by

confirmation bias


Or plain lies? You decide.

Our apologist writes

To answer this now I would argue that history documents that Christianity is the only religion based on literally millions of people seeing God all at once when He descended on Mt. Sinai. In contrast, all other belief systems are based on one person witnessing God and then convincing people to follow.

and I immediately had to dust my bible to confirm this truth that I had missed, for I know of no other book of antiquity where such a thing could have been recorded except the bible. This story is in Exodus 19 and the relevant part reads thus

20 The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up 21 and the Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. 22 Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”

And I recalled the several passages where the same book tells us no one has seen the lord and lived and so much more. It can therefore be safely said the argument the apologist was relying on to support their belief is not valid. Many apologists (think Ken Ham) and goddites assure us Moses wrote the book, Moses met god and even in this particular verse, we have it written and Moses said to the people or the Lord said to Moses but no single instance where the god talks directly to the people.

So when our apologists writes

Based on my reading of the Bible this is the very definition of a false prophet.

I can safely conclude Moses is a false prophet.

The ontological argument is given to us as answering the question of whether god is man-made. The irony in this argument should be evident. Anselm in his argument makes existence a predicate. And when he argues god is the greatest beyond which nothing greater can be thought, I can’t for the life of me see how one can argue god is the greatest evil beyond which no great evil can be thought.

I think had this author just written

I can only say that I believe wholeheartedly because God permeated my fabric with doubtless belief, and now I just know who is right.

I would have treated them more kindly, for in this statement, is a statement of faith.

About makagutu

As Onyango Makagutu I am Kenyan, as far as I am a man, I am a citizen of the world

140 thoughts on “confirmation bias”

  1. inspiredbythedivine1 says:
    November 18, 2015 at 16:34

    “I can only say that I believe wholeheartedly because God permeated my fabric with doubtless belief, and now I just know who is right.” These days, the only theists who have the balls to be this honest are Islamic jihadists, unfortunately. The OP’s author also mentions a truly crazy thing. He says God led him to Jesus. So, Jesus led him to Jesus? Or did “God” as a separate guy, lead him to “Jesus”? Christianity is THE most dishonest religion EVER! It is, without question, polytheistic. Yet, Christians claim it isn’t. Thus, Christians, besides being self-righteous, narcissistic, arrogant asses, are bat-shit crazy.

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  2. KIA says:
    November 18, 2015 at 16:49

    Did the person say History records? Delusion

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  3. john zande says:
    November 18, 2015 at 16:50

    Christianity is the only religion based on literally millions of people seeing God all at once when He descended on Mt. Sinai.

    B’wahahahaha… Yeah, and so impressive was this that they all started worshiping Baal! LOL!

    The Stupidity is strong in this one

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  4. fojap says:
    November 18, 2015 at 17:00

    Man, even I know that’s not right and my mains source is Charlton Heston. Even if your appologist is right, wouldn’t it be tens of thousands, not millions? How many people could fit at the foot of the mountain anyway?

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  5. archaeopteryx1 says:
    November 18, 2015 at 17:10

    Ex 19:9 – “And the Lord said to Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee.”

    So a million people saw a thick cloud – how unusual is that?

    Ex 19:21 – “And the Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.”

    So we have a thick cloud that surrounds a mountain top, and a god who tells Moses NOT to let the people climb the mountain to see him, lest they die – so exactly who was it again, who witnessed the appearance of Yahweh?

    Pay no attention to the man behind the cloud —

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  6. nannus says:
    November 18, 2015 at 21:49

    Funny what people can read into such a section from the Bible. For example, where does it talk about “Millions” of people. The Israelites, at this time, might have been a small group of a few hundred to a few thousand people.
    I also find it funny that such people take the Bible as a source of true information. Christianity must be the true religion because the Bible contains this and that. Why do they regard the Bible as a source of true information?

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    • archaeopteryx1 says:
      November 18, 2015 at 21:57

      Liked by 3 people

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    • makagutu says:
      November 19, 2015 at 08:40

      Why do they regard the Bible as a source of true information?

      Because the bible says so.
      He made the millions up

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      • nannus says:
        November 19, 2015 at 09:25

        I would like to know where the Bible-believers get the belief from that the Bible itself says it is true. I don’t know the Bible so well so I don’t know where in the text this is written.

        However, to my knowledge, the collection of books we know as the Bible (“biblia” is a plural of “biblion”, meaning “books”) was agreed uppon on the Synod of Hippo in 393. Before that, there was no Bible, there where only individual books. Any statement in any of them that this particular book contains the truth or is the word of god (whatever that might be) cannot refer to the whole collection. No additional book was added that claimed such a status for the whole collection. There cannot be a rererence to the whole collection in any of these books since they predated the collection.

        So to me it looks like this is a myth (in both senses of that word, as mythology and as a falsehood).

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        • makagutu says:
          November 19, 2015 at 14:19

          That has been the work of apologists. They have selected a few verses from the bible and used them to convince themselves and the unsuspecting public that the bible is divinely inspired and true

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        • archaeopteryx1 says:
          November 19, 2015 at 18:02

          Only partially accurate, Nannus – the Old Testament had been finished by about 200 CE – that is to say, the Jewish ‘Tanakh.’ But you’re right about the New Testament.

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          • nannus says:
            November 19, 2015 at 22:01

            Well, I am not an expert on this stuff. But the date you give also shows there was a historical process that led to this collection of books. It did not fall from heaven. Its a man-made compilation of man-made books and a product of historical accidents.

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            • archaeopteryx1 says:
              November 19, 2015 at 22:20

              Oh, absolutely. I have apologists say that there is no way so many varied authors could have written such a consistent epic, but if you’ll notice, each episode of most TV dramas are written by different screenwriters, yet the consistency is there because the writers are following what went before.

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      • nannus says:
        November 19, 2015 at 09:34

        See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon. Obviously, the content of the Bible(s) is a matter of historical processes. And initially there was even more variation. Some of the earlier churches where later declared heresies (obviously a matter of power made possible by one of the sects becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire). Where this power did not reach (e.g. Ethiopia) the canon looks different.

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        • makagutu says:
          November 19, 2015 at 14:25

          In what I have read so far, in the first century of our era, scripture referred only to the books of the various books of the OT. The new testament did not at that point exist as a we have it now and in its compilation, there are several books that were left out.

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        • archaeopteryx1 says:
          November 19, 2015 at 18:22

          Oh, there were all kinds of Christianities floating about the early churches – The Gospel of Peter, for example, a pseudonymous work, bits of which were discovered in Cairo in 1898, but mentioned by Eusibius. It was a work with Gnostic leanings that was popular among the Syrian churches for many years. It was approved by Serapion, the Bishop of Antioch (who had never bothered to read it) for use in the church of Rhossus, until someone pointed out it’s Gnostic properties – Serapion then dashed off a letter forbidding its use, or as Gilda Radner used to say, “Never mind.”

          The Gospel of Peter was the only gospel to actually describe the resurrection. It seems that the heavens opened up and two men descended “in great splendor.” The stone rolled away by itself and the two men entered the tomb, then emerged, supporting Jesus. The heads of the two reached up into heaven, while the head of Jesus reached up beyond the heavens. They were followed by a floating cross. A voice from heaven then spoke, “Have you preached to those who are sleeping?” – the cross answered, “Yes.”

          I swear I’m not making this crap up. L. RON HUBBARD couldn’t make that crap up!

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          • makagutu says:
            November 19, 2015 at 20:58

            Haha.
            We must give them credit for imagination

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          • nannus says:
            November 19, 2015 at 21:56

            I was thinking specificalle of the gnostics, sects like those documented in the Nag Hammadi books, for example.
            I am also not so sure Judaism was so uniform. I would suspect there where a lot of different directions, so I am not so sure about that canon either. The relatively uniform talmudic direction developed later (and even there, there is a Jerusalem Talmud and a Bagdad Talmud) during the time of the Islamic Kalifate, when Bagdad became the main center of Judaism. The Jews were under Babylonian rule, Persian rule, Greece rule and Roman/Byzantine rule subsequently (I might miss some historical detail here), so there was no central Jewish political power who could have made sure there was only one orthodoxy.
            In any case, one must look at those holy scriptures from a historical (and regional) point of view.

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  7. Robert A. Vella says:
    November 18, 2015 at 22:08

    This apologist is an idiot who doesn’t even know their own religion. Where do morons of this caliber come from? Are they grown in dank, dark underground chambers like mushrooms? It’s mind boggling.

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  8. clubschadenfreude says:
    November 20, 2015 at 03:20

    damn, millions of people? Funny how these “millions” didn’t leave one single trace in a space the size of half my state, Pennsylvania. Not one latrine, no piles of quail bones, etc.

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    • archaeopteryx1 says:
      November 20, 2015 at 03:41

      Apologists will tell you that that’s due to the shifting, whispering sands of the Arabian Peninsula – they cover everything.

      William G. Dever was a biblical archaeologist, raised in a religious atmosphere, educated in religious institutions, went to the Levant, intending to prove archaeologically the truth of the Bible. He came out, 30 years later, a confirmed atheist.

      In his book, “What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It,” he writes of the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as having been “discarded as a fruitless pursuit.“

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      • clubschadenfreude says:
        November 20, 2015 at 03:51

        Arabian peninsula? my they were busy weren’t they and not ever seen by anyone already there, eh? 🙂

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        • archaeopteryx1 says:
          November 20, 2015 at 04:35

          Jordan/Northern Saudi is the most likely desert they wandered in. Granted, the Sinai is closer, but the Sinai Peninsula has remained a part of Egypt from the First Dynasty of ancient Egypt (c. 3100 BC) until the 21st century, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense that, running as they were from the Egyptians, they would spend 40 years wandering around Egyptian territory.

          Of course if you remove the entire Exodus from the equation as being a myth, the location becomes moot.

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    • makagutu says:
      November 20, 2015 at 14:43

      they couldn’t have left anything since food was from heaven and everything else they had to carry

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