Atheism vs. Religion Dead Horse Beating Round 473!

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Close, but not quite. Most people are neither wholly rational nor wholly irrational -- and rational atheism is no buffer against irrationality in other spheres not related to the (non)existence of a deity. It thus remains entirely possible for an atheist to commit such atrocities for perfectly irrational reasons (and sometimes even rational ones) that are unrelated to atheism - to further a social or political agenda, for example*. Your point still stands, though, as atheism can not and will not be the motivating factor. Atheism itself is a null set. Atheism provides no credo or ideology. It implies no moral stances or political frames of reference. As such, an atheist who bombs an abortion clinic does so because he believes abortion to be an act so heinous that drastic actions must be taken to put an end to it, not because he is an atheist.

Here, of course, is the rub. NOG is operating under a false dichotomy in which atheism and religion are mirror images of each other, when they are nothing of the sort. Atheism is the absence of belief in a God or Gods. Nothing more and nothing less. Religion, on the other hand, entails a very specific belief in a very specific God that comes pre-packaged with a specific set of guidelines for how one should lead one's life. Zealots are sometimes able to twist those religious precepts in such a manner that they appear to justify all manner of atrocities. Atheists have no unified precepts for a zealot to pick up and run with. This is not to say that religious adherents can be manipulated by propagandists while atheists can not -- merely that an atheist cannot be manipulated by religious propaganda. They can and are still frequently are manipulated by all the other propaganda.

* Lenin and Mao, for example, are a good place to start looking for at least auspiciously sane atheists who have committed horrible atrocities. I'm intentionally leaving out Stalin because he really was bat-**** crazy.

 

Well, in this context, that's the wrong definition to use, because it's useless. No one can argue that there aren't thing granted willing worship. By that definition, anyone calling themselves an atheist is either a moron or delusional. I'm quite sure you want to use a more useful definition for the purposes of this conversation.

Actually, it's not strawmannish at all. As I've said, I've met several of them. They can be young teens, yes, or they can be older teens, college students, or even reasonably educated (some college degree) professionals. They aren't typically successful enough to reach the level of Dawkins, but they do exist. What you have to remember is that, when any group reaches the level of common popularity (which atheism has), it's average member becomes on par with the average member of society. There are plenty of rude idiots in our society, therefore it's perfectly reasonable to assume there are rude idiots in atheism.

And now it is you making unfounded assumptions, and rather insulting ones at that. Please reconsider, or at least present some real evidence for your position.

There's a link to the conversation earlier in this thread. I suggest you actually do research before posting things like that.

Then don't post challenges to it if you can't support those challenges.

This is only because you don't want to see. You have claimed that a particular type of atheist is a strawman and doesn't actually exist. This is the discussion at the moment. pplr has provided evidence that they do. That's relevant to the discussion.

Actually, that's not the claim at all. That would work if claiming that some atheists are actually suicide bombers, but that's not the arguement at all.

You have been irrational, though, as I've pointed out above. Being vocal doesn't require being irrational, but the one often leads to the other, even in well educated people.

We've had this discussion before, too. The general conclusion, even from atheists, is that religion is nothing more than an organizing force in such actions, and that any popular ideal can be used so. The important thing here, though, is that the actual motivation behind the attack was socio-political, not religious. It's the same for the crusades, the Inquisition, Stalin, and Mao. Theistic and atheistic ideas are used as organizational forces and bonding forces for purely socio-political motives. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that, durring the Crusades, the Europeans robbed and murdered Christian locals right along side Muslim and Jewish ones. That's not a religious action, that's just plain simple greed.

You can make the same arguement for any social aspect. Are atheism and communism inseperable simply because of Mao? In some society somewhere, you can probably find a strong link between just about any ideals and practices, that doesn't mean it's causal.

Actually, if you seperate the zealots from the main, yes it does. A problem with the religion itself would be shared with all (or at least a sizable majority) of it's followers. If something is not shared by that group, it's not a problem of the group itself, but rather of some subset, and thus the distinguishing characteristics of that subset.

You may want to study psychology a lot more before you make such bad assumptions.
1.) We all have irrational beliefs. We live by them. It's only a problem when those beliefs are wrong and/or in stark contrast with society.
2.) Irrational beliefs are not the sole (or even primary) cause of violence, even extreme violence like the above.
3.) Genetal mutilation has been documented even in atheist groups of undeveloped countries under the Iron Curtain. It was a social norm, so they kept doing it.
4.) You also have a confirmed irrational belief. A firm belief in the non-existence of gods is just as irrational as a firm belief in their existence. Neither one is supported by rationality.

And again, the evidence proves you wrong. If anything, it's the reverse. There are just as many equally bad things done by secular and atheist groups around the world, but far fewer good things.

Just from the arguements you've posted above, I find that hard to believe.

Considering this is what the archeologists tell us, yes. The oldest records and even fragments we have of these books match the current versions (with allowances made for the changing form of Greek over the years). This is true of the New Testament and the Torah (the Torah is even more impressive, since it's records go back much further). No other books in history can claim the same.

As for Christianity and the Romans, I suggest you work hard to seperate secular traditions (Christmas, etc.) from the religion. Also, it wasn't the merging with the Romans that caused any problems, but rather merging it with local tribal religions in Europe. It's from there that we get Christmas in December (should be in September) and the name of Easter (date is right, but the name and symbols come from a druid goddess). I believe you'll find, however, that neither of these problems are major factors in the modern Church. Catholocism has a whole other set of problems, but most protestants take Catholic salvation on a case-by-case basis (meaning they don't all count as real Christians in our book).

 

Sure, Wikipedia is biased, but they generally do include citations, so it's not like they pull everything out of their backsides. Like I said, it was the first thing that popped up on Google, and since it wasn't greatly in conflict with what I have been taught about the Gospels (and keep in mind I attended a Jesuit University, and so I have studied both the Old and New Testament at a collegiate level), I did not see them as particularly biased. And yes, I did see that later on they mentioned earlier dates - and I mentioned as much in my previous post.

Perhaps this is one of those differences between Catholic and Protestant denominations. I will take your interpretation at face value, but will simply point out that your interpretation is not universal among all Christians. For example, most Catholic theologians do not view that the Gospels of Matthew and John were written by Jesus' disciples of the same name (which means that none of the Gospels were written by the disciples). This isn't exactly a radical, new view either. Such views came into theological discussions about 200 years ago.

From a Catholic perspective, the only Gospel which is even considered to possibly be a first hand account is that of Mark, who may have been Peter's scribe/interpreter. It is also considered to be the first of the Gospels written, and the only of the Gospels written before 70 AD. Since all of the other Gospels were considered to have been written a good 40+ years after Jesus' death, most Catholic theologians do not consider them first hand accounts. (And even in the case of Mark, unless he was taking dictation from Peter, that's not a first hand account either. Although short of Jesus himself, Peter would have to be considered one of the best sources.)

Anyway, while I will concede that the Gospels could have been written as early as the dates you assign, that your instruction on the subject apparently is different from mine. And we'll probably never know for sure. The earliest surviving manuscripts of the Gospels are a good 100 years later than even the latest possible dates of their original authorship, and so there's nothing surviving today that could be considered an original.

 

I've always found Wikipedia is a great resource when I agree with what they say, but very unreliable when the author doesn't think like I do....

 

I've never believed that, since it's just too simplistic (the "need" to invent a theory). First, there are a number of theories of why JFK was shot, not just the Oliver Stone movie version. Second, there was the supposed incompetence of the Warren Commission and its findings, which are still a matter of controversy. Third, citizens have a healthy skepticism of their government and its "need" for secrecy. The drive in more recent years has been for more transperancy, but in the 60s, basically you got the government version and good luck with it.

As far as JFK being a conservative or liberal, it depends on the context: He was a self-proclaimed liberal during a period of time that was even more conservative than the country is now. And he was proud of his liberal credentials, as thin as they were, as you point out. But I wouldn't call him a "conservative," but probably a moderate, on balance.

I'm not really taking sides in the differing theories over JFK, but I will point out that the Mafia stills takes dubious "credit" for it to this day. Did they kill JKF to get to Bobby? Frankly, it's hard to believe anything they say, but I wouldn't put it past them....

 

Politics comes from the Greek "Poly" meaning "many" and "ticks", meaning small blood-sucking insects. So "politics" must mean "many small blood-sucking insects".

Humorous but not a good way to learn about what words actually mean in specific contexts. We often see this sort of error with the term "role playing games" as well, where kids try to assert that the authoritative meaning of the term is "A game where you PLAY a ROLE!". Unfortunately that is not how language works. The Gnostics were originally and in THIS context still referring to a sect of Christianity who were distinguished by their claim of direct knowledge of God.
The term "agnostic" coined by Thomas Huxley was in direct response to THIS usage and his definition was pretty much a justification for atheism.

But as I said, I have no problem with your broadening things and/or retooling them for our purposes here.

False. I LACK (direct)knowledge of an existent, supernatural deity(and so am agnostic) and furthermore I assert that no one else can have such knowledge since such entities cannot exist. This gets into the 'Flatland' argument about what can and cannot be "known" by human beings about alleged transcendent beings which I won't go into great detail about here(yet).

HERE is a Wikipedia source detailing the millions and millions of people both past and present who worship or DID worship the sun.

You are pulling the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy here. Just because YOU happen to worship a different god does not grant you the right to determine whose gods are "true gods" and whose are not.

Not at all. I have no "beliefs" in this regard to be in conflict.

Kind of hard to remember what this part was about and these boards do not apparently quote both the preceding remark as well as the response so I will edit this post with my reply.

Okay, let me try this again...

If you have encountered atheists who have behaved like jack-asses, then the worst you can say is that you have met some people who happened to be atheists and were also just *******s by nature.
Likewise I have met religious people who do not even subscribe to the wildly fundamentalist sorts of religious ideas but they are just *******s and prone to using violence and bullying to resolve issues.

I do not EVER make the argument that such people as I have encountered are themselves evidence that religion is itself bad or wrong.

But I HAVE met people who are otherwise rational, not prone to violence at all who behave inhumanely specifically BECAUSE of their religious beliefs.

I have yet to meet or hear of an atheist who does so. You will never hear "God is not great!" or "God does not exist!" prior to someone pulling a pin out of a grenade and blowing up an orphanage or some such. There is NOTHING in the simple 'lack of belief in God(s)' to motivate such.

Context is key here man. When you use "extreme" in the context you used it to paint atheism as being at least as likely as theism to suffer the same "extremist" personalities, there is not a lot of wiggle room for you.

Both actually. Evolutionary biology for example makes a pretty strong case that we are biologically wired to believe irrational things and thus we develop socially along these expected lines.

Name one. Keep in mind that whomever you seek to insert here has to be killing people BECAUSE of his atheism or some tenet of atheism(which do not exist so this may be a problem for you). That rules out Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.

I agree with you 100%. I have spent too much time dealing with the Zeitgeist crowd. However none of the Zeitgeist film's contents or offerings are driven by atheism. Politics? Sure. Anti-religious feeling? Absolutely!

I would not know for sure but I think it safe to say that of the atheists whop would bother engaging in debate on the matter, most would have to be rationalists. We are getting off topic here though...

I often engage people who have "seen plenty of them!" in regards to UFOs, ghosts, Sasquatch, psychic powers, etc. I suspect the same factors are in play in regards to what you say you have seen.

Actually yes...as well as much experience with non-militant theists, progressive Christians, peaceful pantheists, aggressive/nasty Buddhists, etc.

Again, will go back and see what this was about and respond later in an edit.

No, just look at those definitions! They quite literally do not make any rational sense! To illustrate why this is I often ask people on your side of this proverbial fence to DEFINE "existent"(or "real") and "imaginary" in such a way that we can use that criteria to categorize existential claims offered into one box or the other.
The problem that 'supernaturalists' run into(and realizing this seems to always precede their running out of the discussion) is that the ONLY criteria we can come up with are that 'real' things have sense contents and do not require bizarre rationalizations to conform with reality.

Imaginary things are able to do things out of linear sequence(though no rational mind can understand or explain how such would be possible), such as someone catching a baseball prior to the ball ever being thrown which leads to the first baseball ever invented being created 100 years after the last World Series has been decided.

Real things cannot do such nonsense. Real things CAN be perceived.

Ignoring the seeming irrelevance of this conclusion for the moment, your postulation here makes no sense. It is equivalent to saying "Most people are drastically uneducated on matters of science. Ergo most Nuclear physicists are probably not well educated enough to have any idea what science or Nuclear physics are!". I would think that most who would use the terms "strong" and "weak" in regards to theism, atheism, and agnosticism would be at least educated enough to have read about them(and more than likely this would occur in a setting where educated people frequented, such as college).

As am I. But I am perplexed as to why you think the above links support your position here?! The above link does not give any examples of "Rationalist dogmas" at all.

No...it's not.

I hold no such belief.

I do not "assume" a "perfect form of science". I accept that science is the best, most reasonable means we have of examining and learning about reality and I further accept that science is, by nature self-correcting(as opposed to say...religion which is not). Science is all about the unknown and there will ALWAYS be the unknown and hence always a need for science. But your dangerous unwarranted assumption here is that we can assume that the unknown will, for whatever reason include whatever ideas we dream up in our heads and that we should therefore count these ideas as "possibilities".
Just because we will always have 'X' does not mean that 'X' will ever include fairies, gods, ghosts or cold fusion or free-point energy generators.

Then why do you not advocate for belief in Santa Claus, fairies, genies, etc.? After all, just because science cannot currently reveal them does not mean we should regard them as improbable or impossible right?

See the problem there?

I think I see the source of your difficulty here. Confusing what science "does not currently reveal to be true" with what supernaturalists assert 'Exists but science CAN NOT reveal to be true.'. I see no good reason to think that ANY existent thing CAN NOT be revealed to exist by science. Seems a highly irrational stance to take.

False. That is not MY logic. I have NEVER said that some things cannot exist because science has not thus far revealed them to be true.

 

Continued

Disagree but this stuff is getting pretty long-winded already without embarking on a lengthy examination of the Theory of Special relativity right now.

His theory was taken seriously because it adequately(if not brilliantly) explained facets of gravitation, observation and the passage of events that were not previously explained well.

All theories are tentative, to the extent that if better/more complete data arrives then our theories also get revised to coincide with such.

To great extent this is false. We do KNOW that the earth is not cube shaped and will never be revealed by science to be such. We know that WE exist and we perceive a shared reality we exist within. We know that square shaped circles do not exist and never will exist. We also know that matter is the primary stuff of the universe(more on this below).

Maybe I am mis-reading you here but how could one be pretty sure about what lies 'beyond' limits that you say we cannot even know what they are?!
And yes, we CAN know a good deal about these 'limits'. The thing about science/technology is that it does not progress along a consistent direct line from "discovering fire" to "nanotechnology". It took our ancestors millions of years to discover fire and it's application in cooking meat. After we discovered fire and cooking we quickly developed more complex tools and methods for using them. alongside these developments our 'societies' went from small tight-knit packs to tribal clans to villages then towns, then cities.

The first two-piston steam engine was developed in the Library of Alexandria some 2,000+ years ago but the designs were destroyed by religious vandals. After the steam engine was 're-discovered' some 1700 years later it took only 100-150 years for the first automobile to be invented. The first airplanes came about within a few decades after that, then the first mainframe computers.
In other words once science gets going, it really starts to snowball right up until we reach those 'limits" of reality(such as the nonexistence of the supernatural and hence why no instrument is able to detect a "soul" or some such).

You are misusing the term "belief" here as I have NO beliefs as per this usage. I am not putting forth any beliefs nor am I trying to prove the truth of any positive assertions about reality. You are shifting the burden here. A logical fallacy which seeks to characterize dissent from an extraordinary claim with the act of positing such a claim. I am not obligated to prove that there is no tooth fairy in your house in order to conclude that there is no such thing. If you were hypothetically asserting the existence of said fairy then the burden would be upon YOU to prove your case.

Wrong again. Even using your specific definitions you are wrong here. Materialism IS a "self evident truth" just as much as any self-evident truth you could put forth. Materialism is not a "belief". It is a philosophical recognition that matter is the primary stuff of the universe. What this means in practical application is that conceptual entities(ideas or idealized conceptions such as God and/or belief in such things) have only a secondary existence in that without physical brains there would be no thoughts or ideas.

You are right that Materialists do not tend to believe in "other realities" and such but this is getting off track here. Materialism is the axiom of science and most of science's advocates. Axioms are often referred to by philosophers and scientists as "useful assumptions". The reason being that some who do not wish to concede materialism will say that since there is no 'concrete proof' that matter is the primary source of existence, that this is an "assumption". To which materialists reply by pointing out that knowledge must have a point of origin from which progress can be made or we end up in an infinite regression of 'prove THAT!'. So if it is an "assumption" then it is a useful assumption because it also happens to coincide with and corroborate everything we learn about reality.

Ah, you are familiar. I think you are stretching things a bit though. For starters even calling it an "assumption" is rather dishonest, especially given the meaning that "assumption" usually has. If a racist were to say out loud : "I need someone to fix my computer...oh look! There's an Asian guy...hey come here and fix my PC for me would'ja?" then we would rightly call THAT an "assumption" because it is ridiculous to conclude that an Asian guy automatically is well versed in computer maintenance because he is Asian.

Materialism is no such animal really. There is a sense which one could call it a "useful assumption" which I would not get too bent about but the above is not such a case.

NOTHING is "beyond the realm of proof/disproof". Someone, somewhere will ALWAYS contend self-evident truths with some bizarre rationalization(ironically using half of the arguments you have given here).
I really have only the one axiom and it is self-evidently true.

I find this amusing that the only example you seem anxious to give of Christian irrationality is something absurdly impossible. Find a 2,000 year old corpse that probably did not exist in real life and scientifically prove that it is said corpse?! It is like saying that believers in vampires are irrational if someone brings the corpse of the REAL Count Dracula(proven by SCIENCE!) and that corpse is of a werewolf, rather than a vampire but the Vampirists still believe in vampires.

I think I agree with what you are trying to say here except to point out that accepting "eyewitness" accounts as valid evidence for an extraordinary claim would not be something a rationalist should do. Same with video confirmation.

False. I think being exceedingly generous the earliest we could put Mark is like 60 C.E. and the rest of them are basically latter borrowings from Mark with some stuff added and some stuff taken away. You can see this in the evolution of how the authors portrayed the Jews from the Nag Hammadi stuff, through Mark and all the way to John where the Jews are being depicted as villains whereas early on they are the heroes.

But this is getting thick so I will stop.

Who made no mention of any Jesus Christ he was aware of. He only mentions what it was said that CHRISTIANS believed and the very usage of "Christus" in what he wrote is the dead giveaway.

Been a while so I will get back to this one in a bit...

The Testimonium Flavium? A forgery inserted by later Christians. Origen translated the earliest writings of Joesphus' works and the fradulent insertion is conspicuously not there. PLus the passage in which Jesus is mentioned does not make any sense there. It is like finding a rant about how much modern computer games suck written between two paragraphs of bloody violence within a Clive Barker novel.

Only mentions that Christians existed and believed things. No mention of seeing any "Jesus" followed around by 12 disciples.

False. I have little patience for this sort of nonsense. False beliefs are one thing and I can get along with people just fine even if they hold beliefs in things I find silly. But slapping the silly "It's a historical fact" impresses me no more than Creationists making unqualified assertions about science.

He did not. A man named Appollonius of Tyana DID live and we have historical records of his 'trouble making' in ancient Rome. He preached of one God, was alleged to perform miracles and heal the sick, and was eventually tried for sedition and crucified. Why is THIS guy mentioned over and over but your "Jesus" is not? And the story of Jesus is not exactly unique in the ancient world. It seems damned near every cult that existed then had a myth about some demi-god being born to a virgin mother, being killed and resurrected etc.

You are effectively being given the corpse of Jesus. Let's see how much of a rationalist you are then...

You will have to be more specific here as I am not sure you even know what Ockham's Razor or the Principle of Parsimony are. Many people unfortunately think they mean "The simpler answer is usually right." but this is incorrect.

OR/PoP is a principle, that is true but also one of those 'self-evident truths'(not really an axiom though...at least not in the context I was using such).

We should not unnecessarily multiply entities for explanation is how Occam's razor is defined. The Principle of Parsimony is usually summed up as "If you hear hoof beats, think 'horses'...not 'zebras' but I have refined it to be more accurate:
If you hear hoof beats, think 'horses'(horse or zebra etc., whatever equine is native to wherever you are at), not 'unicorns'.

Yeah and if Gene Wolfe writes a scathing book about Scientology or it's celebrated members, he will receive a number of "scathing reviews" and, like the ones Hitchens received, they will be devoid of refutation of the facts stated. Of course if you are able to do what no other "scathing reviewer" has been able to and answer Hitchens' points, facts then I would certainly love to see it!
The ad hominem fallacy does not a good argument make. You might as well be calling Copernicus a "racist" to refute the Heliocentric universe model.

You are ignoring a whole lot here. Of course the total number/quantity of charitable organizations and such will be mostly of the primary, dominant religious belief. In ancient Azteca the most charitable people would have been believers in Quetzalcoatl also. "Charity" exists in the realms of PEOPLE. Don't believe me? Go to a few atheist get-togethers sometime and ask them what sort of things they do. If you want to get really crafty then disguise yourself as a homeless person and sit outside of one of their meetings with a cup labeled "change".

What you will find I think will surprise you. This is not something I can credit to atheism or even secularism. I think that for whatever reason most atheists(at least activist ones) tend to be Liberal and therefore(often to a fault) they tend to be more prone to that sort of hippy, 'every life is equally important!' type of charity. Not saying that Conservatives are not in large numbers the same(though a lot of this depends on what you define as "charity") but in my experience they seem to bear strong political rationalizations for not giving to charity(re: "He's just going to waste it on drugs anyway!" or "The government already takes all my money for damned taxes!" etc.).

You are shifting the burden again. I have made no claims so I am not obligated to prove anything and this is one of those cases where you truly cannot prove a negative so asking me to do an impossible thing which I am not obligated to do anyway...?!

*Chuckle*
No offense but I see this one a lot(first time with Tolkien as the proverbial "author" though). First problem is that it is a false analogy. You are comparing the act of a NON-omniscient human being writing a book to an omniscient being being able to ponder decisions he would not be able to ponder because he was already aware, at all times of what would transpire.

It does not even begin to address the contradiction/paradox I referred to.

At what point can God ponder ANY decision? When is he 'not omniscient' enough to wonder about what he should do?

Though your above analogy is completely false I will tinker with it to try and make it more applicable in order to illustrate the problem:

say that Tolkien is OMNISCIENT. He does not "suspect" or "desire" that things go a certain way in his story. He KNOWS as IMMUTABLE FACT that Frodo will embark on his quest and that Mordor will fall.

Now at what point does he get to ponder a decision about whether Frodo will be the hero of the story who takes up the challenge? At what point can he decide if and how Mordor might fall? He must either follow what he is in effect programmed to do by his omniscience OR he must thwart his own omniscience by pondering a decision.

No, it is still not a "positive" assertion. You cannot make a negative into a positive by trying to word it using positive linguistics. It is like describing an innocent bystander as "The positive robber of NO bank" in order to characterize him as being just as much a bank robber as the guys running from the vault with machine guns.

And us strong atheists do not necessarily say "There are absolutely no gods" in the way you describe. Again, it is provisional. To YOUR God I am no doubt a strong atheist. To Kim Jong Il and the sun I am a 'non-worship atheist' as I accept that these things exist but do not willingly deify them. To the 'Snazzdoogle' I am a weak atheist since I have no idea what it is.

I do not know of ANY strong aextra-terrestrialists and think this analogy is silly. Saying that no other life than our own exists anywhere in the universe cannot even BE a scientific proposal! That is not the way science works.

Yeah...and?

Well if you think of a contention with what I stated then feel free to offer it. I cannot really respond to "I think you have a twisted version..." though.

Then I think you are not paying attention.

To me, conviction is belief, not action. Beyond that, though, I think we agree.[/QUOTE]

I was not confusing conviction with "action". I meant CONVICTION. Strength of CONVICTION is what is inferred by the "strong" and "weak" qualifiers.

This is not MY invention btw. That is how these4 terms are actually used in philosophy.


Sorry that this reply is coming a bit late and I have little doubt that there will have been other responses posted before I got this one posted. This one itself took me two and a half days to write because I have been busy lately.

 

Wow. I beginning to think that Dr Skepticus and NOG are actually the same person arguing with split personalities in a Sybil-like fashion. Note the similarities in the cut-and-paste argument style....

 

Then you are either not understanding what I was describing or you simply deny the facts you do not want to hear. It is not someone's opinion or wild guess that humans are pattern-seeking animals. This is a FACT.

Correct except these are NOT "theories" and I am a stickler about not using the term "theory" in such an abusive way. They all have the same degree of evidential and rational justification though and that is ZERO.

Often asserted but never demonstrated. Also even if this were true it suffers from the same problem that Creationism does in that it is not good enough to simply refute some part of the theory in question("theory" = Explanation of a fact or known phenomenon) in order to support an alternative idea.

Yes people mistrust the government and there is nothing really wrong with that. Ironically the JFK conspiracy theories only really sprung up after the Watergate affair when distrust of government was at an unprecedented level.

CTers seem to forget that the same "government" persons who were incapable of pulling off a comparatively simple burglary are in essence the same people they think capable of a massive conspiracy involving possibly MILLIONS to assassinate a sitting President and frame Oswald so conclusively.

This is false. He NEVER proclaimed himself a "Liberal" and more often than not took shots at Liberals(I.e. calling Adlai Stevenson a 'fag' and such). He felt far more comfortable with Richard Nixon than he did with anyone in his own PARTY, let alone LIBERALS. He consistently tried to hinder if not block the civil rights movement, etc.

Even if this WERE true(it's not), it would be irrelevant. Do you have any idea how many people have claimed to be the "real shooter"?!

That does not even begin to make sense but this is the wrong thread for this so I will stop here.

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Correct and this is what I was trying to say. For example, it is perfectly feasible that even a critical atheist will decide to murder his family because he 'hears voices'(insane), believes his family to be "Conservative Nazis" and they therefore deserve to die(political irrationality), etc. but none of this is analogous to the religious atrocities I refer to. When the 9-11 terrorists did what they did they were not insane and while the political reality may have inspired anger with them, it took a much more powerful motivator to drive them to murder thousands while taking their own lives.

"Kill yourself to please *some human*." does not tend to be very successful but "God is watching you and is waiting to either reward you or condemn you to eternal suffering" works much better.

Exactly!

Agreed.

True.

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Not to be nitpicky(or rude even) myself but maybe you SHOULD HAVE put 'theory' in quotation marks because a theory is NOT a 'rung on a ladder of increasing certainty'. It is NOT "one step below proof". A theory in science is an explanation of a fact/observed phenomenon. The appropriate analogy would be that the computer you are typing away in front of does exist and this is a FACT. The 'theory' explaining how the computer exists and how it operates would be like a manual on computer engineering. That manual NEVER "becomes a computer" itself, it only explains the workings involved.

There were many people named "Jesus". Several are mentioned by Josephus in fact but NONE of them conform to the character of the Bible, and I am not just talking about the supernatural/miraculous elements either. This is one of those issues where people, often seeing the matter as being of secondary importance, just concede that Jesus did in fact exist even though there is no evidence to suggest such. It would have zero effect on my atheism if he had existed but I am a skeptic and so cannot just willy nilly concede falsehoods as 'true'.

 

I really don't care if it's a fact or not. I believe your illustration of it regarding JFK was lame.

Good for you. Since many who write on the subject, and have researched it, still refer to them as "theories," that sounds more like a you problem and not my problem.

Hence the reason I chose the word "supposed" to qualify my statement regarding the WC. I really have not researched it enough to comment either way.

No, sorry, it's not. He also defined what true liberalism is. It may be his own personal perspective of "liberalism," but it is also the one that most liberals (like myself) recognize as a correct definition of the term.

http://www.liberalparty.org/JFKLPAcceptance.html

Sure, if you want to craft a separate thread, that's fine with me. Knock yourself out, dude.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories

 

I know many of you Americans worship JFK but is he already deified so he fits into this thread?

 

Touche. I was merely attempting to vernacularize the definition (although I do not recall using the "rung on a ladder" analogy). Point taken, nonetheless.

I agree. And that was kind of my point. The existence of a dude named Jesus (or some other name) does not prove that he was the son of god, or any of the other baggage that comes with it. His existence is of secondary importance compared to the concept that Jesus represents to most Christians.

I believe in a lot of semi-historical characters to which legends are ascribed. For example, I believe that there was a real person on whom the original concept of King Arthur was based. I don't believe he lead a group of knights in shining armor (as none existed in the 500 AD or so timeframe when he would have been a historical figure), I don't believe he had a friend named Merlin who was gifted with supernatural powers, I don't believe he received his kingship by pulling Excalibur from a stone, or that the Lady of the Lake received his sword after his death. I just believe that there was a dude, who may not even have been named Arthur, who led and inspired a bunch of people and his deeds and abilities were greatly magnified to mythological proportions through the generations. Same goes for Robin Hood - it's possible to believe his character was based on a real person, even if you think that other characters in the story such as Maid Marion and the Sheriff of Nottingham are not.

Much the same way, I don't think the concept of Christianity sprung out of thin air. There was some original person responsible for a belief system held by over a billion people today. I would even go so far as to concede that such a person may not even have been named Jesus (in much the way that the King Arthur legends may not be based on a guy named Arthur), but I believe it came from somewhere...

 

joacqin, he had Jackie AND Marilyn in the same house, on the same night -- of course we worship him.

 

And this is why the distinction between atheism and agnosticism, or at least strong and weak atheism, is needed. You're right about weak atheism (agnostic atheism), but strong atheism is a different beast altogether, and you're dead wrong on it.

Actually, you're wrong here. I'm comparing strong atheism to theism with specific examples of each comparable. Mao has zealots, just like Mohammed does. Mao's zealots are atheistic (strong), while Mohammed's are theistic (also strong). Those are comparable.

Given your Jesuit education in the field, can you tell me any reasons to doubt that the disciples wrote John and Matthew? I mean, a lack of concrete proof is one thing, but that's commonplace in archeology and history. I would think an actual reason to think otherwise would be needed. There is also a stark distinction between Catholic Christianity and Protestant Christianity, especially where the Bible is concerned. We don't use the same Bible as you do, with several books different and even some chapters not included because they showed signs of being added later. I could believe those dates as 'final authorship' dates for the Catholic versions, but that still leaves the bulk of the text as open for debate.

This raises two questions to me. One, how can you date Luke at 70+ AD when it's sequel didn't even include the execution of Paul (AD 65), but rather just his imprisonment and awaiting trial? Secondly, why do you believe a 40 year gap prevents the authorship from being original when we know that at least John lived that long (having likely died around 100AD). Lastly, the biggest problem with all four Gospels being so late is that Matthew includes distinctly Jewish references, indicating they were written by Jews for Jews. The problem with this being late is that the Jewish Church became a very minor force fairly early on.

I love that joke, but actually it come from the greek: politikos, "of citizens or the state", who's origin is polis, "city".

Actually: Agnostic:

Seems he was rather arguing what I use the term to mean: one who does not know the existencce of a First Cause.

Again, that makes you a strong atheist, and distinctly not an agnostic. You posit a 'knowledge' that gods cannot exist.

And I don't know any of them, nor do I suspect that any of them are currently on these forums.

... Yet you have already professed both a belief in the nonexistance of the supernatural and (for lack of a better term) of supreme beings.

It may take a while, but backtrack to what I was originally saying. I'm defending the term 'Ultimate Atheist' here. I am saying that there is a specific subgroup who denies the entire existence of the supernatural and all supernatural agents (gods, demons, angels, miracles, psychic powers, ghosts, ect.) in one blanket ideology. I am defining a sub-set of atheism specifically on their atheistic beliefs.

I would actually challenge you to prove that, minding that religion and society are different.

Take a second look at the followers of Mao or Stalin. While the leaders may or may not have been genuinely atheistic, or have been motivated to put religion down by their atheistic beliefs, the followers were vicious, merciless, and violent because of their atheistic beliefs and their beliefs that theists were somehow sub-human or dysfunctional. That is a specific sub-set of atheism, and one specially designed to be vicious and heartless, but it is atheistic in basis.

You're right that context is the key, but you're wrong about the context. I'm using 'extreme' in a clinical context, defining sub-groups and ideologies, and even here I only use it as a secondary definition of another term used earlier: 'ultimate'. You read hate into the usage of the term, probably because that's how you're used to seeing it, but it wasn't there.

It may rule out the rulers (that's debatable), but it doesn't rule out the followers. And yes, there are tenets of specific forms of atheism. These forms seem to lack formal names, since they didn't really catch on, but we may call them Stalinism, Maoism, and the like. Mind you, those are to atheism about what the woship of Quetzlcoatl was to theism: specific subsets that are not representative of the whole but still representative of what the idea can become.

I think you're stretching here. The films are driven by a desire to convince people there are no real gods. This is driven by a genuine belief by the makers that there are no real gods. It is the nature of humanity (and likely genetic) that we want people to agree with us and believe the same things we do, thus to try and convince them of those things (or, in the extreme, kill them if they don't). That's still atheism behind it, though.

Really? I've never met anyone who's 'seen plenty' of any of those, and I would discount the likelyhood because the existence of such a thing seems unlikely to me, from a rational standpoint. The possibility that someone could take atheist beliefs to an irrational extreme, however, seems very realistic, given human nature. Claiming to have met one or two of them, then, is much more believable.

I think it may have jaded some of your reactions in this thread. Just for your knowledge, I'm an engineer and so I typically try to be very precise with what I say. I say what I mean and I mean what I say (or at least I try to) and I generally don't like inferring insults about people or groups. If I mean to insult them, I'll come out and say it.

The problem isn't with the definition of 'real' but rather with you're insistence that what is real can be currently sensed or percieved. This is an illogical assumption. For lack of anything better, though, I'll say that something is 'real' if it has the potential to effect our surroundings, and 'imaginary' if it does not. With that in mind, a neutrino is real because, though rare, it can effect it's surroundings. On the other hand, a centaur is not because, since none actually exist (an assumption, but a sound one), they can't impact their surroundings. With that in mind, gods and the supernatural may be real provided that they ever have the potential to effect our surroundings. Whether we can measure that effect, or ever document it (especially troublesome if that effect is minor and/or not common), is another matter, and not one of reality, but rather of perception and proof. And again, perception and proof are fluid things which change over time. 500 years ago, neutrinos could not be detected. They could not be sensed at all, but they were still real. Right now, dark matter cannot be detected (it is theorized as an explanation for otherwise unknown mass, but other possibilities exist). We cannot prove that it is real, but whether it is real or not is an immutable fact right now, just one we haven't discovered.

First off, nuclear physicists are by no means a common population, thus my logic doesn't apply to them. Secondly, I never said 'people who call themselves Strong Atheists', but rather just inferred 'people who meet our definition of Strong Atheists'. Many of the ones I've met weren't even educated enough on the issue to call themselves atheists, but they were quite convinced all gods were false.

From the first link, Dogma is:

From the second link:

That describes two different authoritative tenets of Rationalism, described as the 'moderate position' and the 'radical position' (note this is not an insult to the holders of such a position, but merely a way of defining they're position on a spectrum).

Really? If the universe is consistent independant of our perception, then the real is what is there, whether percieved or not, while the imaginary is what is percieved to be there, but in reality is not. That's a pretty clear distinction.

Good. I've debated with people who did. It's... confusing.

So, then, you admit that there are such things right now that science cannot percieve?

I make no such assumptions. Again, you assume positions about be which I have never held, nor given any hint of holding. My claim is merely that, since you admit you don't know what is out there, you can't prove X doesn't exist without falsifying a prediction made given the existence of X. Basically, you claim that something absolutely doesn't exist, yet you cannot disprove it. That is not science, that's an assumption. You can probably prove that faeries don't exist. Gods and ghosts are more iffy. On cold fusion, if you assume it not to be possible, you're just being an idiot. There's actually a lot of money going into attempts to develop cold fusion right now. It's not very hopeful, but the potential rewards are high enough to warrant some investment by some people, and some experiments have been hopeful (specifically involving heavy water electrolysis with paladium cathodes). The results are, at the moment, unpredictable, but real.

And, incidenctally, the very definition of 'possibilities' is that these things are possible, not known.

Well, I do advocate teh belief in Santa Claus. He's a real historical figure, and I may even be able to show you his corpse somewhere (not sure if it was preserved by anyone, but he was sainted). As for fairies and genies, we can pretty well disprove their existence. We can't do that for gods in general, or the supernatural. Beyond that, though, you infer that, by believing one unproven thing to be real, I must believe all unproven things to be real. This is irrational. I posit that I personally believe in X and that X cannot be disproven by current science, but that doesn't mean I claim all possibilities must be true. Personally, I don't believe there is any alien life out there in the universe, or at least not sapient life. I'm not about to discount the possibility, but I doubt it.

Yes, and it's a very nice strawman. I hope you enjoy burning it.

 

And again you rely on a perfect science. I think here you admit it must be some infinitely future science, thus not practically realistic at any point, but it's still a perfect science.

I think our real difference here is our perception of science as a whole. I see it as a human institution, a human attempt to make sense of our universe. It's a very good one, but it's ultimately human, administered by humans, and limited by humans, as well as by it's own rules. You appear to see it as some philosophical ideal which, in a logical extreme, may detect anything that is.

Aha, I think I see the problem here. I had assumed you mean that because, to put it plainly, I don't discount the possibility of science in the future discovering God and/or the spiritual realm. Basically, I don't think these things are things that cannot be discovered by science, just things that have not been. Thus, to claim that they cannot exist and to cite sciences inability to discover them as support means you rely on the current state of science. I realize I hadn't correctly posited by beginning position, so you could misunderstand it easily. That, then, means I misunderstood your responses to my statements.

Aww, but I love that theory! I'll discount further debate on it, though, because I think our above points and arguements sufficiently explain the issue.

The above gives a perfect example of how we could. Ok, assume all possible knowledge exists within a circle, and this includes both knowledge of what is and knowledge of what is not. Now imagine that circle divided by a line. On one side is knowledge of what is, while on the other side is knowledge of what is not. Our science takes (semi)random points in this circle and attempts to falsify them, to prove them not. First off, at no point can we ever truely prove what is, just, at the moment, fail to prove that it is not. Therefore, with logic, it is impossible to ever identify where that line is, but simply to prove what is on the other side of it and what may or may not be on the other side of it. The further something is from anything that has been disproven, the more likely it is to be true, but disproving one new thing near it may suddenly cast new doubt on it itself. To give you an example, we know that the Earth is a rough sphere, with very slight elipsoid tendencies and various very minor irregularities on it's surface. We also strongly believe that the universe has more than three, or even four, basic dimensions. We don't know much about these other dimesions, or even know that they exist, but it is possible that, in some of them, the Earth may be cubic, or trapezoidal, or pyramidal, or the like. A future science may well discover that our planet is a hyper-shape that, in some restricted dimensions, is in fact a cube. I don't find it likely, but it is possible.

First off, that's not science, that's engineering and technology. Those snowball, but not proportional to scientific knowledge, but rather proportional to the number of tools available and the number of people who have access to them. Believe it or not, even today, science doesn't drive most new technology. Rather, that seems to work in reverse.

I am not misusing the term 'belief' at all, nor am I shifting any burdens. You have repeatedly claimed, quite firmly, that there are no gods and no supernatural. That seems to me like you believe such things, and those are beliefs, plain and simple.

*sigh* Now this is just plain bad. If materialism were a self-evident truth, then there NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN RELIGION IN THE FIRST PLACE!! That's what a self-evident truth is, it's self evident! It proves itself. Materialism doesn't.

You realize you've just proven my arguement?

And again, you are making assumptions about the tone of these forums. I believe you'll most commonly find 'assumption' used around here to mean 'a belief taken as truth which may be false, having no proof'. Most of them are assumptions of evidence, of agreement, of perspectives, and the like.

1.) The existence of Jesus as a historical figure is generally accepted as reliable fact. We've talked abou this already.
2.) Find any other way to disprove (and I mean really disprove, as a whole) Christianity and I'll give it to you. This is just the first one that came to mind, not the sole limit.

The eye-witness accounts I'll give you, though in corroboration of your own witness it is proof that you weren't just experiencing a simple halucination. Video proof, though, I think is pretty sound. It disproves mass halucination (the most common attemt by atheists to explain any records of anything supernatural). Given the claim presented, it is highly unlikely that such a thing could be physically faked, so the video evidence should be pretty reliable.

... Jews aren't really presented as villains in John. In fact, in all four Gospels, almost every figure mentioned is a Jew. The only non-Jews I can think of off the top of my head would be the Samaritan woman by the well and Pilot. The first is a good reference, but the second not so much. In short, the only way John could present the Jews as villians would be to present all of humanity as villains. Anyway, Aldeth and I are arguing that, so you may want to argue those points.

Prove there were firm believers in his physical existence from the area specified within a very short time. That is heavily suggestive of eye-witnesses. At this point, the conspiracy theory is pretty much shot through. People would have to be psychic to fake this, and without any cause, as there were plenty of other rebellious leaders the Romans had killed they could deify. If Jesus was fake, why not use a real one?

Now we're really getting out there. First you claim a conspiracy by early Christians to prove Jesus existed at a time when no one doubted it, and then you claim Joesephus as a reliable source? Please.

What's false? That the Talmud and Mara Bar-Serapion mention Jesus? No, that's quite true.

Probably because Appollonius lived in Rome and Jesus lived in Judea. Appollonius was a Roman citizen, Jesus wasn't. That's like being surprised that NY City has detailed birth records, but a random village in Africa doesn't.

No corpse here, just a bunch of misconceptions, denials of accepted history, and illogical conclusions.

Both present the logical claim that one should not use more complex explanations than needed. First off, this isn't a self-evident truth, just sound advice. Secondly, however, sometimes the more complex explanation is right. The 'simple answer' claimed that the Earth was flat and the Sun revolved around it. It's a 'good idea' not to challenge them without reason, but one man's observations were enough reason for him to challenge the latter.

All I said was that this was all I found, and I even asked you if you have a better source for reviews. If you don't, just say so, but if you do, please give them. Randomly attacking me for things I didn't say doesn't help anyone.

You have claimed there are no gods, there is no supernatural, and Jesus is a work of fiction. Those are all extraordinary claims. You've claimed logic for the first and second (I dispute your assumptions) and conspiracy for the third.

You make the false assumption of a static timeline. If the future is not fixed, then 'omniscience' is knowledge of all the consequences of all possibilities. This may be functionally achieved by just being able to travel freely in time and to enact all possibilites (or even just all that you desire to enact). It is only a contradiction if you assume a static timeline, that the future is set and immovable.

Again, assuming a static timeline and set future. This is why I used the Author analogy. Tolkien was omniscient (within the limited realm of Middle Earth). This is not debatable. He also pondered the possibilities. While I can't prove this 100%, I think you can accept it as a given. Now, if we presume that God is seperate from our reality (not really a stretch all things considered), then the analogy stands.

No, that's an absolute failure to understand what I'm saying. What I am saying is that 'I don't believe in gods' and 'I do believe there are no gods' are two very different statements. The first presents no claims about the universe. The second presents one claim about the universe: that it is one devoid of gods. The second directly contrasts the statement: 'I do believe there are gods', while the first simply doesn't agree with it.

I do. I don't agree with them, and think what traces of logic they present are faulty, but they make the claim regardless.

Why not? It's falsifiable, isn't it? I mean, all you have to do is find one alien and you've disproven it. It's a perfectly valid hypothesis.

More to the point, though, is the proof that certainty in the negative is not a non-position, and does require proof.

... Well, it was shining example of something. I can't remember what now, but it was relevant to the conversation.

Worship is the act of attributing worth to something. That's all in simplist terms. Furthermore, it never requires the belittling of the self. Even if you attribute more worth to something than to yourself, that just means you don't view yourself as the single most important or worthy thing in all existence. If you consider that an automatic belittling of yourself, then you may be a narcissist. Or a sociopath, but that's more debatable.

... But you said:

Which is it. Do "weak" and "strong" have nothing to do with conviction, or everything?


T2, it's a logical and practical way of responding to someone. I respect Skepticus for using it. I'm not sure how much more respect I have for him, but I do respect him for that at least.

Jesus was a fairly common name at the time. Maybe not 'John' commonality, but at least 'Bill'. That being said, your reliance on Josephus is worrying. You do know the man flat out lied in many of his texts, don't you? He was more of a tabloids writer than a historian. He wrote what his readers wanted to hear.

... All depends on who you ask.

EDIT: For the record, I don't think I've ever had to break up a post into two posts before!

 

The more we get into this, the more it appears we are discovering differences between the Protestant and Catholic spheres of Christianity. I am begining to think that we are both simply stating what we have been taught, and this is something that even the most senior members of our respective Churches may not agree on, which would certainly suggests that the problem may be wholly unsolvable at our level.

As to your specific questions, you certainly have me at a disadvantage. I wasn't a theology major, and only took those courses because it was a graduation requirement. As such, I haven't seriously studied this subject in over a decade, and while I remember general points of what I was taught, I cannot recall specific reasons why one timeline is favored over another. I'm also pretty sure that I sold those textbooks back to the bookstore upon completion of the course (I only held onto the ones that were science-related), so it's not like I can go to my library when I get home and do some research for you.

However, I can attempt to answer some of your questions regarding John, as that's the non-synoptic gospel, and so we spent some more time on it, and I can recall distinctions between John and the other three Gospels more clearly. According to Catholic tradition, it is generally accepted that if John the disciple did write parts of that Gospel, someone else had to finish it. John certainly lived to a ripe old age, but certain references in the text (at least in the Catholic version) indicate that the Gospel could not have been finished any earlier than 110 AD, and there are some serious doubts as to whether John lived that long, and that's the first reason some other author is suspected.

The support for John the disciple as the author stems from the author's use of "I" in some parts regarding Jesus' ministry, suggesting the author was present at the time, and that at least parts of the Gospel are autobiographical. However (and this is the big reason), these references are infrequent, and the writing style employed in the oldest manuscripts that survive today show a different type of writing style regarding some parts of Jesus' ministry as opposed to the bulk of the work. (Don't ask me how they can tell a different writing style - the oldest versions are written in ancient Greek, and I'm certainly out of my league if I try commenting on that.) Also in the sections with the different writing styles, there seem to be inconsistencies in the timeline and sequence of events of the rest of the Gospel, and that these references to do not appear in the proper context.

In summary, it appears that the author of John (who is regarded as anonymous) very well may have had access to some of John's writings in composing the Gospel, but he took some pretty significant editorial liberties when it came to the composition of the Gospel. Of the two writing styles employed, the one that comprises the majority of John does not contain the "I" references. So most Catholic theologians think the author used John's writing as source material, but that John himself is not the author of the majority of that Gospel.

EDIT: Note that this is a "modern" interpretation, and by "modern" I mean it did not get serious consideration until the 1800s. If your Church subscribes to a more traditionalist approach to Biblical interpretation (and I suspect this is the case), traditional interpretation is that John the Disciple is the author. Jesuits - as far as prests go - are rather liberal in their views, and do not necessarily hold onto traditional views if they feel more recent research lends support to a different conclusion.

EDIT2: Also, keep in mind that these views were not held when the four Gospels were cannonized, and that if such a view were prevalent, it may never have been cannonized. John is also the most quirky of the four Gospels, being the only one that is non-synoptic, and also deals much more with Christology than the other three.

 

I think the biggest defenses I've heard for John the Disciple being the author are:
1.) The use of 'I' as you mentioned.
2.) The frequent use of the term 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' which, if it wasn't a way to avoid self-reference, seems very, very odd wording.
3.) The detail and descriptions indicate someone who was actually present as opposed to an oral tradition.

I've heard the advanced Christology used to defend a much later dating, but that doesn't quite follow as several of Paul's letters involve just as advanced Christology and their authoriship is pretty much undisputed and Hebrews, almost certainly written before AD 70, is pretty much the definition of Christology. These two show that such theology developed very early on and is no hard evidence of a later date.

I've also heard a somewhat creadible theory that most, if not all, of the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew and later translated to Greek. Apparently there are various plays on words and rhyms and such that only work in Hebrew. This alone may account for variations in writing styles, if multiple people worked on the translation. Still, that's far from certain.

 

NOG, as for your three points, I have heard of them as well. (Like I said, it's been a while since I studied it, and your points jogged my memory). In all the parts where it appears John is the writer, the writing style is different, and that different writing style is only present in about 20% of the Gospel. Catholics do not argue that John had no contribution to the Gospel, simply that he was not the primary author. Catholic theoglians assert one of the two following theories: 1) the author had access to the writing of John and used them in making the Gospel or 2) (this is considered less likely) the author took all of John's writings and smushed them into the middle of his work. The parts of the book not directly dealing with Jesus' ministry are the author's words, while the parts dealing with the specific actions of Jesus' ministry are from John.

The Christology argument is not typically the focal point for arguing that the work was not John's. The main reason for arguing against John as the primary author is that people who are well versed in ancient Greek writings say that it looks like the Gospel of John was written by two different people. A smaller section appears almost autobiographical and may well be John, but the majority of the Gospel is not.

As for the original New Testament being written in Hebrew - I don't have an opinion either way. We don't have any of the original works, and I have no idea if the writers were literate in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, or some other Semitic language used at the time.

 

Those that were themselves literate (as opposed to dictating) would almost certainly be literate in Hebrew, since almost all of them were Jews (Mark and Luke are uncertain here). Odds are that anyone literate at the time (pretty much anywhere in the Roman empire) would be literate in Greek. Other languages are a lot more spotty.

 

You're right - but I always found that amusing - you'd assume that most Roman citizens would have learned to write in Latin.