Clickbank Products

Was Jesus invented through ancient myths?

THINK THIS ARGUMENT WORKS? WELL..NOT REALLY!!

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Are Theists the Only People Who Have the “Burden of Proof”? By J. Warner Wallace

I don't presume to speak for others a lot but in this case I'll make an exception this article by J. Warner Wallace is a much needed answer to an often used tactic by many Atheists who like to avoid producing evidence for their bold claims!

Are Theists the Only People Who Have the “Burden of Proof”?

As an atheist, I rarely found it necessary to defend my position when talking with friends who believed in the existence of God. After all, my Christian friends were the ones who were making a claim about an invisible Being; certainly the burden of proof belonged to them rather than me.

 I simply held the “default” position: There’s no need to defend the absence of something that appears to be absent! From my perspective, theists alone were the ones who needed to make a case. My position as an atheist was self-evident.

This approach almost always put my Christian friends in a defensive position. They found themselves struggling to assemble the evidence while I simply criticized the validity of each piece of their case. I never stopped to think that I might also need to make a case for what I believed, and my Christian friends were unable to demonstrate my responsibility to do so.

Today, as a Christian who has been involved in the examination of evidence for the past 25 years, I understand that atheists also have a burden of proof.

All of us, in attempting to explain the world around us, move from a plethora of questions to a single responsibility: There Are Many Questions Atheists and theists both agree that the big questions of life are numerous.

 How did the universe come into existence?

Why does the universe exhibit the ‘appearance’ of ‘fine tuning’?

How did life originate?

Why does biology exhibit the ‘appearance’ of ‘design’?

How did human consciousness come into being?

Where does ‘free will’ come from?

Why are humans so contradictory in nature?

Why do transcendent moral truths exist?

Why do we believe human life to be precious?

 Why do pain, evil and injustice exist in our world?

 While atheists and theists have their own list of unanswered questions, we all agree that there are many important issues that need to be examined. There Are Only Two Kinds of Answers In the end, the answers to these questions can be divided into two simple categories:

 Answers from the perspective of philosophical naturalism (a view I held as an atheist), or answers that accept the existence of supernatural forces (a view I now hold as a theist).

Atheists maintain that life’s most important questions can be answered from a purely naturalistic perspective (without the intervention of a supernatural, Divine Being). Theists argue that the evidence often leaves naturalism ‘wanting’ for answers while the intervention of an intelligent, transcendent Creator appears to be the best inference. In times like these, the theist finds it evidentially reasonable to infer a supernatural cause.

 There Is Only One Shared Responsibility Both groups share a singular burden of proof. If theists are going to posit God as the answer to some (or all) of the questions I’ve described, we are going to have to argue for His existence and activity.

If atheists are going to argue that adequate answers exist without the need for God, they are at least going to have to provide sufficient naturalistic explanations. In either case, both groups (if they are honest with themselves) will have to shoulder the burden of proving their case.

The burden of proof is not limited to the theist; all of us need to be able to make a case for our choice of answers. One side defends supernaturalism, the other defends philosophical naturalism. The nature of the questions (and the limited categories of potential answers) ought to motivate all of us to decide which of the two explanatory possibilities is most reasonable.

While atheists are sometimes un-persuaded by the arguments for God’s existence, they are still woefully unable to provide coherent and adequate answers to the most important questions of life related to the cause of the universe, the appearance of design, the origin of life, the reality of human free will and the existence of transcendent moral truth.

Theists aren’t the only ones who have to answer these questions. If naturalism is true, naturalists have their own unique burden of proof.

 

 J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity

 
Below, this women explains WHY she has no burden of proof for her CLAIM there is NO God!
 
 
 
 
Here's a very interesting take on Atheists who lead Christians along in order to DECONVERT them, please don't be stupid and receive their doubting spirit into your heart or they will win!
 
 
 
 
 
In my experience on Sodahead.com where I debate Atheistic thought I have found a FEW good debates where we both learned something usable but for the most part the Christian does waste a lot of valuable time on "trolling morons" who have no understanding that wasn't given too them by other trolls online!

Friday, September 19, 2014

Is Jesus Simply a Retelling of the Horus Myth? by J. Warner Wallace

What if I told you there was once an ancient religion whose God was conceived by a virgin named Meri and had a stepfather named Seb (Joseph)?
 
What if I told you this God was born in a cave and his birth was announced by an angel, heralded by a star and attended by shepherds?
 
He attended a special rite of passage at the age of twelve (although the ancient texts describing this God are silent about His life from the age of 12 to 30).
 
 At 30 years of age, this God was baptized in a river (His baptizer was later beheaded).
 
He had 12 disciples, performed miracles, exorcized demons, raised someone from the dead, and even walked on water.
 
They called Him “Iusa”, the “ever-becoming son” and the “Holy Child”. He delivered a “Sermon on the Mount”, and his followers recounted his sayings.
 
He was transfigured on a mount and eventually crucified between two thieves.
 
He was buried for three days in a tomb and rose from the dead. His followers called Him “Way”, “the Truth the Light”, “Messiah”, “God’s Anointed Son”, “Son of Man”, “Good Shepherd”, “Lamb of God”, “Word made flesh”, “Word of Truth”, “the KRST” or “Anointed One”.
 
 He was also known as “the Fisher” and was associated with the Fish, Lamb and Lion. According to this ancient religion, this God came to fulfill the Law and was supposed to reign one thousand years.
 
 Sounds a lot like Jesus doesn’t it?
 
According to those who deny the existence of Jesus, however, this description is of a mythological precursor to Christianity, the Egyptian God named Horus.
 
Skeptics sometimes use ancient deities like Horus, Mithras or Osiris as examples of dying and rising precursors to Jesus.
 
They claim the mythology of Jesus was simply borrowed from pre-existing examples such as these.
 
Was Horus really like Jesus in all the ways skeptics often describe him?
 
These similarities are startling. For many Christians (especially young believers who encounter this objection while in college) similarities such as these cast doubt on the historicity of Jesus.
 
 It’s important, therefore, to examine the truth of these claims to see what the real mythologies tell us about characters such as Horus. While it’s true there are a number of pre-Christian mythologies with dying saviors, they aren’t much like Jesus once you start to examine them closely.
 
 They often merely reflect the expectations and yearnings of ancient people for the God who truly did come to earth. A significant portion of what we just described about Horus is simply false and lacks any Egyptian historical or archeological support whatsoever.
 
 Much of what I described about Horus is simply a reflection of the effort of atheists to make Horus look as much like Jesus as possible.
 
Horus was worshiped principally in two Egyptian cultural centers (Bekhdet in the north and Idfu in the south).
 
Little remains at the northern location, but there is still a large and well preserved Ptolemaic temple at Idfu; most of our information about Horus comes from this southern temple. Horus was usually represented as a falcon.
 
 He was the great sky God and the Son of Isis and Osiris. Let’s take a look at the claims we’ve already described and separate truth from fiction (for a more in depth examination of Horus and many other alleged Christian precursors, please visit David Anderson’s excellent website.
 
 I’m condensing much of his work in this brief blog post).
 

Claim: Horus was conceived by a virgin mother named Meri, and had a stepfather named Seb (Joseph)

Truth: Horus was NOT conceived of a virgin. In fact, mural and textual evidence from Egypt indicates Isis (there is no evidence that “Meri” was ever part of her name) hovered over the erect penis (she created) of Osiris to conceive Horus.
 
While she may have been a virgin before the conception, she utilized Osiris’ penis to conceive. She later had another son with Osiris as well. There is no evidence of three wise men as part of the Horus story at all. Seb was actually the “earth god”; He was not Horus’ earthly father. Seb is not the equivalent of Joseph and, in most cases, Seb is described as Osiris’ father.
 
Claim: Horus was born in a cave, his birth announced by an angel, heralded by a star and attended by shepherds.

Truth: There is no reference to a cave or manger in the Egyptian birth story of Horus. In fact, none of these details are present in the ancient Egyptian stories of Horus. Horus was born in a swamp. His birth was not heralded by an angel. There was no star.
 
Claim: Horus attended a special rite of passage at the age of twelve and there is no data on the child from the age of 12 to 30.

Truth: There is no continuous effort in the Horus mythology to account for all these years, so there are no real gaps in the chronology. Horus never taught in any temple at twelve (as did Jesus).
 
Claim: Horus was baptized in a river at the age of 30, and his baptizer was later beheaded.

Truth: Horus was never baptized. While conspiracy theorists often point to “Anup the Baptizer” (claiming he was later beheaded), there is no such person in Horus’ story.
 
Claim: Horus had 12 disciples.

Truth: Horus had only four disciples (called ‘Heru-Shemsu’), but at some point in his story there is reference to sixteen followers and a group of unnumbered followers who join Horus in battle (called ‘mesnui’).
 
Claim: Horus performed miracles, exorcized demons, raised someone from the dead, and walked on water.

Truth: Horus certainly performed miracles (he was, after all, described as a god). But there was no mention of exorcizing demons, raising people from the dead or walking on water.
 
Claim: Horus was called “Iusa”, the “ever-becoming son” and the “Holy Child”.

Truth: No one in Egyptian history was ever called “Iusa” (the word does not exist) nor was anyone called “Holy Child”.
 
Claim: Horus delivered a “Sermon on the Mount”, and his followers recounted his sayings. He was transfigured on the Mount.

Truth: Horus never delivered a “Sermon on the Mount”, nor was he transfigured.
Claim: Horus was crucified between two thieves, buried for three days in a tomb, and was resurrected.

Truth: Horus is not reported to have died at all in the vast majority of Egyptian narratives. There is also no crucifixion story. Instead, Horus is usually described as eventually merging with Re (the Sun god) after which he “dies” and is “reborn” every day as the sun rises. There is a parallel account describing Horus’ death and detailing how he was cast in pieces into the water, later fished out by a crocodile at Isis’ request.
 
Claim: Horus was called “Way”, “the Truth the Light”, “Messiah”, “God’s Anointed Son”, “Son of Man”, “Good Shepherd”, “Lamb of God”, “Word made flesh”, “Word of Truth”, “the KRST” or “Anointed One”.

Truth: None of these titles are in Egyptian history, but Horus is called by several names you might expect for any god in mythology: “Great God”, “Chief of the Powers”, “Master of Heaven”, and “Avenger of His Father”. Horus was not called “the Krst”. This word in Egyptian means “burial” (it wasn’t a title at all).
 
Claim: Horus was “the Fisher” and was associated with the Fish, Lamb and Lion.

Truth: Some of conspiracy theorists associate Horus with fish (by virtue of the fact that Horus was a fish in some portion of the ancient narrative), but there is no evidence Horus was ever called a “fisher” or was ever associated with the Lion or the Lamb.
 
Claim: Horus came to fulfill the Law, and was supposed to reign one thousand years.

Truth: There was no Egyptian “law” for Horus to fulfill, and there is no mention of a thousand year reign in Egyptian mythology.
 
On closer examination, Horus isn’t much like Jesus after all. It’s not unusual for the characteristics of ancient pre-Christian deities to be exaggerated in an effort to make them sound like Jesus. The first step in refuting such claims is to simply investigate the attributes carefully.
 
Beyond this, we must also recognize the expectations and yearnings people have related to the existence of God. The Bible rightly describes this yearning and the innate knowledge each of us has related to God’s existence (Romans 1:18-20 and 2:12-16). We shouldn’t be surprised ancient people (created in the image of God) would think deeply about the nature of this God.
 
 Many alleged similarities between pre-Christian mythologies and Jesus are extremely general in nature and would be expected from anyone considering the existence of a Divine Creator. Primitive cultures interested in God’s nature reasoned He would have the ability to perform miracles, teach humans and form disciples.
 
 These universal expectations fail to invalidate the historicity of Jesus. As Paul recognized on Mars Hill (Acts 17:22-31), men thought deeply about the nature of God prior to His arrival as Jesus. Sometimes they imagined the details correctly, sometimes they didn’t.
 
In the end, similarities between Jesus and mythological precursors fail to invalidate the historicity of Jesus. The historical veracity of Jesus is determined from the evidence supporting the reliability of the eyewitness accounts. Jesus is not simply a retelling of the Horus myth.
 
While Horus worship is now a dead religion, Christianity continues to thrive. Why? Because the Christian records are reliable. Skeptics sometimes portray Horus as something he isn’t in order to keep us from believing in Jesus as something He is. But the reliable Biblical record establishes the Deity of Jesus in a way no other ancient mythological text could ever hope to achieve.

J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, a Christian Case Maker, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity and ALIVE

Subscribe to J. Warner’s Daily Email




Sunday, April 13, 2014

Using LOGIC to dismantle Atheistic thought: WOW! What a debate!









You've heard the nonsense coming from the mouths of skeptics who do not like to reason, or answer questions of faith......they avoid this in a postmodern world by this type of reasoning, we live in a postmodern condition, we create our own reality based upon our own internalized preconceptions. So why then is it that I must prove anything to you if that's true, you should just take it at face value since it's my reality, aren't all realities valid in the world? If not why not?

And that being the case there is no longer one objective truth, we are free to create our own personal truth. There's no absolute right or absolute wrong in society any more just an infinite number of equally valid stories, of course that would never include biblical truth would it?

Why does the Law of Logic exist at all if any set of values are equal? Is it really logical to believe all views at once? How can anything be true in a lasting sense if nothing is grounded in something and doesn't that force Atheistic thought aside as no more valid than any other thought?

WHAT ARE THE LAWS OF LOGIC?



Logic is a proper or reasonable way of thinking about or understanding something , a particular way of thinking about something , the science that studies the formal processes used in thinking and reasoning.

The law of identity

Everything that exists has a specific nature. Each entity exists as something in particular and it has characteristics that are a part of what it is.

The law of non-contradiction

There are arguably three versions of the principle of non-contradiction to be found in Aristotle: an ontological, a doxastic and a semantic version. The first version is about things that exist in the world, the second is about what we can believe, and the third relates to assertion and truth. 

The law of the excluded middle

According to this law, every quality either belongs, or does not belong, to a given nature. There is no logical compromise, or exception, and no middle alternative. It is this law which accounts for Aristotelian logic's hierarchical nature. For if there is a single nature for every class, that which has more of that essential quality will be judged superior to that which possesses less. Based on the law of excluded middle, the concept of the hierarchy of values is established.

This law states that not only is X, X, and that X is not non-X, it adds that X is X and nothing in between. 


Study of inference and argument. Inferences are rule-governed steps from one or more propositions, known as premises, to another proposition, called the conclusion.

A deductive inference is one that is intended to be valid, where a valid inference is one in which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true.


All other inferences are called inductive.






The basic laws of logic govern all reality and thought and are known to be true for at least two reasons: 


(1) They are intuitively obvious and self-evident. Once one understands a basic law of logic, one can see that it is true. God made all things using these laws as their base and denying it only makes you look pathetic and uninformed!


(2) Those who deny them (Atheist's) use these principles in their denial of them, demonstrating that those laws are unavoidable no matter what you believe and that it is self-refuting to deny them.



This debate above is a masterful use of these laws of logic which only make sense under the christian worldview and must be borrowed by the atheist or the evolutionist in order to argue their worldview, proof that Romans 1:20-23 is absolutely true.

 Those who claim to believe in logic have to understand that they are using the very proof that God exists to argue he doesn't. Circular reasoning and begging the question are the usual fair whenever you borrow from one beliefs proof's to even have a reason for your own argument to exist because reason and logic are not existent in a naturalistic worldview.



Without God nothing can be proven since chemical accidents by chance have no logical conformity, nature has conformity to certain laws it was not nor could it be that way by pure gamble, a roll of the dice no matter how many billions of decades you roll, the statistical monstrosity is to large an edifice to surmount. There is absolutely nothing logical for instance about random DNA growing into present day DNA since DNA must be fully formed from the beginning, that is scientific fact, how could some DNA form then the rest over millions of years, how would we see, hear, have a heart beat, walk or crawl without FULLY formed DNA to begin with. 

Nature has proven Darwin wrong so often it's actually humorous to watch people defend him. Nature is irreducibly complex even at the smallest level, the universe as well is so well designed that we would not exist if even one thing were out of order at any time. The earth is finely tuned to the Nth degree something macro evolution would completely undo in seconds from inception if not sooner! 

The laws of logic are immaterial not material and therefore only sensible when used by a mind which is also immaterial , ie God, his created minds in us. We use logic because we were created in the image of an immaterial being, who is timeless, space-less and all powerful thus we have an immaterial soul and spirit confined within a material body. 


Even the atheist was made with this basic creative process, speaking from a bible point of view, therefore they are using what God gave them (LOGIC AND REASON) to rule against his existence which is kind of like using your brain to reason against the fact that you think and therefore you do not exist in reality.


A materialistic universe based in naturalism does not work from logic, but rather from primal instinct, a "mind" which is non-material must use non-material logic to cause us to reason, using logic to prove how things work, without logic there would be no science or evidence because the material can only be understood by the immaterial mind. In order to use logic one must use reasoning and in order to use reason one must have a material container and that is your brain.

The human BRAIN is merely the vessel which contains the immaterial soul where reasoning and logic are thought through and realized. There is absolutely no way this ability came about by random chance, in effect I could ask why do we think like this rather than by simple 

How can use "moral arguments" against God, morals are immaterial and therefore cannot be used by someone who believes that our entire nature is made up of chemicals that randomly fell into place over billions of years. 

How could reason and logic have developed by complete accident and even amount to anything at all?  They cannot account for logic from a Darwinian standpoint since logic is conformity to basic ideas of moral assent not accidental thoughts that fire and misfire without control whatsoever. 

Did the first life on earth use logical thought or did logical thought evolve? If it evolved how did the primitive beginning life ever survive? If it did how did it evolve being immaterial in nature, existing in our soul contained within our brain container? 


Naturalism can only explain physical natural existence not immaterial soul and spirit, so it evades logic to even attempt to use logic since the immaterial has no place within a naturally explained world by their own rules.


QUESTIONS? YES I HAVE MANY!


1.)

 The natural world through macro-evolutionary processes does not use nor need logic so where did it originate? It is evident that micro-evolution or rather the true variation within God's "kinds" from which all species developed is the only splinter of truth with which logic works. But even with this simple example of fact the skeptic must fight logic extending this beyond any reasonable scientific basis to macro-evolution which has NO basis in science!


"The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."


2.) 

How could a 'distinct system' of immaterial understanding and logic develop THROUGH a process so limited to natural solutions for life?

3.) 

Where in the world did our "brains" develop immaterial (soul) powers like thinking, reasoning and problem solving if we came up from lesser life forms that manifest none of these? 

4.) 

Why is it that Mankind and God are the only beings that utilize such a thing as logic, reason, and moral foundations? And that being true, how is it that man can utilize the very gift of God's logic to deny his existence?

5.) 

Why is it that Atheists must resort to BORROWING from "immaterial logical thinking" in order to try and explain why the "immaterial world" spirit and soul doesn't exist, when the clear rule of logic is non-contradiction?

IT'S CLEAR THAT LOGIC IS A CHRISTIAN BASED IDEA AND OPERATES WITHIN THE GOD GIVEN PROCESS OF SPIRIT AND SOUL WHICH THE NATURALIST HAS NO EXPLANATION FOR!

Seems like the Atheist's Catch 22 to me, damned if they use it and damned if they don't!