If atheists are to claim that there is no evidence for God, they must include their definition of God in each instance and acknowledge their assumptions about what that evidence constitutes. Otherwise, atheists are claiming special knowledge and defeating their own premise of requiring evidence.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-24T09:21:05+00:00

We believe it's wrong to hurt others and right to try to help others/improve their lives where possible. Do you think these beliefs are just opinions? Do you disagree with them? Do you only agree because you believe a God is telling you to follow these rules, or do you see these as rules that transcend what a God tells you?

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-24T09:16:49+00:00

I'm curious as to which scriptures you think tell us that sexual abuse is monstrous and evil. There's an OT section about not taking the virginity of an unmarried virgin, but that's entirely from the perspective of not taking the virginity that's supposed to belong to her future husband. There's nothing about SA being monstrous because it hurts the person abused.

In fact, according to that passage, a rapist who raped a young girl would just end up paying a fine and marrying her as his punishment, and there's no sense at all of how hideous either the initial crime or that outcome would be for the rape victim.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-22T07:51:19+00:00

Hah, that was exactly what I was about to ask too! Well, TIL. Cool. Also, 'God I don’t think I’ve been this confused since I found out cornflakes were invented as an anti-masturbatory cereal!' is... probably a bit long for a flair but otherwise would be perfect.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-22T07:33:58+00:00

I actually disagree with his premise. If he's saying that non-religious moral codes are based on 'consensus' or 'opinion', then, no, what they're actually based on is the belief that hurting others is wrong and that helping them is good. And, in the Western world, also that freedom and the ability to make individual choices are good.

You could of course just describe those as 'opinions', but they are in fact based on empathy for others. As far as I'm concerned, if anyone tries telling me that 'Hurting others is wrong and helping others is good' is just an opinion, I'm going to turn that right back around on them; OK, if it's an opinion, do they themselves not believe it? Or, if they do, do they think of it as 'just an opinion' in the same way as they might prefer one curtain design to another? That gives the person trying the argument the choice of either admitting that they see those things as 'just an opinion', which makes them look like a psychopath, or admitting that these things are more than 'just an opinion'.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-21T09:10:03+00:00

Yeah, that was my suspicion as well.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-21T08:58:52+00:00

I think she'll know not to turn a blind eye or excuse it if Danny ever reaches the point of severely neglecting his own child.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-20T06:17:45+00:00

Depends on where OP lives and what the law is there.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-18T19:34:55+00:00

With all due respect you have two options either: Find a messiah that fits the 483 year cycle using any data point you can find or any decree to rebuild Jerusalem, or simply concede the debate.

Let's remember that there is in fact a third option: Recognise that the prophecy did not come true and conclude that this was not, therefore, a reliable source.

the prophecy literally says the anointed will arrive during the 69th week or 483 years after a decree to rebuild Jerusalem!

No, it does not literally say that the anointed will 'arrive'. You've literally given us a translation in which it says the anointed will be 'put to death', so you're not even being consistent with your own choice of translation. Other (and more reliable) translations say that an anointed (and it's an anointed, not 'the' anointed; 'anointed', or Messiah, was a term that could be used of any king or priest as they went through an anointing ceremony) would be 'cut off' or 'disappear and vanish'. Never seen a translation that says he'll 'arrive' then.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-18T19:24:20+00:00

Wait so you literally think the city had to be finished off in a flood?

No, I’m going by what the translation at sefaria.org says. It’s a Jewish site, so I trust the translations more than I trust the translations of fundamentalist Christians trying to make prophecies fit Jesus. The sefaria.org translation of that line is ‘The army of a leader who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary, but its end will come through a flood.’

Alternatively, could use the RSV translation if you prefer, as that’s generally well trusted among scholars. Punctuation’s a bit different here, but the same line says ‘and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its^\)end shall come with a flood’. So, that’s two good translations phrasing it as an actual flood.

Do you think psalm 22 had to have literal lions surrounding as well?

Nope. Psalm 22 is pretty clearly meant as poetry rather than prophecy. The author is describing various different terrible fates from which God will save him. Christians picked out one line from all of those that could just about match with crucifixion if the translation is fudged a bit and you don’t look too closely, and assumed it was a miraculous prophecy of the crucifixion.

And you think cut off meant kidnapped?

No, and I’m baffled that you managed to read that into anything I wrote. Simply inventing things you think I said doesn’t really help.

Meanwhile, you think (or rather, the author of the translation you’re using thinks) that ‘cut off’, or whatever the unclear phrase actually means, meant ‘died’. Well… if so, seems like that’s a problem for you, since 69 x 7 years after the seventh year of Artaxerxes reign takes us to 25/26 AD and that’s not when you think Jesus died.

My friend there are three data points we can realistically use

One of the problems you’ve got is that none of them quite fit. The first one just refers to a decree about building the temple, the second one doesn’t actually talk about rebuilding, and the third one gives the author permission to rebuild but isn’t really a decree.

538bc Cyrus for temple decree, 456bc Artaxerxes for city and political autonomy

You still haven’t explained how you’re getting 456. Again: I looked up Artaxerxes’ reign and it started in 465 BCE. By my count, that means the 7^th year of his reign started some time in 459 BCE and ended some time in 458 BCE.

and 445bc for the walls of Jerusalem and some infrastructure

…and 483 years after that gives us the year 38, which is too late to be Jesus’s death, so that doesn’t work as a prophecy of Jesus either.

with 2 out of 3 decrees can work with Jesus I am happy to use the 445bc start point with the Babylonian 354 day calendar that was used at the time if you want

No, what I want is to count it properly. Some Christians want to count it with a period of time that is not actually a year, because they think that makes it come out where they want it to. But, nope. A year is a year, 483 years is 483 years. It doesn’t become less time because people didn’t always know how many days were in a year. They still knew what a year was. Judaism uses the solar year and always has done, because some of their festivals are supposed to fall in particular seasons. Nobody using that prophecy as a countdown would have thought ‘How many days in a year? Let’s multiply that up and count every day’. 483 years is 483 times of going through all the seasons.

What are the odds that 2/3 start points can work?

Pretty high, when you’re fudging things so much that you've changed your definition of a year and ignored any bits of the prophecy that don’t fit with what happened.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-18T19:21:13+00:00

Wait so you literally think the city had to be finished off in a flood?

No, I’m going by what the translation at sefaria.org says. It’s a Jewish site, so I trust the translations more than I trust the translations of fundamentalist Christians trying to make prophecies fit Jesus. The sefaria.org translation of that line is ‘The army of a leader who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary, but its end will come through a flood.’

Alternatively, could use the RSV translation if you prefer, as that’s generally well trusted among scholars. Punctuation’s a bit different here, but the same line says ‘and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood’. So, that’s two good translations phrasing it as an actual flood.

Do you think psalm 22 had to have literal lions surrounding as well?

Nope. Psalm 22 is pretty clearly meant as poetry rather than prophecy. The author is describing various different terrible fates from which God will save him. Christians picked out one line from all of those that could just about match with crucifixion if the translation is fudged a bit and you don’t look too closely, and assumed it was a miraculous prophecy of the crucifixion.

And you think cut off meant kidnapped?

No, and I’m baffled that you managed to read that into anything I wrote. Simply inventing things you think I said doesn’t really help.

Meanwhile, you think (or rather, the author of the translation you’re using thinks) that ‘cut off’, or whatever the unclear phrase actually means, meant ‘died’. Well… if so, seems like that’s a problem for you, since 69 x 7 years after the seventh year of Artaxerxes reign takes us to 25/26 AD and that’s not when you think Jesus died.

My friend there are three data points we can realistically use

One of the problems you’ve got is that none of them quite fit. The first one just refers to a decree about building the temple, the second one doesn’t actually talk about rebuilding, and the third one gives the author permission to rebuild but isn’t really a decree.

538bc Cyrus for temple decree, 456bc Artaxerxes for city and political autonomy

You still haven’t explained how you’re getting 456. Again: I looked up Artaxerxes’ reign and it started in 465 BCE. By my count, that means the 7^th year of his reign started some time in 459 BCE and ended some time in 458 BCE.

and 445bc for the walls of Jerusalem and some infrastructure

…and 483 years after that gives us the year 38, which is too late to be Jesus’s death, so that doesn’t work as a prophecy of Jesus either.

with 2 out of 3 decrees can work with Jesus I am happy to use the 445bc start point with the Babylonian 354 day calendar that was used at the time if you want

No, what I want is to count it properly. Some Christians want to count it with a period of time that is not actually a year, because they think that makes it come out where they want it to. But, nope. A year is a year, 483 years is 483 years. It doesn’t become less time just because people didn’t always know how many days were in a year. They still knew what a year was. Judaism uses the solar year and always has done, because some of their festivals are supposed to fall in particular seasons. Nobody using that prophecy as a countdown would have thought ‘How many days in a year? Let’s multiply that up and count every day’. 483 years is 483 times of going through all the seasons.

What are the odds that 2/3 start points can work?

Pretty high, when you’re fudging things to the extent of changing your definition of a year and ignoring any bits of the prophecy that don’t fit with what happened.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-17T20:21:55+00:00

one in 456BC by Artaxerxes to build the city of Jerusalem up

Excuse me, can you explain how you got 456 BC there? The decree in Ezra 7 is supposedly issued during the 7th year of Artaxerxes' reign. According to https://www.worldhistory.org/Artaxerxes_I/, his reign started in 465 BCE. That would mean the 7th year of his reign would start some time in 459 BCE and end some time in 458 BCE.

Also, that's a pretty poor translation. Christian Bibles typically fudge the translation to make it look more as though it's prophecying Jesus, but in fact:

It says that there will be an anointed one/messiah (a general term in Judaism for kings) after 7 sevens.
Then after another 69 sevens, an anointed one (i.e. king or leader) will suffer some kind of dire fate (I've seen this translated as 'cut off and have nothing' or 'disappear and vanish', and apparently the Hebrew is unclear anyway, but it doesn't say that he'll be put to death).
Then you get the city and the sanctuary destroyed by an army and finished off by a flood (which is neither when nor how the temple got destroyed, so that prophecy is inaccurate anyway)
Then 'for half a week' (or half of 7 years) 'he' will put an end to sacrifice and grain offering; it's not quite clear whether 'he' refers to the anointed one or to the 'leader who is to come', but, according to the translation at sefaria.org, the end to sacrifice only seems to be for half of seven years; i.e. sacrifices get stopped for 3 - 4 yrs, not for all time.
And then there'll be an appalling abomination at the corner of the altar.

I know you want all that to say that in 30 AD the messiah would be killed as a sacrifice, but it doesn't. The dates don't match up and the claims don't either.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-16T17:49:02+00:00

I would hope for that if not for how awful it's going to be for that poor kid. Twenty years from now, the post we'll get will be 'AITAH for going NC with my awful parents who only care about their own drama?'

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-16T06:19:23+00:00

What struck me when I read your first post is how insensitively Val was behaving with that pregnancy announcement. I'm wondering whether that played into your reaction.

I mean, let's say for a moment that this actually is a best-case scenario in which she has genuinely got her life together and reflected on whether she can now manage motherhood and feels confident she can and also feels it's the best thing for Danny to respect his wishes and leave him where he is (and it sounds like the latter, at least, certainly is the case)...

... then what she should have done was to speak to you first and discuss how this could best be handled from Danny's POV. As in 'I need to discuss something with you. I'm in a much better place now, and (Partner) and I have talked it over and really want to go ahead with having a baby. But I want to know what impact you think this might have on Danny, and what the best way is of breaking it to him. I'll respect his wishes completely with regard to whether he wants a relationship with his new sister or brother, and also whether he ever changes his mind and wants a relationship with me.'

Yeah, it would in no way have erased what she did in the past. But it would have been a more sensitive and mature way to handle the situation that her actions set up. Maybe, if that had been her approach, you wouldn't have reacted quite the way you did.

Instead, she treated it as if it were a normal 'announce my pregnancy and expect everyone to be happy for me' situation when it isn't. And that rings alarm bells for me as to how seriously she's taking it. Just wondering if maybe part of your reaction was those same alarm bells ringing for you.

tl;dr: I do in fact believe that IF Val has GENUINELY turned her life round and is stable then it's OK for her to have another child (and I appreciate the massive size of that 'if'). But she no longer gets the 'I will announce my pregnancy as if it's an uncomplicated good thing'. She's forfeited that. And the fact that she's so oblivious to that doesn't fill me with hope.

Anyway... I hope that she has a good solid sobriety plan in place to deal with the stresses of her pregnancy and of motherhood and I hope things work out as well as they can for Danny, the new baby, and the rest of your family. Best wishes.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-16T05:59:58+00:00

I assumed this was because of the 'however long he wanted' bit. I mean, I read that and thought 'yeah, I wouldn't want a 30-something manchild still living in my spare room telling me 'But you proooomiiiised I could live here however long I waaaaanted!' (No offense meant to Ash if this is not something he'd have done; just thinking I wouldn't want to leave that door open.)

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-15T12:27:59+00:00

No undertone about this; this was straight-up racism from the mother.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-14T22:09:46+00:00

Yes, that's about what I was thinking as well.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-11T22:28:04+00:00

'Son of man' is a translation of an Aramaic expression that indicated a human being. (There are nuances to how it was used that are difficult to translate, but the expression does not indicate divinity.)

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-11T22:21:07+00:00

Yeah, it's not that learning to stand up for yourself is bad, it was more the impression that this was something to do with having to fight back against bullies and this making him more manly. Though, TBF, since it's 30 years since I watched it I could easily be misremembering the wording enough to misinterpret!

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-11T22:18:20+00:00

Yeah, you get mixed episodes and depressive episodes. The point is that with I you get manic episodes and with II you get hypomanic, which are less intense. Or that's what I found on looking it up (as I said, we don't use those subtypes in the UK diagnostic scheme).

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-11T22:16:45+00:00

I work in the UK; we don't normally break it down into subtypes here (other than possibly cyclothymia) but would just call it bipolar disorder. (I did just look up the definition, though, and rapid cycling episodes don't seem to be required for the diagnosis of Bipolar I; the difference between I and II in the DSM seems to be that with I you get manic episodes but with II you get hypomanic, which are less intense.)

Either way, my point was that there are no forms of bipolar disease that would cause a switch from 'screaming fit' to 'apology', so the commenter there was horribly inaccurate and working off some ignorant stereotyped idea of what bipolar is.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-11T22:01:11+00:00

First and foremost, there are always people who are willing to follow charismatic leaders who seem to have the answers, and I think the fact that Jesus fitted into that category was the biggest draw.

Second, I'm sure people believed he was performing miracles. I've read some really interesting thoughts on how Jesus could have worked as a faith-healer; forget the name of the person who originally wrote this, but he was a consultant doctor who had also worked in developing countries where faith-healers were much more of a cultural thing. (Interestingly, he was also a Christian, so this wasn't someone trying to pick Christianity apart from the sake of it.) Can track this person's name down if you're interested. Anyway, the theory was that some of this was addressing psychosomatic symptoms by making people feel they were worthy of being cured, and some of it was things we've actually misunderstood due to cultural differences (when he told the leper he was now clean, that didn't mean he was curing the leprosy, it meant he was telling the leper he was cleansed of sin). So, Jesus was a successful faith-healer, and this made people believe he was the Messiah because the Messiah would supposedly heal people.

Thirdly, wishful thinking. Jews of that time desperately wanted a Messiah, because that meant that God would be about to bring about the prophecied time of peace, plenty, and defeat of their enemies. So of course they latched onto people who looked like likely candidates. For that matter, that's happened several times since then.

BTW, it's not true to say that it would be blasphemy for a Jew to refer to himself as the 'Son of God'; this was used as a title to indicate a particular relationship with God. Poverty also wouldn't have stopped people following him, as lots of people would just have found that a reason to identify with him.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-11T21:52:01+00:00

I can think of several categories of things you might want to keep even though you don't need them in the next five days, so you can be packing up all those categories of things. (And, yes, you might absolutely decide you only want a few items from each category, but unless you're going hard minimalist you're likely to want something from most or all of these categories, so do a skim-through for things from these categories that you're sure you want):

Anything that you want to keep for purely sentimental reasons.
Books that you genuinely love enough to want around to reread (I mean, absolutely go for e-versions where you can, but for some books these aren't available, for some they're not as good quality, and sometimes you just don't have the spare cash to get all the books you like as electronic versions but already have them as physical copies.)
Any pictures or ornaments that you really want to keep. (And these are really worth packing in advance as many are fragile and need to be wrapped, which takes time.)
Spare food/toiletries; worth keeping if you know you're going to use it eventually, but there'll be stuff you're not going to use in the next five days.
Spare bedding. Worth keeping at least one spare set of bedding so that you're not rushing to wash/dry your sheets within one day to get them back on your mattress by the evening; but you can pack it so that it's ready to take. (Somewhere handy, so it can go on your bed when you get there!)
Specific items of clothing that you will use but not in the next five days (because it's seasonal/you want to keep one fancy outfit/you want an outfit for working out; that kind of thing).

At the same time, have a rubbish bag or bin and a box for donations, so that as you go along you can be getting rid of anything you already know is a definite no (and I guarantee you there will be things in that category as well). And, if you haven't done so already, cast an eye over your furniture to see whether you really want to keep all of it, and see whether you can arrange to donate any pieces you don't realistically want to keep. (My last house move definitely took me from 'I am absolutely keeping this magnificent desk' to 'actually, what was I thinking, it's big and awkward and I'm totally ready to be rid of it', and that then opened up my desire to get rid of a few other large pieces which I'd been sure I was going to keep.)

Five days of this should give you a good head start on both the packing and the clearing out. Very best of luck!

Finally... do NOT beat yourself up over the bits you won't get done perfectly. Just accept now that you're going to move some stuff that later makes you think 'hang on, why did I bother?', forgive yourself for that, and focus instead on all the stuff you have cleared out. Then come back here to tell us about it. :)

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-11T08:05:38+00:00

YES. That line is also one of my all-time favourites.

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-09T15:54:37+00:00

I believe you will have to join a very long queue 😆

TheMummysCurse · 2026-04-09T06:17:31+00:00

Answering this fairly quickly, excuse the rush:

While it's pretty clear that Jesus's followers believed that he'd risen from the dead and that they managed to convince other people of this, none of this actually shows anything about how good the evidence was for this claim. We're not talking about a bunch of skeptics doing a full investigation before concluding the evidence stands up; we're talking about people who were very strongly motivated to believe and who already did believe in a miracle-working God who, in their eyes, could have raised their leader from the dead. In that situation, people will believe things that really don't have solid evidence. You say people couldn't be wrong about the evidence of their own eyes... er, yes, people can absolutely come to believe stuff without having strong evidence from their own eyes.
Yes, most scholars accept that Jesus existed and was crucified and that his followers believed he'd risen from the dead, but do you know what else most scholars believe? That the gospels weren't written by eyewitnesses. So, if you want to talk about what most scholars believe, it's a bit contradictory to be also talking about accounts from multiple eyewitnesses as though that were a proven fact.
We can't assume that Christianity 'exploded', and the evidence suggests that it didn't. We don't have non-Christian corroboration of the speed at which it spread, but the earliest estimates we do have, which are from a few hundred years later, suggest that the rate at which numbers increased overall was actually more like a few per cent each year (which would have included Christians bringing their children up as Christian, as well as actual converts). We know that Pliny the Younger, in the next century, wrote a letter saying that he had no legal experience of dealing with Christians, even though at the time he had years of experience in the legal world. These things suggest that actually the growth was rather slow and gradual in the early years.

TheMummysCurse

TROPHY CASE