5.4, part 2 of 6: The Evolution of the Afterlife

The evolution of the afterlife.
STAGE ONE: the 37 out of 39 Old Testament books that either don't mention, or even deny, an afterlife.
STAGE TWO: the 2 Old Testament books that say there IS an afterlife.
STAGE THREE: the New Testament, in which the afterlife, complete with Judgment Day & Heaven & Hell, becomes one of Christianity's main selling points.

By Todd Allen Gates, author of "Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer."

This video series is also posted on the Rational Response Squad site, where there's no word/character limitation on the Comments section: see http://www.rationalresponders.com/the_evolution_of_the_afterlife_from_the_ear...

An overview of whole series:

1 of 7: a brief description of videos 2 through 7.

2 of 7: a description of the Socratic Method.

3 of 7: the ground premises that the skeptic needs to establish with the Christian in order (a) for the Socratic Method to work, and (b) to focus on the issue at hand, which is "Are there valid reasons for me to believe that the Judeo-Christian Bible is the Word of God?"

4 of 7: the skeptic and the Christian read through scriptures and stories from non-Christian religions. Both agree that the following three characteristics are strong clues that a religion was not created by an Omniscient Wisdom, but just made up by people: (1) a cluelessness about the true layout of the universe, (2) senseless prejudices, (3) the borrowing of ideas & stories from pre-existing religions.

5 of 7: the skeptic and the Christian read through the Judeo-Christian Bible, and examine it by the same critical light just held up to non-Christian religions.

Science, Religion, and "truth" vs. "Truth": An explanation of how science and religion are opposites of each other when it comes to how permanent each considers its own knowledge to be--why religion spells its truths with a Capital T, and why science uses the lowercase t. This discussion is a continuation of a topic brought up in Video 5, but as my notes for this tangent issue grew longer and longer, I decided to give this 3-part series a separate title.

5.1 -- 5.4: Further details on the origins of the Judeo-Christian bible--how many of its ideas & stories can be found in religions that pre-date the bible by centuries.

5.1 explains why many of the baffling details within the tale of Noah & the Ark make sense once the story is read as a monotheistic version (in which God is said to be Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Benevolent) of a story that was originally polytheistic (in which the gods were none of the above).

5.2 discusses the pre-Christian religious stories from the Greeks, Romans, and Zoroastrians about unions between gods & mortals, miraculous virgin births, and offspring that were both human and god. It also covers the "Satanic pre-plagiarization" explanations from early Church Fathers Justin Martyr and Tertullian on how the pagans knew about these phenomena centuries before the time of Jesus.

5.3: Richard Dawkins refers to the Christian premises behind the belief that Jesus/God sacrificed Himself to appease Himself as "barking mad." This video looks at each of those premises--Divine Anger, the need for sacrifice, the use of a scapegoat--from the perspective of comparative mythology. A subtitle for this video would be "Richard Dawkins meets Joseph Campbell."

5.4: the evolution of the afterlife. Stage One - the 37 out of 39 Old Testament books that either don't mention, or even deny, an afterlife. Stage Two - the 2 Old Testament books that say there IS an afterlife. Stage Three - The New Testament, in which the afterlife, complete with Judgment Day & Heaven & Hell, becomes one of Christianity's main selling points.

6 of 7: a discussion of an abbreviated form of using the Socratic Method with proselytizers.

7 of 7: a discussion of why my approach focuses on skepticism of so-called revealed religions rather than skepticism of a Creator.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Afterlife
• death
• heaven
• hell
• Judgment
• Day
• evolution
• Plato
• Republic
• Egyptian
• Dead
• Zoroastrianism
• Christ
• religion
• atheism

[ScottJanssen]

There is zero evidence that the Giza pyramids are tombs. The evidence for their date is rather suspect, as it came from dating things found around the pyramids, not the pyramids themselves.

[ToddAllenGates]

> There is zero evidence that the Giza pyramids are tombs

Don't the mummies count?

> The evidence for their date is rather suspect

Here's a site from PBS on the evidence for why we can say with reasonable confidence that the pyramids are about 5,000 years old: pbsDOTorg / wgbh / nova / pyramid / explore / howoldDOThtml

[ScottJanssen]

@ToddAllenGates There were no mummies found in the pyramids of Giza, that was the valley of the kings. I read the link you gave, and again it is dating things around the pyramid, not taken from the Great Pyramid at all. The assumption MUST be made that the things around the GP were built at the same time as the GP. If you look at the layout of the GP, what is underneath the GP is built exactly like a ram pump. It was a machine that created light, and I say that with absolute certainty.

[ToddAllenGates]

> It was a machine that created light

I looked this up, and found some interesting info on it (hieroglyphics, etc.).

This interesting tangent aside, I don't think this point contradicts my main point for bringing up the Egyptians--which is that they had afterlife beliefs long before the Hebrews, let alone the Christians.

[MrBlackwit]

Nonetheless, I enjoy these video.. very thorough. 5/5.

[ToddAllenGates]

> very thorough 5/5

Thanks!

[KT45]

great vid!

[DaDonnieDawg]

Im enjoying the series thus far.

Keep up the good work!

[TheAtheistworld]

religion-mental disorder.

situation when person cant find a way anymore to healthy evaluate how far from a reality he is. its a total perverted delusional reality.look at this guy. he is mentally ill. its not a joke,nor insult. people r goin insane. their thinking and sense of reality is sick.religion-mistake. it was created to increase morals of sheeple. but people stopped questioning and drowning in madness.apocalypse of a human reason.religious society is goin to be a real resident evil movie

[chrisnu]

What you described from Zoroastrianism seems similar to the following:

I say that those who are suffering in hell, are suffering in being scourged by love. It is totally false to think that the sinners in hell are deprived of Gods love. Love is a child of the knowledge of truth, and is unquestionably given commonly to all. But loves power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, while at the same time it delights those who have lived in accord with it. Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 84

[ScottJanssen]

@ToddAllenGates > I don't think this point contradicts my main point for bringing up the Egyptians

Agreed.

I know how the machine worked. There is just one problem, and that is what I am working on solving right now, if I can solve it at all.  Without it, my theory won't see the light of day. I think the GP is what lead to religion, initially, sun worship. You see, the sun is JEALOUS, angry, and vengeful (reference to a flood in Egypt) which caused the machine to explode internally.

[ToddAllenGates]

> None of the text of the bible doesn't have some kind of a precedent

Agreed - this is the main subject of my videos starting with the #s 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5.