Thursday, March 1, 2012

Answering Lonnie's questions 4-10

4)How do you explain David's graphic portrayal of Jesus' death by crucifixion (Psalm 22) 1000 years before Christ lived?
Well to start, psalms is not considered a book of prophesy but a book of poetry.This is shown by its placement in both the Bible and the Torah, where it is placed with other poetic works. Also it is preceded with a note that says,To the Chief Musician. Set to “The Deer of the Dawn.” indicating it's poetic nature. Yes it was (supposedly) written by David who was himself persecuted by Saul, making it much more likely that when it was written, it was written about events that were contemporary to David. Apologists refer to "they pierced my hands and feet" as being the proof that this refers to the crucifixion. They ignore much of the rest of the passage which refers to "the bulls of Bashan" and "Save Me from the lion’s mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen". During which part of his crucifixion was he being attacked by wild oxen? This sounds more like the pleadings of someone who had to fight off oxen and lions in the coliseum than a crucifixion. 

 
5)How do you explain that the prophet Daniel prophesied the exact YEAR when the Christ would be presented as Messiah and also prophesied that the temple would be destroyed afterwards over 500 years in advance (Daniel 9:24-27)?
Many people believe that this refers to the Antichrist and the end times. In regards to predicting the year, that's only with convenient math. It requires that when it says week you assume year and then multiply that by 7. Daniel 9:24 says "70 weeks", but we are supposed to consider this 490 years. With this kind of math it doesn't matter when it happened you would just change the multiplier to make the prophecy fit the event. Unconvincing.



6)How could any mere human pinpoint the precise birth town of the Messiah seven full centuries before the fact, as did the prophet Micah?
Micah 5:2 which is usuall quoted as "pinpointing the birthplace" of Jesus only claims that "one who is to be a ruler in Israel on my behalf will come out from you" referring to Bethlehem.  So in short, he didn't.

 
7)How do you account for the odds (1 in 10 to the 157th power) that even just 48 (of 300) Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus Christ?

Selective interpretation. 

8)How was it possible for the Old Testament prophet Isaiah to have predicted the virgin birth of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14) 700 years before it occurred?
Because the myth of the virgin birth has been used in many mythologies, and would have been familiar to many people at the time. Jesus was certainly not the first "virgin birth" 

 
9)How can anyone doubt the reliability of Scripture considering the number and the proximity to the originals of its many copied manuscripts?
There are millions of copies of Jurassic Park out there, all identical to the original, but I don't think there is an island of dinosaurs any more than I think Jesus was the son of an imaginary god that created everything. Actually I think there is a better chance that there could be a dinosaur island.



10)In what sense was Jesus a "good man" if He was lying in His claim to be God?
I know plenty of good people, and if they suddenly were delusional and thought they were god they would probably still be good people. You are assuming  1)I think he was a good person and 2)if he was lying about that one thing, couldn't be a good person.

New Billboards in New York

American Atheists is putting up 2 new billboards in New York city. They will be going up on Monday, one on Broadway and one in Brooklyn.

The bottom one will be in Brooklyn and targeting the Jewish community. A recent Gallup poll found that 53% of Jews identify as nonreligious, there's a good chance that some of them are actually atheist but that it's just tough to be open about.

The top one will be on Broadway in a Muslim neighborhood. To the left of the English, is the Arabic symbol for Allah.

Surprisingly, so far there has been very little controversy about these billboards, at least in the national news.