Are you saying the ancient Greek, Arab, Babylonian, and Chinese astronomers/astrologers had telescopes? (just one example)
What did they accomplish that our "rigid dogma" says is impossible? And please don't say the Pyramids, Stonehenge, Easter Island, etc. I know those were made by human hands, no aliens, gods, or "Atlanteans" required.
We already had this conversation in the flood thread.
There is no evidence that this has happened.
This thread is not about the humans that we know about, but I am not claiming that the Atlanteans had telescopes. They may not have even needed them.
Humans did build the pyramids and all the monoliths scattered around the world. No one came from the stars. Humans before known history were aware of the stars and even named them. They were even aware of comets.
I am as convinced that there was a catastrophic flood as you are there was not, so we will probably not advance that far on the topic.
You really think we should accept the stories of Hercules, native American creation myths, Hindu creation myths, Xenu, and the millions of stories out there that are mythological in nature?.. as fact???
I'm sorry, but I find that to be a very insane position. You end up with millions of stories as "true", while most of them are probably anything but.
The only sane thing to do is put them in the "dunno" pile until you can find evidence that a story is in fact true. Then, when it is, you move it into the "as far as we can tell, true" pile.
From our experience, like I said, most of these stories contain a bit of truth and a lot of embellishment, so you usually don't even end up putting something in the "as far as we can tell, true" pile.. A part of the story will end up there, a part of it won't. Point is that unless you have evidence, you just don't know what goes where.. so you leave it in the "dunno" pile, which contains millions, if not billions of stories, yet to be verified.
Starting off with every single myth in the "true!" pile is just craziness. It wouldn't work at all.
I would agree with your view that most if not all the stories should be discarded, and that was not my point when I said the incidents happened. I apologize for not being very clear. My point was not that the stories are to be accepted as true, but the incidents that the stories embellished happened, and we don't have the full story. I don't think that the biblical story is embellished. I am not faulting any one who wants to toss it out with all the rest either.
It may be an insane idea to even attempt to figure out all of the incidents that happened in the past, and most people would probably not even want to be bothered with the details. Debunking every single written account on the topic, may be just another way of stating that preference.
No, he is saying we should accept judeo-christian dogma because he hasn't thought about how many contradictory mythological accounts there are and how his favorite one isn't any better evidenced them the others.
Not really, this thread is about "Atlanteans". Do you have examples of these contradictory points?
Oh it can be said. Very easily so. I'll take the claim of a world-wide flood as an example.
People during the time when the supposed world-wide flood happened, didn't know about 99% of the world. Why should I take claims of people, in whatever period they live, serious when they are talking about stuff they don't have any knowledge of?
Do you have proof that humans did not know that much about their world? I would assume that 95% of humans today do not know about 99% of their world. There is however some humans today that do or have access to knowing about everything that can be known about the current world. Humans today are mostly sedentary and unless they take the effort, things that happen outside of their sphere do not interest them. Humans in pre-historic times were globe trotters, and we barely have any clues about what they knew or did not know.
By the way, do you entertain or rule out the possibility there is no God?
I do not entertain, nor do I rule that possibility out. It is complicated and depends on how much a person can even know about themselves. I don't think that I have the ability to hedge my bets. I have not given up on life, but I have come to a resolve that it has been a good life and while missing my "goals" by light years, I do not regret it. If a person can know something is it possible to un-know it? I am not talking about forgetting or brain deterioration.
Obviously in the past there was the notion that one can recant, and change their belief, but does that really change what happens when one dies? People lose their faith and their belief, but can they lose their knowledge? One can change their mind, but can they change the facts? Knowledge and facts may not exist. People may have made them up. But experiences are harder to fabricate. What happens in one's youth tends to be justified and worked out over the remainder of one's life. What one knows is ruled out as true or false and enforced or tossed out as new knowledge is gained. It is quite possible that what one thought was true turned out was not true at all.
