Remember when "atheist" had a negative connotation?

I came across this article today. Interesting:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3440428/Feeling-mystical-brain-s-God-Spot-damaged-Study-discovers-people-spiritual-connections-events-don-t.html

Remember when the term "hobby jogger" had a negative connotation?

Remember when asking "pics?" had a negative connotation

You can still vote for Trump. He clearly knows far less about religion than the average atheist.And I'm with you, I remember it clearly and it is certainly still true. For all the blather about a "war on religion," let's see a candidate on the LEFT stand up and say they don't believe in God and see how far they get, not to mention a candidate on the right. Hell, even the (faux) libertarians are now rooting their answers in religion.

NYCguy wrote:

And I, a voter for nearly a half-century, have never voted for a Democrat for anything...though I certainly will not vote for any of the current crop of GOP presidential candidates who claim that their lives and decisions are primarily governed by belief in a "deitiy."

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To answer the thread's actual (trolling) question: sure, I remember when "atheist" had a negative connotation. I think it still does--but progressively less so.

Stagger Lee wrote:

I came across this article today. Interesting:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3440428/Feeling-mystical-brain-s-God-Spot-damaged-Study-discovers-people-spiritual-connections-events-don-t.html

Not surprisingly, spiritual thoughts are linked to brain damage.

Atheists are so cool

In Sum This wrote:

Atheists are so cool

Inferiority complex much?

Yes I do and yes they did. But atheists used to be activists. Now days its more common for people to be de facto atheists. They don't declare themselves as such but God or religious belief doesn't really occur to them. They kind of fall into it.

Conundrum wrote:

Yes I do and yes they did. But atheists used to be activists. Now days its more common for people to be de facto atheists. They don't declare themselves as such but God or religious belief doesn't really occur to them. They kind of fall into it.

I think part of the reason they don't declare themselves as such is BECAUSE of the negative connotation. I know it was years after I stopped believing before I realized "whoa, i'm an atheist." It is so ingrained in us as a nation to believe that atheism is bad.

;) wrote:

Conundrum wrote:

Yes I do and yes they did. But atheists used to be activists. Now days its more common for people to be de facto atheists. They don't declare themselves as such but God or religious belief doesn't really occur to them. They kind of fall into it.

I think part of the reason they don't declare themselves as such is BECAUSE of the negative connotation. I know it was years after I stopped believing before I realized "whoa, i'm an atheist." It is so ingrained in us as a nation to believe that atheism is bad.

Maybe that is true for some. I can tell you that my kids (20 - 27 years old) pretty much never even think of the whole god question. To them that is a foreign world. Declaring themselves atheists would be something like walking around telling everyone that they don't speak Latin.

I wanted to revisit this topic about the existence of Moses. After further research, I found evidence that was uncovered by Ron Wyatt, a Biblical archaeologist who found the exact area where Moses crossed the Red Sea. That area is known as the Gulf of Aqaba, more specifically Nuweiba, Egypt on the Eastern shore of the Sinai Peninsula. Per the map, it shows the crossing to be about 8 miles wide.

Wyatt led a scuba exhibition in 1978 and uncovered chariot wheels which were preserved by coral. He uncovered 4 spoke, 6 spoke and 8 spoke chariot wheels. According to the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, the 8 spoke wheel was used by the Egyptians during the 18th Dynasty and matches the Thutmoses III timeline. In the book of Exodus, it mentioned that Pharoah's army drowned in the Red Sea.

I find this compelling evidence for the Moses story. How else did chariot wheels end up under water?

The Joseph story is another topic that many chose to dismiss as pure fantasy. I would like to list a historical figure from ancient Egypt who fits The Biblical Joseph.

Take a look at Imhotep:

Second in command under Pharaoh Djoser

Lived to be 110 years old

Great architect and builder

Stored up corn during 7 years of plenty

Provided corn during 7 years of famine

Interpreter of dreams

Built the step pyramid and palaces

Legendary history

Married into the Priesthood of On

One of 12 siblings

Seems to match Joseph.

Bible and slavery wrote:

... I found evidence that was uncovered by Ron Wyatt, a Biblical archaeologist

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...I find this compelling evidence for the Moses story. How else did chariot wheels end up under water?

1) "Biblical archaeologist" is an oxymoron. 'Archaeologist' is a type of scientist - like all scientists an archaeologist follows the evidence wherever it may lead. 'Biblical' denotes someone who takes the Bible as the truth regardless of what the evidence says and looks for ways in which the evidence could possibly be interpreted such that it does not contradict the Bible. i.e., the 'Biblical' descriptor negates the possibility that one is a scientist.

2) It is amusing that you find the "evidence" presented by this "Biblical archaeologist" (sic) to be compelling. Indeed, you have precisely copied the thought pattern that so many vacuously use to justify a belief in God.

"I don't know how the chariot wheels would be found where they are found...therefore Moses."

"I don't know how (insert your favorite scientific gap) works...therefore God."

Oh, and regarding Ron Wyatt, here is how he is described in Wikipedia:

"Ron Wyatt was an adventurer and former nurse anesthetist noted for advocating the Durupınar site as the site of Noah's Ark, among other Bible-related pseudoarchaeology. His claims were dismissed by scientists, historians, biblical scholars, and by leaders in his own Seventh-day Adventist Church..."

Or from a Christian site - isitso.org

"Ron Wyatt was neither a professional archaeologist nor a specialist in any scientific field that would help him in evaluating the sites and items he claimed to have found.

He was a nurse-anesthetist by trade, embarking on amateur archaeological expeditions as time and finances permitted. This amateur status certainly does not preclude the possibility that he could have found many interesting items in his travels.

What it does indicate is that he was not necessarily equipped to subject his speculations about sites and objects to rigorous scientific scrutiny. In the opinion of many who have investigated his claims, his speculations were often based on not much more than wishful thinking and scientific misconceptions. But once he had settled on a conclusion about what he had found, and had begun sharing those findings with the public, he and his supporters seemed extremely hostile and unreceptive to any questions about the accuracy of the scientific documentation that would have substantiated those finds"

Thanks, POTO, for shedding light on the source.

The essence of any useful argument is that all the parties to it have to be able to say, sincerely: "But I could be wrong." When you don't have that, you have a religious argument.

"Religious" arguments don't necessarily involve religions at all--think about Yankees v. Red Sox. What they do involve is people whose minds are made up, and are not to be swayed with "facts" and "reasoning," "data" and "logic."

Genuine scientists (many of them highly motivated) have been looking for solid evidence of a biblical exodus for a long, long time. A couple of million people (at a time when Earth's total human population was on the order of 100 million), wandering in a fairly limited area for 40 years? If there were credible evidence to be found, it would have been found by now!

And this is the answer to people who say that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Absence of evidence that should be there surely is evidence of absence.

So... how did those chariot wheels get there?

Re: "it would have been found by now!"

What are you basing that on? Do you not believe that there will ever again be another meaningful archeological discovery in any field? Or only in the field of Jewish history?

thejeff wrote:

So... how did those chariot wheels get there?

Re: "it would have been found by now!"

What are you basing that on? Do you not believe that there will ever again be another meaningful archeological discovery in any field? Or only in the field of Jewish history?

You might want to start with the question:

Did those chariot wheels get there?

Find legitimate reporting of this archaeological find.

I had never heard of Ron Wyatt, so I looked him up. There is a lot of documentation that Wyatt was an outright charlatan. It reminds me a little of certain guy from Vermont who just happened to stumble upon some golden tablets written by the hand of God. One guy's supposed find is not enough "evidence" for me. Sorry, but this just really doesn't pass the smell test at all.

Let's suppose for a second that he really did find a a few chariot wheels. So what? A couple of chariot wheels is a bit different from an entire army at the bottom of the Red Sea. We have to be skeptical of evidence until there is enough to render at least a theory. What you have here is a thin hypothesis at best.

thejeff wrote:

So... how did those chariot wheels get there?

...

"I don't know how the chariot wheels would be found where they are found...therefore Moses."