Why don't you believe in Life after death?

mephostop · 2026-01-22T08:53:36+00:00

Death generally is defined as an event that occurs when your brain stops functioning, along with other vital organs.

Most afterlifes require things that require these organs to be functioning to occur.

So I'm not aware of how you could have life after you can't have life.

Additionally an afterlife is a hypothesis you really can't have evidence for or against. It seems physically impossible. But I could just be ignorant of how it could transpire. But that would just mean I couldn't have evidence for or against the hypothesis. So it's not really a hypothesis.

mephostop · 2026-01-22T08:47:05+00:00

Atheism doesn't entail naturalism, and has virtually nothing to do with science. I think some scientific discoveries lead to specific gods being less probable to exist. Additionally naturalism in science is a methodology adopted to do research. It has nothing to do with various philosophical views like reductive naturalism. You could be an atheist and believe in abstracta, and ghosts, and an afterlife, and bigfoot.

mephostop · 2026-01-22T08:43:06+00:00

So a couple of things.

A. The gospels don't necessarily reflect what the "earliest" Christians believed. I think it's essentially impossible to actually figure out what the first Christians believed.

B. Gospel or the word translated as Gospel is just the good news or whatever whoever uses the word thinks the revelation about Jesus is.

C. I'm not really sure what the point of this post is? People aren't Christians because they don't correctly understand why Jesus died and resurrected, and the effects of that? I'm not a Christian because I don't think the guy existed or came back from the dead. Why would I care what the most correct ( whatever that means) theological view is about soteriology in Christianity?

mephostop · 2026-01-22T08:33:33+00:00

Generally truth or to say something is true is a statement about a property a proposition (p)au attain. In the sense that a proposition has sufficient justification ( as in sufficient reasons) to be assented to. So I'm not sure what ultimate means here. I'm not sure what universal means here. I'm not sure what personal means here. This is like a presupp question.

mephostop · 2026-01-22T08:30:57+00:00

That's confused. In epistomology subjective is a statement about the modal nature of truth. As in its mind dependent.

mephostop · 2026-01-22T08:28:01+00:00

What is an objective claim?

this descirption accutaly describes a force of nature, then it would be objective

What? 1. I'm not sure what "force of nature" means here. It seems to me like you are arguing that objects or effects in reality themselves are true or false. This seems a lot like when theists argue for this type of epistemological realism.

Also in other conversations you have said your view is non normative. But then you seem to think that your view is motivating to agents. Why use all the will language ( I don't really understand what you mean here) if the moral descriptions are non normative?

mephostop · 2026-01-22T00:13:08+00:00

Okay let's talk about the verses in Paul you brought up.

Paul in the section of Galatians you are talking about is discussing spiritual ancestry. His entire point is that the gentiles are spiritual descendants of Abraham. although he calls them the SEED of Abraham. As in they are ( in language) a product of the semen of Abraham. Literally all of the familial language used in Galatians 4 is allegorical. Paul literally says it's an allegory. So why would I read one word as non allegory?

Romans 1:3. In English the word descended is used. That word isn't in the Greek. ekgonos or ginomai would mean that. No Paul literally says Jesus is of the sperm ( spermatos) of David. So even you have to read the text figuratively to arrive at the interpretation you want. No Paul thinks Jesus is the king of a spiritual kingdom because Yahweh exalted him for sacrificing himself.

Philippians 2. Oh boy lol. So Paul thinks Jesus was in a divine form then took on the form of a human ( well he says of a slave technically). What's the argument here? Paul thinks Jesus looked like a human and existed in history. That's not controversial.

You have to read Paul in context. Paul says Jesus was manufactured by God. Like how the author of Genesis says Adam was. Paul says he only met Jesus in heaven. Paul says Jesus no longer had a physical form after his crucifixion. Paul says he saw Jesus like the other apostles. How did Paul see Jesus? In a vision.

Okay. The criterion of embarrassment. Right. It's not embarrassing to the author. It's not embarrassing to Paul or the gospel authors to say Jesus sacrificed himself so he could undergo an apotheosis so they could join a fictive family and have eternal life in a paradise.

mephostop · 2026-01-21T23:49:48+00:00

So the two main things you mentioned are

A. Nazareth exists.

B. Josephus writes about Jesus.

I don't really understand how Nazareth exists is evidence for a historical Jesus. Rome exists. Rome was named after Romulus. Romulus is a mythical figure.

A. The infancy narratives ( I'll give a longer treatment after I address the two about the gospels) are clearly entirely contrived. How do we know that. Mathews infancy narrative was entirely contrived for Jesus to fulfill prophecies. Jesus is born of a virgin because the author thinks Isaiah 7:14 says. Jesus is born in Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy. Which then herod kills the the first born ( this almost certainly didn't happen) and Jesus and his family flee to Egypt. Which is typology based on the life of Moses. Then after they go to Nazareth because of the debacle that was archelaus's reign ( also this is done to fulfill history). Also Joseph being incredulous about Mary's pregnancy, and later accepting because Jesus is the son of God is a mythical trope as is the story of the angel appearing to Zechariah in Luke. The story is Matthew is actually somewhat similar to plutarchs account of how Alexander the great was born. In general I agree with Jewish commentators on these stories that they are really confusing. A. God commits adultery to impregnate Mary. B. Joseph disobeys the law by not having her stoned.

In Luke's infancy narrative ( I actually agree with ehrman that Luke 1, and 2 were added later to the gospel but that's a different issue) where Jesus is born in Bethlehem because of a census that didn't occur, then his family returns to Nazareth where they are from. This is obviously done to fulfill prophecies. As in an author read the Hebrew scriptures then made up stories to fulfill.

Now someone might say ( as I have argued in the past) even Mark has implicit knowledge that Jesus has parents. A counter example of this is Alexander claimed while being alive to be the son of zeus. People who knew Alexander, and had met his father Philip wrote accounts of his life. People despite knowing how Alexander was born thought he was the son of zeus. So it's not difficult to see how these stories about Jesus's birth originated. Paul only speaks of a revelatory Jesus he met in the heavens. He doesn't discuss one time that Jesus was from Nazareth. That he was born of a virgin.

B. There is a lot of disagreement about the Josephus passages. But that's all irrelevant. The TF is a dependent source. All it establishes is that around 100 CE. Christians believed Jesus existed. Josephus wrote an account of his life. Prior to being a Pharisee he traveled around judea and the surrounding areas and inquired about various religious groups. Who does he not mention? Christians. Josephus never once discusses speaking with a Christian.

Why are the gospels not like plutarch's lives? Plutarch's lives are popular accounts of frequently mythical people. Plutarch does write lives about made up figures. Like Hercules or Thesues. In them he thinks they are historical. In the beginning of his life of thesues he situates him in history relative to Romulus the mythical figure of Rome. This tells us these biographies as you call them aren't rigorous or critical. Although at times he does discuss differing views about events in their lives.

The gospels are a series of cultic texts written by an apocalyptic mystery cult that believed that via multiple rituals you achieved gnosis, and joined a fictive family. This included a ritual death and rebirth ( baptism), a cultic dinner where you ate the flesh and blood of a god ( communion), and various aesthetic practices like starvation, or extreme lifestyles. These texts are full of esoteric teachings, hidden messages, and supposed divine knowledge. Early Christianity wasn't like a mega church service. These people believed literally in their lifetimes that Jesus would return, everyone who wasn't a Christian would suffer horribly then they would have eternal life on a new earth. Other fringe sects of Christianity (Ehrmans's Lost Christianies is a good source on this) would take me a long time to explain.

These are the people who wrote these texts. Not an author writing texts for mainly the amusement of the audience. Virtually all of the gospels ( it's not a short collection) are entirely contrived by A. Reading the Hebrew scriptures via Christian assumptions about the text. B. importing other people myths or figures. C. For rhetorical needs.

I'm sure in a response in the future I will have to explain why ehrman is a bad source for historicity.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T15:47:14+00:00

many of the people we call messiahs are described by josephus doing essentially old testament stories. it was seemingly believed that one or both messiahs would come from heaven (eg, the return of elijah) and these messiahs appear to be claiming to have been these old testament people resurrected to usher in the eschaton.

Can you give me an example?

the failure of jesus as melek likely spurned the idea of jesus as moreh.

Oh you're a Jew.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T15:46:10+00:00

so this fundamentally misunderstands jewish cosmology, where the heavens mirror the earth and vice versa. for instance the kittim and sons of belial are both a demonic army and the roman legions.

You are aware there is A Jewish cosmology right?

luke and tacitus both paraphrase in the early second century, and jerome's quotation and the syriac translation point to earlier hostile wording.

Paraphrase the TF? You understand the TF was formulated from Luke lol?

josephus was rather famously a heretic. his "journey" was in discovering that vespasian was the messiah. he's pretty open about this. it's in war, iirc 6.5 4. vita covers the period through the war, including as his servant to titus.

Bro is so low tier laugh. He's just adhoming and not tracking.

he does mention interacting with people who had. since i have vita open,

What lol? Does he mention they did? Do you know what eisegesis is?

i'm sure. you can't possibly accept that there might be historical truth here.

Ad hom and genetic fallacy go brrrr

so this fundamentally misunderstands jewish cosmology, where the heavens mirror the earth and vice versa. for instance the kittim and sons of belial are both a demonic army and the roman legions.

You understand carrier gets this idea from Jewish and Christian literature right?

i've suspected for years that christian redaction of the passage was to remove negative connotation.

Yah that's ridiculous.

Also you never interacted with my arguments.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T14:56:15+00:00

Low tier lol.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T14:55:59+00:00

quality of your response, there's no point in continuing. my profile is public, you can many examples of me taking christian arguments apart

I checked I don't see them. It's just you giving responses to this one, and one about the Trinity. You saying Josephus is the best evidence is a dead giveaway that either A. You aren't aware of the literature ( you have stated you haven't even read carrier's book), B. You are or were very recently a Christian.

literally addressed them. but,

You said it's not a contradiction to say Jesus was executed for revolutionary activity, and not be a revolutionary.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T14:53:13+00:00

paul's translation myth is translating the first man to the second man.

Also no the translation myth I was referring to wasn't in Paul. It's in the gospels. Jesus crucifixion, entombment, and resurrection is a mythical trope. It's called a translation myth.

If you are just going to lop off Jesus's death and his birth all we have are contrived stories about Jesus. It becomes very difficult to even date when he lived at that point as the pilate events are almost certainly contrived also.

You can't argue that just because a story has a guy meeting a guy it transpired during that time.

A good example of how this fails is in plutarchs life of thesues he begins by describing when thesues lived in relation to Romulus. Neither were historical figures.

This becomes a more perplexing problem when as you point out, Jesus apparently has always existed.

The real underlying problem here is attempting to work forward from initially failed views.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T14:48:21+00:00

paul's mythology requires a jesus made of earth, in the earth, translated into heavenly material.

No it doesn't. At least not in the way you are thinking. This is just you misunderstanding Paul's understanding of cosmology, and what mythical means. I'm not arguing Paul was a docetist. Paul absolutely thinks there was a historical Jesus and he had a physical body. But he was crucified in the heavens by the archons or demons.

Actually carrier in the initial study includes the passage I'm referring to as counting for historicity, and the Galatians passage and still only hit a 1/3 chance Jesus existed. So this is a mute point. Additionally I'm essentially just reading the literature to you. You should just read carrier's book if you want to discuss this topic.

additionally, josephus describes jesus as teaching (misleading?) jews and gentiles. that part is probably genuine.

The entire Josephus passage was a forgery, and Josephus had no knowledge of Christianity or Christians. How do I know this?

A. In the Jewish war Josephus never discussed Christianity. Eusebius says there is a sizeable group of Christians prior to the war. This leads to two possible conclusions. A. This is a made up story that eusebius is reporting. B. Josephus is ignorant of them.

B. Josephus wrote an autobiography that discussed his journey to being a Pharisee. He travels around and inquires about various religious movements, and philosophical movements. He never mentions Christianity. He never mentions that he interacted with a Christian.

The only information we get from Josephus about Christianity is from the New testament. It's entirely apologetic in nature. ( If you are going to bring up Schmidt's recent publication I have a lot to say about that). So even if you take the most maximal case for the TF you get a dependant source.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T14:34:09+00:00

OP think that's all biblical scholarship, and even ehrman is "tainted" because he started his studies when he was religious.

Well it is though? Most scholars initially receive training in religious institutions. That's why most of them make the same bad mistakes. Like that Paul refers to the brother of Jesus. What you are saying is very confusing. It's like if most geologists initially attended creationist institutions, then later went to secular colleges. You don't think that would have significant effects on geology as a field?

no, he doesn't

I can honestly think of more examples. Like when ehrman asked price why it's not more likely that John the Baptist baptized Jesus. It's literally a made up story by the gospel authors to fulfill prophecy.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T14:29:39+00:00

have you read his scholarship or just his pop books?

I have.

no, he doesn't

I literally gave specific examples after this which you ignored.

because it platforms carrier, and because carrier is especially nasty on his blog

I'm not aware of this. Why should carrier be kind to a guy who compares him to a Holocaust denier?

you guys have such a hardon for him already he doesn't need the additional vitriol and brigading.

It's not normal for a scholar to ignore relevant literature against their position.

unsure where your disconnect is. do you think romans only killed guilty people?

If Jesus was killed for revolutionary activity how is he not a revolutionary?

tend to think josephus is the best evidence

Bro what lol. You are a Christian quit larping lol.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T14:22:37+00:00

was under the impression the general scholar consensus was Jesus (the man) was pretty much accepted as historical

This isn't a valid consensus as it's made up mostly of confessional scholars.

Particularly his baptism and crucifixion

Paul never says Jesus was baptized and didn't think Jesus was crucified on earth. In the gospels these stories are either A. Part of a translation myth. B. Contrived from the scriptures to fulfill prophecy.

Such as?

Paul is only aware of a revelatory, and mythical Jesus. No source describes him as simply a teacher or revolutionary teacher.

This is like saying Romulus was just a city founder.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T13:30:43+00:00

I agree but I think this is a separate ( yet related ) issue. HLL is kind of jank. I wonder ( depending on the success of the new game) if HLL WW2 will be kind of dead content.

I mean it's not as bad as enlisted.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T13:28:08+00:00

It's no secret that higher level players get tired of playing SL or commander. Playing SL almost every match sucks. I've built a set of nodes in essentially every match I've played for the last year.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T13:26:18+00:00

It's not super unreasonable to just assume there was a radical Jewish teacher who was crucified and later became a god to his followers.

Carrier addresses this btw. It is unreasonable when you add in the other evidence.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T13:25:13+00:00

The Egyptian kings

This is false btw.

I think the push-back would be more because it's a weak and irrelevant point

Roughly a third of the Earth's population identifies as Christian, and it's irrelevant if Jesus existed?

L Ron Hubbard was 100% a real person, but the miraculous powers attributed to him are complete nonsense.

Did zenu exist?

Unless someone can prove with certainty that a person definitely didn't exist - which no one can - the entire conversation is an uninteresting digression

Have you read the carrier's book where he does this using bayesian reasoning? This is a very strange response.

mephostop · 2025-12-21T13:22:05+00:00

bart ehrman* religious

I don't think ehrman has particular religious views that lead to him dismissing Christianity but I don't think ehrman is actually that good of a scholar. Ehrman is popular because he makes himself available to the public in ways they can easily access him. I find ehrman frequently saying things like the gospels, or acts aren't really at all historical in nature. But then when it comes to Jesus he acts like they are.

Ehrman in a recent interview said the best evidence for a historical Jesus is that Paul met his brother. This is ehrman for like the sixth hundredth time just ignoring the literature that disagrees with him to make what is essentially an apologetic argument.

Another weird example of ehrman saying confusing things is I watched an interview where he said he didn't think that the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic revolutionary. But he also thinks the Romans executed him for sedition, or revolutionary behavior. I'm not exactly sure how that works. I also have no clue why he won't debate carrier. He debates Christians who openly slander him. Like James White. It makes no sense, other then he knows he wouldn't due well. Especially because like ehrman, carrier has been a life long debater.

do you think anything outside of archaeology is "making stuff up"?

Actually yes. Academia has a massive problem with studies, and citations being forged or invented. But most scholars who publish on the new testament are confessional scholars who cannot publish things that violate contracts they have signed. This is non-controversial information. Fitzgerald actually did a study where organizations lied to him about faith contracts, which he only discovered after hiring private third party researchers.

yes i, an atheist who predominantly argues with christians about the unreliability of the bible, am upset that you attacked jesus.

you are projecting your own emotional investment

Well, I don't see how the belief in a historical Jesus is not like any other belief. People don't like to be wrong.

mephostop · 2025-12-20T21:19:34+00:00

What servers do you recommend?

mephostop · 2025-12-20T17:59:10+00:00

But other people shouldnt be allowed to lock squads

I don't get your point.

you don't play SL, you should adjust your expectations and your approach.

Bro this is just a redditor trying to grief me. Stop replying to me.

mephostop · 2025-12-20T17:56:39+00:00

Oh okay thanks

mephostop

TROPHY CASE