Posted by Gremlin [12.255.181.7 - 12-255-181-7.client.attbi.com] on 13 July 2002 at 01.18.35 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: a few corrections posted by Andy on 13 July 2002 at 00.25.49 ZuluTime:

1. I may have misread that then. I'd got the impression that you were discounting the possibility of polytheism. I'd agree that the number of deities over zero is of little importance in determining whether any exist at all. Although, if deities can be established to exist, we'll have to work out which one[s] they might be.

2. That which is conscious varies between entities, of course. Computers have souls by your definition. In mammals, at least, sentience is the result of electrochemical reactions. But, not only are those reactions not immortal, they don't really exist individually for more than a few seconds. The brain is a lot like an LP: grooves record data indefinitely; the sound produced at any given second is the only part which could be considered at all alive. If those living parts are souls, then if the geography of an afterlife depends on actions and thoughts, then part of everyone's thoughts will end up in heaven, and parts will end up in hell. People aren't defined by all of their thoughts together, but by the thoughts they produce in immeasurable increments.

3. The absence of mention of Y'shua in contemporary texts is construed as evidence against his existence. I'll give you an example.
     You enter into a contract. You have whatever provisions and stipulations all worked out. You get a copy, and your opponent gets a copy. And that's that.
     Later, your opponent sues you for failing to uphold your end of the contract. His evidence that you failed to fulfil the contract is that, on his copy, he's written in additional measures. Of course, they don't appear on your copy, and they're not initialled on his.
     The guy would be laughed out of court, and any decent lawyer [obviously excluding his] would urge you to countersue for frivolous litigation.
     In the case of Y'shua, he was added to a couple of documents decades or centuries after the fact. He doesn't appear in any contemporary documents. The documents published at the time and in the place in which he reportedly did all these things make absolutely no metion of him at all.
     Aside from the bible--where the bits about him are known to have been written decades and centuries after the fact--there's no documentation on this guy. All reportedly contemporary documentation has been confirmed as a hoax. No one claiming to know that this guy existed could ever have met him, or seen any actual evidence of his existence.
     So: is it possible that he existed anyway, and no one thought to mention it for a hundred years after his death? Is it possible that the Romans--required under pain of death to keep meticulous records of each execution--simply forgot to mention the crucifixion of a guy who was apparently the greatest villain in Eurasia at the time? Is it possible that, somehow, no one ever thought to write anything down about this guy until a century later, when someone suddenly wondered why he was only a spoken rumour?
     It's possible.
     It's entirely possible that the erased existence of this guy is a simple two-thousand-year conspiracy. It's possible that someone went in and destroyed all contemporary records which once existed, and left all the others.
     It's possible that Y'shua was the second gunman on the grassy knoll. It's possible that Y'shua was the one who abducted Elvis.
     It's just not very likely.
     Evidently, the guy never existed. You can reorganise that into the guy never evidently existed if it sounds better. But, granting that we have records from that region at that time, and nothing written a few hundred years later into the bible coincides with the contemporay records, the conspiracy theory that Y'shua existed at all is laughable.

As for this noncreation belief matter dating thing, I'm not sure what you're asking.

Regarding beliefs: the reason I dislike the connotation that a belief can be based on evidence is the reason I dislike the vernacular in general. There are half a million words in the English language, and each has a specific value. Homonyms annoy me.
     If it's important to use the term belief to describe a theory based on evidence, then, for clarity, it would help to qualify the term as founded and unfounded belief.
     For the purpose of clarity, it makes more sense to call an unfounded belief a simple belief, and a founded belief a theory.