The naivete of the New Atheist scholars

Religion and Secularism
141
Of the three studies done using DNA, one put the population at only 5,000 humans. Another was 500 humans left on earth. The other study results was in between the two.
You have to provide links for these studies so that we may know the dates, by whom the studies were realized, and what is meant by “humans".
This finding gives us a very important date for the expanding of humans on the earth again.
What expanding of humans on the earth again? There were Neanderthals in the Near East and Europe, AMH (Anatomically Modern Humans) and Denisonans in the Far East, Florenciensis in Flores Island, Africans in Africa and Homo sapiens sapiens probably on their way to the Western Asia. Moreover, human races had already formed at the stage of Homo erectus (according to Multiregional Continuity theory) and therefore all races survived nicely.
What we know at this point is the Red Ochre burials found so far are dated 80K years ago.
Ochre for burials or otherwise has nothing to do with religion. Religion starts with the concept of gods. Let us not play games!
This is saying that there were at least two groups or pockets of humans to repopulate after the Mt. Toba eruption.
At least two, but at most, up a few hundred, probably.
142
Personal viewpoint. Just a reminder when talking about religions of the past. The people were not much different than you and me. And religion dealing with afterlife and miracles needing a supernatural being was about the same as today.
There is a way to improve your personal viewpoint: read what the ancient people believed and do not insult them by saying that they believed modern nonsense such as the afterlife. The concept of the soul did not obtain prior to 2300 BCE and therefore neither the concept of the afterlife nor that of the immortality existed. https://www.academia.edu/6940175/The_making_of_the_soul_concept
143
What's the point of this discussion?
Well, you obviously did not read the op, so here are the last paragraphs: It now becomes obvious the reason obliging religious scholars (and dishonest or idiotic agnostic scholars) to support the archetypes’ theory or humans’ psychological priming for religion; they strive to protect religion! But there is more to it. If the story that Campbell detected is not an imaginative one but the report of actual events, then the criminal rapist gods that the ancients were talking about were real people and we are dealing not with the idea of God but with a monumental hoax. By means of archaeological and scriptural evidence the history of religion can be reconstructed and the God idea be shown for what it is: a monumental hoax based on an archaic joke! Which was legally proven in a court of law. What more do you want? Convince religious people that they are wrong? They have been at war over this for thousands of years because they call each other wrong!!! And now you are going to clear this *matter* up once and for all?? Who is naive here? You making verbal war on the naivete of New Arheists? That's just weird.
So, where does your metaphysics philosophy fit in this environment?
If you had read Max Tegmark, which you stubbornly refuse to do, you would find the falsification of Theism. That falsification is the fact that the universe is an implaccable mathematical construct, without intention, motive, or emotion. The universe *functions* only mathematically, Universal Mathematics (CONSTANTS) is the meta-physical essence of the Universe. No hand of God! Only mathematical values and functions. There, simple, direct, understandable and *functioning* Why does this present a problem for you? Do you really think establishing a few dates of certain event is going to *disprove* anything, other than that in the eyes of a theist you are an *unbeliever* or even stronger, an *infidel*, just like me?
144
The concept of the soul did not obtain prior to 2300 BCE and therefore neither the concept of the afterlife nor that of the immortality existed. https://www.academia.edu/6940175/The_making_of_the_soul_concept
I looked over your paper on souls. It talks about how the Egyptians used the concept. It doesn't talk about the Egyptian person who decided to invent the concept and spread it through culture into the future. I'm not saying that isn't possible, I'd just like to see the evidence. Did I miss that part?
145
For example I stated that there are no "improvements" in religion over time. You rebutted with an excerpt from somewhere about a man who masturbated.
It is not from somewhere, it is from the oldest religious texts of humanity, the Egyptian Pyramid Texts; and it was not a man who was masturbating, it was the principal god, the father of the gods.
How in the hell is that relevant to my point? You've cited ejaculation scenarios 2-3 times with no apparent basis in context to this thread or the accompanying arguments.
I do not know what your point is, but that is how the gods produced humans: by ejaculating into the vaginas of women. Theologians did not like that and little by little removed the female part from the story of the creation of humans and gods. Originally they had to keep the reference to sex but then removed that too and had the gods creating humans by various methods until they found the clay. The history of religion is very rude and filthy and inhuman. Sorry if I have disturbed your spiritual understanding of the… divine. :lol:
146

Yeah you eventually clarified what you meant by “improvements”.
Monotheism! :lol:
That’s revealing.

147
It is not from somewhere, it is from the oldest religious texts of humanity, the Egyptian Pyramid Texts; and it was not a man who was masturbating, it was the principal god, the father of the gods.
You talk about courts of law. I can see a judge asking for evidence. The prosecutor says..."It's not all the evidence your honor...but it's the oldest we can find." Judge: "Oh well, that's good enough. As long as it's the oldest material we can find that will be suitable." "Yes your honor I figured if it pleases the court we'll just fill in the blanks with hypothesis and conjecture."
148
Reading above the quotes from interpreted ancient texts you quote, I see more evidence of various forms of cultural selective breeding than I do any commonality of religions. Selective breeding is one of the most common strands of human behavior that can be found in cultures and religions. So what's influencing what here?
You have to cite the quotes so that I will understand what you mean by cultural selective breeding.
149
That's not what it made you is it? It made you go study for yourself and challenge those authorities.
But your advice was to trust the authority. If I had put my trust on Allen’s translation, I would have made myself into a sucker. The layman may depend on the authority when it comes to fields of knowledge he was no control on. I have no idea of physics and mathematics, so I have to respect what Einstein said on this subject, yet I can very well realize that Einstein was spouting nonsense every time he was referring to religion. With translations of ancient texts one only has to study three of four different translations of the same sentence in order to make his mind on the validity of the translations. Okay, this was a distinction that was easily missed. I did not give advice to trust an authority; I said I would be compelled to if I could not muster a greater authority. Either I could spend the time studying myself, or find others who were equally trustworthy and disagreed with the first authority. No one is a sucker for doing that, unless you trust the first authority without question and go on to repeat them or give them money, or otherwise act foolishly. You got it exactly right with Einstein, but you aren’t applying this logic to yourself. So, why do you trust Einstein when it comes to theories about matter and energy? Answer that, then imagine you are me and apply that same method to how I decide to trust you. You simply “insist" you are an expert and say I should learn something from you. Using your logic, I would be a brainless idiot to do that. The thing you are missing here is the “smell" test. If I see something brown, and it stinks, I don’t need to reach down and pick it up. I know enough about how history is done to know that you don’t simply look at a few figurines, notice similarities in hair and boob shape and claim that some world shaping myth was passed from culture to culture for 80,000 years.
150
Reading above the quotes from interpreted ancient texts you quote, I see more evidence of various forms of cultural selective breeding than I do any commonality of religions. Selective breeding is one of the most common strands of human behavior that can be found in cultures and religions. So what's influencing what here?
You have to cite the quotes so that I will understand what you mean by cultural selective breeding. Your post #138 Throughout history people have chosen how to advance their bloodlines. Arranged marriages. Throwing female babies into the river. The ugly girls waiting in the temple for years that you cite above. Abortions..... No interracial marriages. there's millions of examples. So as I said, Human behavior has much influence on religion and the origins of religion and gods. Much more influence than your study of a small sliver of human history...4000BC- 40AD or so. We can see it above in those temple scenarios. Those scholars probably did observe that. And it shows Human behavior in possible stressor environments. Stressed pair bonding environments etc, I don't see a goddamned thing in there that shows any commonality of religions. Commonality of the human condition? Yes!
151
Which was legally proven in a court of law. What more do you want? Convince religious people that they are wrong?
Religious people are lost cases for the atheist. I aim at their children as they aim at mine. I’ll teach their children the history of religion with all the filth and inhumanity it carries and they would never turn believers.
And now you are going to clear this *matter* up once and for all?? Who is naive here? You making verbal war on the naivete of New Arheists? That's just weird.
The New Atheists are the ones who play the card of the pimps of theology by preaching that humans are psychologically primed for religion. You are of the opinion that the history of religion is not enough to kill religion, ha? But you do not know that history because they do not want you to know. They do not want you to know that in the entire ancient Near East the ruling elite were producing new subjects and slaves in human breeding grounds. That information is classified because it is obvious that we are dealing with a social system that lasted for tens of thousands of years. The breeding grounds were entire villages (one of them, Merimda, has been found in Egypt) where the lords were raping miserable abducted women. Those lords came to be known as gods and so we read in the inscriptions of the Deir-el-Medina chapel that: Osiris creates new life in the great harem in Thebes
If you had read Max Tegmark, which you stubbornly refuse to do, you would find the falsification of Theism. That falsification is the fact that the universe is an implaccable mathematical construct, without intention, motive, or emotion. The universe *functions* only mathematically, Universal Mathematics (CONSTANTS) is the meta-physical essence of the Universe. No hand of God!
You are fighting against theology. I, the atheist, I am fighting God. No atheist with self respect pays any attention to theological nonsense.
Why does this present a problem for you? Do you really think establishing a few dates of certain event is going to *disprove* anything, other than that in the eyes of a theist you are an *unbeliever* or even stronger, an *infidel*, just like me?
There are ancient Egyptian royal instructions revealing that their entire social system was based on the production of slaves in human breeding grounds. Egyptologists, and the academy in general, tell you that the pyramids were built by magic, without the use of hordes of slaves, because if the scholars in the other fields of knowledge learn about the human breeding grounds, they will make the connections and will know what is meant by “the gods created humans". So, those who know are obviously certain that the history of religion, if revealed, will kill religion for good.
152
What's the point of this discussion?
Well, you obviously did not read the op, so here are the last paragraphs: It now becomes obvious the reason obliging religious scholars (and dishonest or idiotic agnostic scholars) to support the archetypes’ theory or humans’ psychological priming for religion; they strive to protect religion! But there is more to it. If the story that Campbell detected is not an imaginative one but the report of actual events, then the criminal rapist gods that the ancients were talking about were real people and we are dealing not with the idea of God but with a monumental hoax. By means of archaeological and scriptural evidence the history of religion can be reconstructed and the God idea be shown for what it is: a monumental hoax based on an archaic joke! I'm glad you brought that back up. Here's where I think you are off, re: the above statement. The word "hoax" implies someone's intent to fool someone else. The thing is, we are ready made to fool ourselves with imagined narratives. It is only when we develop to a certain degree individually, that we can discriminate easily between fiction and reality. Some people may gain this ability as young children, but some people never do.
153
If you had read Max Tegmark, which you stubbornly refuse to do, you would find the falsification of Theism. That falsification is the fact that the universe is an implaccable mathematical construct, without intention, motive, or emotion. The universe *functions* only mathematically, Universal Mathematics (CONSTANTS) is the meta-physical essence of the Universe. No hand of God!
You are fighting against theology. I, the atheist, I am fighting God... You are fighting a supernatural deity that does not exist?? Or perhaps you mean that you are fighting the existing concepts of God.
... No atheist with self respect pays any attention to theological nonsense.
Yet you have not only paid attention to theological nonsense, you have obviously devoted an extraordinary amount of effort in its study. Are you suggesting that you have no self respect? Surely that is not what you meant.
154
It now becomes obvious the reason obliging religious scholars (and dishonest or idiotic agnostic scholars) to support the archetypes’ theory or humans’ psychological priming for religion; they strive to protect religion!
I am not idiotic or dishonest (generally speaking). I do not strive to protect religion (beyond what the Constitution requires). I would like for all people to be able to see religion for what it is. But I know that we are (as are all organisms) naturally inclined toward engaging in superstitious behavior. Beyond that, as humans, we also have complex verbal behavior with which we often form narratives that fill in the blanks created by our limited and sometimes inaccurate perceptions. In addition to that, we all start out as infants who do not have complex verbal behavior, but who are taking in enormous amounts of information, while experiencing utter helplessness except for the mercy of some entity that is caring for us. I would say that those factors, alone, can prime us toward eventually buying in to religious nonsense, as we develop further.
155
This is me wanting to discuss the word "improvement" as it pertains to the evolution of religion. Using the word “improving" here is not correct in the context of the idea either.
Here is you replying to my point: You need to know something about ancient theology in order to appreciate the “improvement" Here is a sample of ancient Egyptian theology (Atum is the main god, the father of gods): Atum is he who (once) came into being, who masturbated in On. He took his phallus in his grasp that he might create orgasm by means of it, and so were born the twins Shu and Tefenet. (The Pyramid Texts, Utt. 527 §1248)
So I take it now that what you mean by "improving" is moving to a less vulgar canon. You also subsequently stated that "improvement" is moving towards monotheism. Both of these I find peculiar coming from such a hard boiled atheist as yourself. Old god jerkin his cosmic meat to make Space Twins, or Cool Hippy dude who is god but must kill himself with a violent crucifixion so that he can come back to life, creating a weird guilt trip for any of the religion's adherents. That's why I had no idea what you were talking about. Ok that isn't an improvement. They both suck! My point stands, you cannot cite one improvement in the evolution of religion. Including buddhists or unitarians.( I know that's a tough one, but I gotta stand fast.)
156
Which was legally proven in a court of law. What more do you want? Convince religious people that they are wrong?
Religious people are lost cases for the atheist. I aim at their children as they aim at mine. I’ll teach their children the history of religion with all the filth and inhumanity it carries and they would never turn believers.
And now you are going to clear this *matter* up once and for all?? Who is naive here? You making verbal war on the naivete of New Arheists? That's just weird.
The New Atheists are the ones who play the card of the pimps of theology by preaching that humans are psychologically primed for religion. You are of the opinion that the history of religion is not enough to kill religion, ha? But you do not know that history because they do not want you to know. They do not want you to know that in the entire ancient Near East the ruling elite were producing new subjects and slaves in human breeding grounds. That information is classified because it is obvious that we are dealing with a social system that lasted for tens of thousands of years. The breeding grounds were entire villages (one of them, Merimda, has been found in Egypt) where the lords were raping miserable abducted women. Those lords came to be known as gods and so we read in the inscriptions of the Deir-el-Medina chapel that: Osiris creates new life in the great harem in Thebes
If you had read Max Tegmark, which you stubbornly refuse to do, you would find the falsification of Theism. That falsification is the fact that the universe is an implaccable mathematical construct, without intention, motive, or emotion. The universe *functions* only mathematically, Universal Mathematics (CONSTANTS) is the meta-physical essence of the Universe. No hand of God!
You are fighting against theology. I, the atheist, I am fighting God. No atheist with self respect pays any attention to theological nonsense.
Why does this present a problem for you? Do you really think establishing a few dates of certain event is going to *disprove* anything, other than that in the eyes of a theist you are an *unbeliever* or even stronger, an *infidel*, just like me?
There are ancient Egyptian royal instructions revealing that their entire social system was based on the production of slaves in human breeding grounds. Egyptologists, and the academy in general, tell you that the pyramids were built by magic, without the use of hordes of slaves, because if the scholars in the other fields of knowledge learn about the human breeding grounds, they will make the connections and will know what is meant by “the gods created humans". So, those who know are obviously certain that the history of religion, if revealed, will kill religion for good. So, you are saying that pointing out the flaws in scripture will kill God once and for all? Seems to me that science has done a pretty decent job of disproving the God of the OT, yet religion persists, even with a God of the Gaps. I showed a link where the Vatican itself has admitted that Evolution is true. Still the OT persists, unaltered. And you think that as an atheist, you are going to convince any religious person that God does not exist. Have you read the three different stories of *Loafs and Fishes*? When it comes to Theism, in any form, facts don't count. To Christians Jesus walked on water and made a bunch of loafs from a few loafs in a basket and a bunch of fishes from a few fishes in a basket. No one cares how many loafs or fishes Jesus produced. Somehow he did it and it was witnessed (as it is written in the Holy Book). I also gave you an example that God could not have fathered Jesus by a *virgin* or she would have had to be female. Then you give religious people an out by saying it's the people who were wrong and you seriously believe that will clear the entire business of religion? I am sorry, but it is you who is naive if you think you can just erase thousands of years of (erroneous) belief by pointing out errors in the Book. Again, take note. Religions themselves have been at war for thousands of years to prove as Carlin said, "my god has a bigger dick than yours". Now you come along and assert that God doesn't have a dick at all. In the few remaining Theocracies they'll tear you apart and rip you to pieces as an *infidel*. In fact, according to Islam, apostasy (conversion from Islam, even to another religion) is punishable by death. So as fellow atheist I wish you luck, but I am afraid your approach is futile in view of the very history of religion you wish to correct. If you are as knowledgeable in religious history as you say, you also know how many wars have been fought in the name of their God against other people who fought in the name of their God. IMO, only science can disprove the *need* for a god, but even that does not seem to bother people to whom religion is a *way of life*. IMO, as science keeps progressing, religions will occupy a smaller and smaller role in daily life. Gradualism is the key here, IMO. p.s. If you don't have this book in your library, you may have a look at it: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
157
Culture is memory...because you say so!
No, Yuri Lotman]
Artifacts that were made before writing are according to the stories. What artifacts? The pornographic figurines from your paper? All of those artifacts just handily fill in the timeline of culture for tens of thousands of years and it just picks up seamlessly right where writing begins? Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds?
No, I don’t. Go back and read the entire article.
I looked over your paper on souls. It talks about how the Egyptians used the concept. It doesn't talk about the Egyptian person who decided to invent the concept and spread it through culture into the future. I'm not saying that isn't possible, I'd just like to see the evidence. Did I miss that part?
The article shows that the concept of the soul is not even a concept as it is the product of chance. As regards its spreading to other cultures, it was mostly done by the ancient Greek philosophers who went to study in Egypt. Thales, Pythagoras and Plato are the most known ones. Along with the scientific knowledge of the Egyptians that they passed to Europe, they burdened the Europeans with the nonsense of the Egyptian priesthood, to the extent that the Celts would lend money agreeing to take it back in the other world!!
158
You got it exactly right with Einstein, but you aren’t applying this logic to yourself. So, why do you trust Einstein when it comes to theories about matter and energy?
Because if Einstein had been deceiving someone with his theories, those were his colleagues, not me the layman. The idiot of Lemaitre, however, wanted to deceive the entire humanity by preaching that the God’s fart was of very dense and hot gases and made such a Big Bang that the entire universe was created. :cheese:
Answer that, then imagine you are me and apply that same method to how I decide to trust you.
Do not trust me. Free your mind of all the prejudice put there by a humanity dominated by religion, and trust your logic and reason.
You simply “insist" you are an expert and say I should learn something from you. Using your logic, I would be a brainless idiot to do that. The thing you are missing here is the “smell" test. If I see something brown, and it stinks, I don’t need to reach down and pick it up. I know enough about how history is done to know that you don’t simply look at a few figurines, notice similarities in hair and boob shape and claim that some world shaping myth was passed from culture to culture for 80,000 years.
Nice speech! Pity you do not care enough for the subject being discussed to get at least the figures right. It is 40,000 years, the time the people left the Near East area for Europe and the Orient.
159
Of the three studies done using DNA, one put the population at only 5,000 humans. Another was 500 humans left on earth. The other study results was in between the two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
You have to provide links for these studies so that we may know the dates, by whom the studies were realized, and what is meant by “humans".
This finding gives us a very important date for the expanding of humans on the earth again.
What expanding of humans on the earth again? There were Neanderthals in the Near East and Europe, AMH (Anatomically Modern Humans) and Denisonans in the Far East, Florenciensis in Flores Island, Africans in Africa and Homo sapiens sapiens probably on their way to the Western Asia.
Maybe I was not clear. I should have said expanding population. After Mt. Toba eruption and the loss of population. The population would have naturally have increased again over time. The thinking points are, that once a population has lost most of it people. That changes in religion are likely to take place.
Moreover, human races had already formed at the stage of Homo erectus (according to Multiregional Continuity theory) and therefore all races survived nicely.
We are talking about changes that would have happened because of the unexpected 1,000 year ice age and the unexpected population bottleneck.
What we know at this point is the Red Ochre burials found so far are dated 80K years ago.
Ochre for burials or otherwise has nothing to do with religion. Religion starts with the concept of gods. Let us not play games!
I totally disagree with your conclusion that you have to have a god to have a religion. What you are telling me is that without god there is no religion. Is that correct? My thinking is that afterlife is the main driving force behind religion, not gods. I bet if you took afterlife off the table in religions, the religions today would die out. God is just the judge for afterlife. Before the Age of Deities, there were no gods. But there was afterlife, Holy Spirit and heaven. To me that’s what I call religion. What is your term for that type of faith? The Red Ochre burials and Sky burials were done for the reason of reincarnation. This action falls under an idea or belief of the people. A supernatural event, no more than a god is a supernatural belief.
This is saying that there were at least two groups or pockets of humans to repopulate after the Mt. Toba eruption.
At least two, but at most, up a few hundred, probably.
I agree. The point being, that mankind did not just migrate out of Africa after the Mount Toba eruption.
160
Dimitrios Trimijopulos, Nice speech! Pity you do not care enough for the subject being discussed to get at least the figures right. It is 40,000 years, the time the people left the Near East area for Europe and the Orient.
You mean long after early modern humans left the southernmost tip of Africa about 70,000 years ago?
In ‘An early and enduring advanced technology originating 71,000 years ago in South Africa’ (Nature 491, 590-593 - 22 November 2012), Dr. Brown, Prof. Marean, and seven others reported the earliest evidence for small blade tools that signal the use of true projectile weapons such as spear throwers. http://www.humanorigin.co.za/pages/pinnacle-point/