a new dark age based solely on the questionable moral lessons they’ve cherry picked from those books.
Except the authors openly acknowledged that those are fictitious works
Plenty of fiction is written without acknowledging its fictional nature. Hell, the spoofy historical comedies even lean into incredulity, adopting stylistic hallmarks of serious journalism and documentation.
Source me on that. Show me a spoofy historical comedy written seriously where the author defends it as historical fact. I think it would also be fair to say you can’t use a religious or cult text (i.e. Book of Mormon, Dianetics), since those are being presented as legitimately non-fiction, and it has to be presented as entertainment (so no pseudoscience cranks), since that is the main purpose of fiction (beyond disinformation and religion, of course).
I’m going to guess that you can’t, since what you have presented is a logically impossible loop.
Show me a spoofy historical comedy written seriously where the author defends it as historical fact.
The most seminal example is Orson Wells’s “War of the Worlds”, which set off a full panic across the Northeast Atlantic when it was broadcast. A more modern example is American Hustle a dramatic (ultimately falsely embellished) comic retelling of the Abscam scandal. But there’s an entire genre dedicated to falsified history from a comic perspective.
Then there are much more sincere takes as well, some of them extremely old and compelling enough to be considered true for centuries. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_Regum_Britanniae
what you have presented is a logically impossible loop
Lying is impossible? Getting historical events wrong for the purpose of improving the entertainment value of a media product is impossible?
Are you joking?
War of the Worlds doesn’t meet the criteria. The book is written in a fictional style (first person perspective of events that conflict with reality). Orson wells in his famous radio play acknowledged at the beginning that it is a work of fiction, as well as at the end. This does not meet the specified criteria as a supporting example.
American hustle is clearly a movie. Seeing how the director and screenwriters knew they were making a movie, advertised a movie, and ran the “this is a work of fiction…” disclaimer, I feel that this does not meet the criteria as a supporting example.
Historia Regium Brittanie seems like it might fit the criteria, but I suspect that it was either disinformation (no actual ancient Latin history, fabricated for clout) or not presented as entertainment.
Lying is impossible? Getting historical events wrong for the purpose of improving the entertainment value of a media product is impossible?
This is not what I was trying to convey. What I was trying to say is thst its impossible to have an author create a piece of fiction, written as factual, purely for entertainment purposes, while maintaining that it is factual.
Yes people can lie, I never said they couldn’t.
So far we have one possible example from 400 years ago, where were don’t know how the author presented or defended his work as factual or fictional.
I’m not convinced. In fact, 2 out of 3 of your sources pretty explicitly support my point, and the 3rd might support yours a tiny bit.
Are you joking?
Tone it back a bit. Get out of your own head and take another look at what is being presented. To use a phrase: “touch grass.”
War of the Worlds doesn’t meet the criteria.
It quite literally caused a national panic, because it was delivered in a believable manner to a gullible audience.
American hustle is clearly a movie.
It’s a biopic that presents itself as a historical account of real life events.
Historia Regium Brittanie seems like it might fit the criteria, but I suspect
You’re going to have to put more on the table than “it doesn’t count because I would have known better if I’d read it in 1163”.
What I was trying to say is thst its impossible to have an author create a piece of fiction, written as factual, purely for entertainment purposes, while maintaining that it is factual.
It is incredibly easy.
It quite literally caused a national panic, because it was delivered in a believable manner to a gullible audience.
It mostly did not. Ironically, that story is mostly fictitious.
Did the 1938 Radio Broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’ Cause a Nationwide Panic? | Snopes.com https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/war-of-the-worlds/
It quite literally caused a national panic, because it was delivered in a believable manner to a gullible audience.
That was not one of the criteria. People are in a panic about all kinds of fake shit all the time, but (practically) nobody is out trying to rebuild civilization after the human race was decimated by alien Interlopers after they were defeated by a virus. It was a work of fiction, the author acknowledges it as work of fiction, you clearly didn’t understand the criteria for evidence of your claim.
It’s a biopic that presents itself as a historical account of real life events.
It literally says it is a work of fiction. The entire production crew acknowledges it is a work of fiction. You clearly did not understand the criteria for evidence of your claim.
You’re going to have to put more on the table than “it doesn’t count because I would have known better if I’d read it in 1163”.
You’re going to have to do better than one possible example where we don’t know the author’s motivations or marketing of the work. To quote, I believe you useed the word “Plenty” when describing the availability of your evidence, so far the actual support is “one possible due to a lack of information about it from hundreds of years ago”. Also… Not a historical comedy?
It is incredibly easy.
…And yet still elusive to you.
How… DARE… you!
Vampires would be the dominant species on Earth if ol’ Abe hadn’t handled it for us!
He died for our veins!
