(Part 2) Best products from r/DebateAnAtheist

> What science does the Catholic Church contradict?

Any claim of the Church that includes God as a causal agent.

Within science (the methodology of science), there are two assumptions:

1. Any phenomena can be understood as an effect of physicalism.
   
2. Physicalism is same everywhere (i.e., not only are we not in a special place, there are no special places).
   
   The alleged entity, God, has no place in any scientific equations, plays no role in any scientific explanations, cannot be used to predict any events, does not describe any thing or force that has yet been detected, and there are no models of the universe in which God's presence is either required, productive, or useful.
   
   A non-complete listing where the Holy See currently contradicts the methodology of science is:
   
   

• Creation ex nihilo/creation ex deo; the transistion from a literal nothing, a condition of non-/not-existence to the condition of existence (including, but not necessary limited to, this universe)
  
• Cosmogenesis; the initiation of this universe including the physicalism specific to this universe
  
• Abiogenesis; the transition from non-life to life
  
• Evolution; The Holy See supports Theistic evolution where God is a causal factor in how evolution occurred and where evolution is an ante hoc process rather than a post hoc result
  
• A contemporary Adam and Eve; the Holy see relates the Adam/Eve story as an allogery, yet requires literal co-existent contemporary Adam/Eve to establish the Fall and Original Sin
  
• All of the claims of cognitive and purposeful "God did it" miracles within the canon Bible which violate or negate apparent physicalism
  
• The results of the application of many moral tenets that are Bible based (either directly through scripture or by the rational of Tradition).
  
  Some references against the historical 'warfare' between science, and the results of science, and Theism (in which the Catholic Church is a significant player):
  
  
• A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 volumes, By Andrew Dickson White
  
• The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension, by Frank M. Turner, Isis, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 356-376
  
• Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, By John Hedley Brooke
  
• History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, by John William Draper
  
• An interesting look at revisionist apologistics: Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, by Gary B. Ferngren
  
• Persecution of Noted Physicians and Medical Scientists, by Steven I. Hajdu, Ann Clin Lab Sci Summer 2007 vol. 37 no. 3 295-297
  
• An Illusion of Harmony: Science And Religion in Islam, by Taner Edis
  
  Now, does the above refute Catholicism? No. A requirement within the methodology of science is that of falsifiability - and all of the "God did it" claims invoke some measure of non-falsifiability; thereby rendering the use of science as, in many cases, inappropriate. To support Catholicism based upon some version of: "Since science can't disprove it, there is a (conceptual) possibility that this claim is true" represents a disingenuous strawman as well as the fallacy of a reverse burden of proof - which, in turn, is used to provide support for the Theistic use of the argument from ignorance/God of the Gaps to artificially elevate a conceptual possibility, a feeling or appeal to emotion, to the level of a claimed credible probability.
  
  Additionally, and more specific to the Catechism of the Catholic Church then to other Christian sects and other Theistic Religions, is that the Church coaches many of it's Divine and supernatural related claims and tenets as "mysteries" that required the Virtue of [Theistic Religious] Faith to accept - thereby bypassing the responsibility to actually provide credible and falsifiable evidence to support.
  
  Finally, a suggestion. Instead of attempting to find scientific results to refute Catholic tenets/doctrine/policy/claims, consider using this time to critically evaluate the claims and policies of the Catholic Church as actually and credible supportable, to identify, develop, or provide a credible burden of proof for these claims/policies that are sufficient to support a belief/acceptance (for example, show these claims, which are extraordinary in consequence if true, to be supportably true with a significance level/level of reliability and confidence better than a conceptual possibility, an appeal to emotion, wishful thinking, Theistic Religious Faith, the ego-concept of the highly-subjective mind-dependent qualia-experience "I know in my heart of hearts that this thing is true" represents a mind-independent fact or Truth, and/or a flawed logic argument.

First off, one does not have to understand evolution to be an atheist. Common misconception.

If you'd like to truly understand evolution, you must be knowledgeable in what evolution is, what evolution is not and the driving mechanics that make it work.

Now what is evolution?

Evolution refers to the change in the frequencies of certain alleles within an interbreeding population of organisms. What the word allele refers to are the acting components of a gene such as, in simple terms, whether someone is short or tall.

Each person carries two copies of each allele and they may be the same or they may be different but each copy is one of two things: dominant or recessive. When two organisms reproduce, one of the two copies from each parent goes to the offspring. If the parents have two dominant alleles for a trait, such as height, their offspring will have the dominant trait. In this instance they would be tall. If they have the recessive versions, they would be short and if they have one of each they would be medium size, which is called heterozygous expression. That's your simple crash course in heredity.

Now how do alleles come about?

This variation can happen in several different ways, such as:

• Mutation: A mutation occurs when the genetic code is changed. This can happen via an external source, like solar radiation, or an internal source, like the DNA being copied wrong when a cell divides. Each time a mutation happens, it can have one of three results: nothing happens, the effect of the gene can be changed or the gene can stop working.
  
  
• Sex and Recombination: This applies to sexual organisms (duh) and refers to the refers to the reorganizing of which alleles match to which. This is in opposition to the linked genome (things don't get reorganized) of asexual organisms.
  
  
• Genetic Drift: This refers to the the exchange of genes between populations and between species. Think for instance about our tall and short alleles from earlier. Say that one population that really only breeds with itself has only the short allele. One day they meet up with another group of similar organisms that they can breed with and they only have the tall allele. As a result, the missing allele becomes present in the other population.
  
  Well, that's fine and dandy, Mr. Montuckian, but these organisms aren't evolving from frogs into birds now are they? No kids, they're not. Not yet at least. You need to apply the mechanisms of evolution to them to make that happen. These are made up of the following:
  
  
• Selection: A lot of people separate this concept into Artificial and Natural Selection. They are the same thing. Basically, when you have a varied population, some organisms will have traits that provide them with a selective advantage when it comes to their environments. Tall organisms may be better able to access food, while shorter organisms may better conserve heat. Depending on the environment, a tall or a short organism may be better able to survive and reproduce, which creates more creatures with the adaptive genotype and fewer with the maladaptive genotype.
  
  
• Sexual Selection: Sometimes genes are chosen because they are preferred by a species but don't have an adaptive purpose necessarily. We've all got our fetishes after all.
  
  Eventually, and sometimes this can take a very long time, new 'species' are created. But like using the word 'code' to refer to DNA, 'species' is a word that we apply to biology and it's not entirely appropriate. The idea of separate 'species' is borne out of the idea of The Great Chain of Being. This idea says that all animals are organized into a hierarchy of greater or lesser organisms with little stuff like bacteria and bugs at the bottom, mammals toward the middle, people higher than that and celestial gods and angels above that. Not a real scientific sort of idea, if you ask me. In reality, and this is the cool thing, we're all really part of the same tree and if we were to go back and look at you, your parents, your grandparents and so on as a sort of flip book, you would see little tiny variations that lead back to the beginning! It's hard to see these in a single generation though, which I think leads people to dispute the fact that it is, in fact happening.
  
  And this brings me to my final point:
  
  *What isn't* evolution?
  
  Evolution is not:
  
  
• Abiogenesis: This is the idea that life emerges from non-life. While many evolutionary biologists think that this is probably how life began, with errant proteins reassembling themselves and reproducing, it's not a tenet of evolution.
  
  
• The Big Bang Theory: That's a cosmological model and a crappy sitcom. Neither of which have a whole lot of life associated with them.
  
  
• Atheism: Atheism is simply the refusal to believe the assertions of theists that there are supernatural beings. While many atheists point to evolution as the most probable method that we know of for the creation of Man, they are wholly unrelated.
  
  Hopefully this gives you a clearer picture of what it means to understand evolution. There are plenty of great books out there, such as Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth that can give you a more in depth explanation of the caveats and nuances of evolutionary theory.
  
  Edit: A few text and clarity things.

>For a theory to be scientifically valid, it must be falsifiable. How could one disprove the transmission theory of consciousness?

Well, let's get one thing straight from the get go. There's a difference between fact and theory. For instance, apples exist, and they fall to the ground. Those are facts. However, why do they fall to the ground, and why do they grow on trees? To answer that, we need theories. Facts do not need to be falsifiable, but theories do.

The production theory of consciousness, i.e. the theory that the brain creates the mind, is, to its credit, falsifiable. However, we are in a position where the evidence already has falsified it. I know that may sound completely alien to you and just ludicrous, but that's because you are not in a position of being aware of that evidence. See here and here for a thorough summary of that evidence, and all the arguments put forth against it explicitly refuted. So, when we take a look at all the evidence, the transmission theory of consciousness, at large, appears to be more of a fact than a theory. I.e., we know that the brain mediates consciousness and that consciousness continues in the absence of the brain. What we don't know is how. And there are variants of the transmission theory of consciousness put forth that try to explain that in various ways. And those variants are falsifiable. Carter talks about some of them in his book, but I can't remember them from the top of my head.

>I mean, what makes neurons special in that they can interact with another dimension?

I don't know. Let's turn the question around. Say you are an eternal being in the spirit realm, and you want to incarnate into a physical world as something specific. We, for instance, are here experiencing what it's like to be a human. But would we like to experience what it's like to be a dog, cat, tiger .... mosquito, larvae, butterfly, ant ... blades of grass, drops of water ... cells, molecules. I mean, is there a point at which a line is drawn and there's no point in experiencing what something is like?

I don't know. I don't pretend to have all the answers to that question. All we know is that we at least incarnate as humans to see what that's like. The future will probably hold more answers, as we collectively begin to make inquiries of this kind regarded as more imperative.

>Well, if consciousness is being transmitted to our world, then we should be able to measure the increase in energy.

Based on what argument?

>What form of energy is used in the transmission?

I don't know. I don't know if it's even something that we can detect. It could very well be an interactive nature that is beyond our (current) tools of investigation.

> The idea that the mind is in some way non-physical.

The mind is a product and an element of the physical brain. It may not be concretely tangible (i.e., you can't hold a mind), but that does not mean it is not a part of the physical universe. Physics explains the mind quite well, actually. The neurons in our brain are developed in compliance to the laws of physics and biology, the neurochemicals in our brain are physical substances, and the electric currents in our brains that communicate signals between neurons operate in compliance to the laws of physics.

Evolution also provides insight into the development of consciousness. While, sure, humans are the only terrestrial species with advanced enough consciousness to develop religious and philosophical ideas, we know now that many animals have forms of consciousness and proto-consciousness like what we would expect if humans evolved consciousness from simple origins. The mind is perfectly explainable through naturalistic sciences, and our naturalistic model of human consciousness makes predictions that are falsifiable.

I'd suggest reading Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works. Here's a talk he gave on the book. I'd also suggest his The Stuff of Thought, The Language Instinct, and The Blank Slate.

I'd also suggest Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. While it's main thrust is to show how science can inform morality, it offers some pretty decent layperson explanation of consciousness, and it is written by an accomplished neuroscientist (whatever your opinion on his religious works may be). His pamphlet-esque Free Will also covers some good ground here.

> All able-bodied humans are born with the ability to learn language.

Not at all true. You can be able-bodied and learning disabled. There was a nonverbal autistic student at my middle school years ago who ran track. Trivial point, but still incorrect.

> I would argue humans also have a Spiritual Acquisition Device.

I would argue that this argument is SAD. (pun; sorry.)

You're positing a massively complex hypothetical neurological infrastructure to link human brains to a divine alternate universe or dimension that has never been shown to exist. Not only has this neural uplink never been observed, but it is entirely unnecessary, as neuroscientists and psychologists have a perfectly functional, testable model of consciousness without it. You're adding a new element to that model that is functionally redundant and untestable. Occam's Razor would trim away your entire posited element out of extraneousness and convolution.

Consciousness is an emergent property of the operation of the human brain, and we can see this by looking at the ways in which injuries to the brain cause changes in behavior. The most famous example is Phineas Gage, whose personality changed so dramatically after an injury to his brain that friends said he was "no longer Gage". But there are many other examples. I'd strongly recommend reading The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran, which explores several brain-based maladies and the ways in which they radically change people's behavior; one example is Capgras syndrome, which causes a person to adamantly claim that someone dear to them (e.g. their own mother) is actually an impostor.

To bring this back to the reason why you're posting this here instead of a [neuro]science or psychology subreddit, if we have an eternal, spiritual soul separate from our body, its nature would presumably be durable--not subject to sudden and drastic change. But the case of Phineas Gage strongly contradicts that, and the research that has been done by neuroscientists in the ways our brain works shows that emotions like love are intimately tied to physical brain states in ways that can be a) measured and b) affected dramatically by injuries or perturbed by temporary stimulation or paralysis. In other words, not only do experience and science not support the existence of a soul, they contradict it.

Whatever you believe, I'd strongly recommend reading at least one neuroscience book, since it's a fascinating topic and it's clear you're interested in these questions. Any of Ramachandran's books would be good, and you might also want to try Steven Pinker's excellent How the Mind Works for a broad overview.

I can not give you enough upvotes. I will also try to summarize the talk for those that are too lazy to watch the whole video.

Cosmologist are pretty sure that the right answer is the second one: energy came from nothing.

I'll try to explain it: we know that most of the mass of bodies does not come from quarks that form protons and neutrons, it comes from the empty space between them. We have theories that say that empty space is continuously bubbling with particles that pop in and out of existence, and experimental results confirm it. Actually, our best theory is accurate to 10 decimal places with experimental results, that is amazing.

So, what is the energy of vacuum space? Cosmologists calculated that and the answer was: energy of vacuum = 10^120 x mass of all the universe. That's scary, because if it were true, we wouldn't be here. So cosmologists knew that the answer was: the total mass of universe has to be zero (total mass is given by "normal" matter, energy and negative energy). And now we know that it is actually true: accurate measurements showed that our universe is flat, and that means that it was born from an exact balance of negative and positive energy. A flat universe is the only universe that can start from nothing, and our universe is indeed flat.

Dr. Krauss also wrote a wonderful book that I highly recommend: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing.

I suggest you read a couple of books that present the evidence for evolution very clearly:

Why Evolution Is True

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Evolution itself is a simple concept, but the evidence for it is broad and detailed across many scientific disciplines, and it all fits together.

Regarding the existence of God, one can't prove that your God doesn't exist, or that any of the other thousands of gods that have been worshiped through the ages don't exist. The real question is whether there is enough evidence to positively prove the existence of any one of those gods.

> the universe seems to be orderly and designed (orderly and designed as in the way a watchmaker makes a watch). Like I said, not very good.

This goes by many names, including Paley's Watchmaker Argument and the argument from design.

I agree it's not a good argument - it's got a lot of problems with it. Iron Chariots has a page set up that goes into some detail about these issues, if you're interested: Argument from Design.

The main issue I have: where did the designer come from? If the designer was special and always existed, why could the universe itself not be special and always have existed in some form (perhaps an infinitesimally small cosmic "seed" from which the Big Bang sprung?) If the designer sprang into being on its own, why then could the universe itself not have done the same thing?

> I'm already realizing that my belief in a god isn't supported by anything other than flimsy justifications.

Keep reading! There are plenty of books and documentaries that explore all sorts of philosophical and scientific ideas - people here or /r/atheism or /r/TrueAtheism would be more than happy to suggest relevant material, should you wish it.

If you're interested in cosmology, you might like Lawrence Krauss' talk A Universe From Nothing (which covers topics from his book by the same name.)

Sean Carroll's talk at Fermilab on Quantum Field Theory is also excellent.

Former Young Earther here. The best thing you can do is read and learn. www.talkorigins.org is a pretty good site.

Another good source is The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/B004AYCWY4/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1319762317&sr=8-5

Figure out some of the more common creationist claims, as well. Read some about geology, astronomy, cosmology. It'll take a while, but the more you know, the more intelligible you'll be, and the better able you'll be to string ideas together when asked.

You wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, but throughout your philosophical journey, you always based your convictions only on authority and tradition instead of on evidence and arguments. Don't you realize that this is the epitome of anti – intellectualism?

It is correct that the New Atheists aren't the pinnacle of atheistic thought and didn't contribute many new ideas to the academic debate of atheism vs. theism or religion. But this was never their goal, and it is also unnecessary, since the academic debate is already over for many decades. If you want to know why the arguments for theism are all complete nonsense and not taken seriously anymore, why Christianity is wrong just about everything and why apologists like Craig are dishonest charlatans who make a living out of fooling people, your reading list shouldn't be New Atheists, but rather something like this:

Colin Howson – Objecting to God

George H. Smith – Atheism: The Case Against God

Graham Oppy – Arguing about Gods

Graham Oppy – The Best Argument Against God

Herman Philipse – God in the Age of Science

J. L. Mackie – The Miracle of Theism

J. L. Schellenberg – The Wisdom to Doubt

Jordan Sobel – Logic and Theism

Nicholas Everitt – The Non-Existence of God

Richard Gale – On the Nature and Existence of God

Robin Le Poidevin – Arguing for Atheism

Stewart Elliott Guthrie – Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Theodore Drange – Nonbelief & Evil



[Avigor Shinan – From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609086)

Bart Ehrman – The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

Bart Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted

Bart Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus

Burton L. Mack – Who Wrote the New Testament?

Helmut Koester – Ancient Christian Gospels

John Barton, John Muddiman – The Oxford Bible Commentary

John Dominic Crossan – Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

Karen Armstrong – A History of God

Mark Smith – The Early History of God

Randel McCraw Helms – Who Wrote the Gospels?

Richard Elliott Friedman – Who Wrote the Bible?

Robert Bellah – Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

Robert Walter Funk – The Gospel of Jesus

Well, we know that the space & time are intricately woven together as a single fabric (what physicists call "spacetime"). If space itself was created in the big bang, then so was time... so to say that "it once was the reality" as if to imply that there is such a period as "before" the big bang (when in fact, it would seem, time itself did not even exist) would be fallacious...

There are, of course, models of the universe in which the big bang is only the beginning of the universe as we know it, but that it's actually eternal (or part of a larger multiverse). But true, absolute "nothing" implies no spacetime. It's hard to think about, to be sure.

I'd recommend reading Lawrence Krauss' book on the subject for one interesting perspective.

I've come to enjoy this youtube channel specifically for the way he engages with people in a largely non-confrontational role.

I believe the techniques are well described in a book by Peter Boghossian called A Manuel For Creating Atheists. The guy in the youtube channel might even be the author, I don't know.

Anyway, I think it's a good basis for discussion. It's not about "You Are WRONG!". It's about taking a closed door and nudging it ajar so the person goes home and thinks about the topic more.

You'll only do yourself a disservice by skimming an internet-education on evolution if it's something you truly want to understand.

Grab a copy of The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins . It costs less than a ticket to the creation museum. The book presents clearly and concisely the evidence for evolution and details how the process works. There's likely hesitation to buy a book by Dawkins because of his notoriety as a prominent atheist, but the book is impartial on the topic of a creator; It only aims to provide the facts and reasoning behind evolution.

I hope you find the answers you're looking for on this matter, brandon64344. The world makes so much mroe sense through the lens of evolution.

Along those lines, Dawkins is great for explaining evolution in easy-to-understand detail. Pick pretty much any book by him and you'll get a very good education.

There is no evidence that the universe has a beginning, or therefore a cause. Our universe could be an extension of a multiverse. The universe could be cyclical. The universe could be created by an alien race in another universe, which is sufficiently advanced so that they have complete control over time and space. The universe could be a lot of things. We can make theories about what those hypotheticals are, but we have zero way of testing them right now. That would require reach we don't yet posses.

There is no reason why the answer to those hypothetical situations is better served as "God" rather than any of a billion other possibilities.

Read A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss or interview a physics professor for more information. Maybe start an /r/askscience thread if you really want to know. The answer to this question is unconnected to whether or not Jesus could walk on water, if Elijah ascended bodily into heaven, or whether Mohammed could spit in a man's eye to heal it.

Just watched the video at didn't find anything out of the ordinary with it.
Mind you I am not an astronomer or anything, I just find this stuff very interesting, so I read a bunch of books on the subject. I've recently finished Lawrence Krauss' "A Universe From Nothing" and I heartily recommend it, though it's not a particularly easy read.

If you haven't already you should really watch Krauss' talk of the same name (which later resulted in the book). It's my favorite talk on anything ever.

I would read Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape or watch Matt Dillahunty's lecture The Superiority of Secular Morality.

Their stuff sums up pretty well where I stand. Basically, I am a moral objectivist.

I feel like you completely ignored my last paragraph in trying to come up with an explanation to defend the view that you'd like to be true.

I highly recommend that you read a book called, Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman. In it, Dr. Friedman lays out the composition of the book in the way that scholars see it.

The first two are trivial but the last one is not, and I don't suggest you try and deploy evolution as the principle defense of your morality, as that approach tends to be insufficiently rigorous (although it's true that morality evolved, that doesn't mean any particular action is 'good', for instance), especially if you aren't well read on the subject. This approach can be unpersuasive, and if you end up in a debate with someone well versed in moral moral philosophy, you might find yourself very quickly disarmed.

Instead, here is a book I highly, highly recommend.

You must have heard of Sam Harris by now, but if you haven't, check him out online. There are several of his debates and talks (moral landscape, free will, comparative religion, link between belief and behavior, spirituality) up and I think you'll find it interestingly difficult to disagree with him.

The book The Atheist's Guide to Reality explains the evolutionary reason for why we see significance where there is none (i.e. conspiracies) near the beginning. Also, it's a great book.

We can't replicate the solar system or gravity, they're just things we observe yet we know they're factual. However fortunately evolution isn't just something we observe, it has been recreated in the laboratory with bacteria (primates take too much time to evolve so we can't view it in the laboratory).

However there are examples of evolution in large animals if bacteria doesn't satisfy you. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

And if you want your mind blown I strongly urge you to read The Greatest Show on Earth, in it there are examples such as this.

Given your apparent troll status, I will simply recommend a book for you that addresses your question nicely. A Universe from Nothing (ISBN-13: 978-1451624465
| ISBN-10: 1451624468) by Lawrence M. Krauss gives scientific explanations about how the scenario you question can occur.

You don't have to buy it to read it, as you can check it out from your local library (or if you have an e-reader, borrow it online).

About the universe and what happened between t=0 and now? Well, I'd have to say start with Cosmos and you can also go with the documentary Sagan did of the same name. He touches on this subject in both of those.

Lawrence Krauss wrote A Universe from Nothing which goes into how there are explanations on how our universe could come to be without the need of the supernatural.

Victor Stenger has a bunch of books on this topic but I guess I might recommend The Falacy of Fine-Tuning.

Do my research for me? I've already done my research, you should do yours.

Here's a good starting point.

https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Revolutionary-John-Dominic-Crossan/dp/006180035X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EFZ7FB757V42YEK86HSA

Or if you're short on cash:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/historical-jesus/id384233911?mt=2

https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

Who Wrote the New Testament and The New Testament a Historical Introduction are both good places to start. The latter is by Bart Ehrman, who Bikewer mentioned.

> There's nothing strange about that, humans are not just information processing machines.

I would like to refer you to the book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker, because it turns out that humans are information processing machines. Our brains don't work by magic, they follow the same laws of physics as everything else.

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X Suggested reading for anyone interested.

Yes, quite a number.

His two peer-reviewed books on the subject:

• Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
  
• On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
  
  The first sets the foundation, talks about the flaws of current historical methods, and lays out a different proposed method for analyzing historical claims.
  The second applies that method to the question of whether Jesus existed.
  
  These are hefty, academic tomes, and are not to be approached lightly. I'd recommend my video link above for a primer.
  
  A few other relevant works:
  
  
• Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013. This is a collection of published papers, including ones on unrelated Biblical and non-biblical historical topics. It also includes a couple of recently published papers he cites in his book on historicity:
  
• Thallus and the Darkness at Christ's Death - Why Thallus' report of a eclipse isn't support for the Biblical darkness at the crucifixion
  
• Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200 - Why Josephus' purported mentions of Jesus actually aren't.

Yes. His book On the Historicity of Jesus is published by an academic house and passed peer review.

He's also previously published scholarly articles, but I don't have any handy.

It might seem perfectly reasonable, but physicists (of which I am not one) will tell you that it is not true. For instance, Lawrence Krauss, the preeminent physics explainer of our time, has written a book specifically called A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. Again, I'm not a physicist, but I do believe what they have to say--they were right about that whole gravity thing, don't you know.

No. Science does not indicate that the big bang came from nothing. The idea of something coming from nothing is a Christian concept. In the beginning God created... And God created something from nothing.

The astrophysicist Lawrence Kraus wrote a book A Universe from Nothing. It was a great read but unfortunately it fed into the idea of something coming from nothing. What Kraus did in his book was to change the meaning of the word 'nothing' in order to have a title that would sell more books. Kraus' 'nothing' was actually 'something'.

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/1451624468

http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian/dp/1939578094

for those wondering what we're talking about.

You can read or watch "A Universe from Nothing" by physicist Lawrence Krauss.

To very briefly summarize this theory, it appears we live in a zero net energy "flat" universe. All the positive energy (like mass) is balanced by the negative energy of gravity. Such a universe could theoretically spontaneously arise from nothing. Nothing meaning no mass, no particles, no space, no time, no laws of physics.

It's kind of how +1 and -1 form 0 in reverse. You can, in theory, get "something" out of "nothing" if the conditions are right. And it appears that the universe in which we live fits those conditions.

It's also possible the universe has no temporal bounds -- that it had no beginning. In this respect, it makes no sense to refer to a "start" of the universe. Time for the universe could be like the surface of a sphere -- it has no beginning, just a defined surface area. Time is a very strange and non-intuitive thing. For example, we know time "bends, compresses and stretches" as in general relativity.

But of course none of this matters. Not knowing the origin of the universe is just not knowing. It doesn't mean it must be god. Atheists are comfortable not knowing. We simply do not believe there is enough evidence for god/gods.

Please educate yourself about the theory of evolution.

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

Kent Hovind received his "masters" and "doctorate" in "Christian Education" by correspondence by a non-accredited school. Hovind has no formal scientific training, no research credentials, no worthwhile understanding of the basics of biology and certainly not even the most rudimentary understanding of developmental biology. This article ranges from complete nonsense to outright lying. Bringing this article in here and suggesting that it points out holes in evolution ought to be embarrassing for you. If it isn't, then you are too uneducated on the subject to even bother taking seriously and a sufficient answer is we are as certain about evolution as we are that the earth goes around the sun despite what "Dr. Dino" says.

> Please provide sources for everything you say

Not everything requires a source. Besides which, you don't provide one.

> 1. The bible- it was written by many different people describing the same events.

Source?

> I don't see how multiple different people could all record the same thing if it wasn't true.

There are many ways:

• They could each know what the other was saying, and all decide to lie together.
  
• They could all be relying on the same misinformed source.
  
• The entire account could be unreliable, even the account of who wrote what.
  
  You have provided no evidence to suggest that these things are not true about the Bible.
  
  > Also the bible doesn't seem like something someone would make up
  
  Really? It doesn't? Why is that?
  
  > William Craig has good arguments for this
  
  This is not a citation. William Lane Craig has written many things about the Bible. A citation would be a specific quote which we can verify that he actually said -- or, failing that, a transcript of the argument in question. You've provided neither.
  
  > 2. Risk of athiesm
  
  You're going to have to be more specific. What, exactly, do you see as a risk here? If you are thinking of Pascal's Wager, it is an absurd false dichotomy -- see my response to your point 4 below.
  
  > 3. Big Bang theory- how can there be something from nothing
  
  If you really want to know, there is an entire book no the subject, written by an accomplished physicist. The TL;DR is: We don't know yet whether the question even makes sense, but there's several theoretical models for how this could be the case.
  
  As an example, in one model, time began with the Big Bang, so the notion of the Big Bang coming from anything is incoherent. So the Big Bang isn't "something from nothing", because as soon as you say "from" in that sentence, you're talking nonsense -- it's as if you asked "What's North of the North Pole?"
  
  But the short answer is, we don't know how the universe began yet. We have some ideas of how something could come from nothing (and routinely does), but we don't know that this is how the Universe began.
  
  So, your turn. How can something come from nothing? Because that is exactly what the Bible says God did, right? If not, where did God get the stuff he made the Universe from?
  
  > 4. What if the devil really is deceiving me
  
  Good question. What if he is? I don't mean about atheism, necessarily -- what if he's deceiving you about religion?
  
  Think about it. Would it be beyond Satan's power to produce a book, and influence major historical figures to spread it as a false religion? What if Jesus was really the Antichrist in disguise, and you damn yourself to Hell with every prayer? The Bible itself, in Revelations (chapter 13, I think), talks about the Beast's rise to power, in which he spreads a false religion as a false prophet -- how do you know you're not following a false religion already? Surely, if the Beast had the chance, he would rewrite the Bible to make himself seem like the hero.
  
  So... I can't help you with your fear about the devil deceiving you, but atheism is certainly no worse off than religion in that regard. You could be deceived by the Devil, or you could be trapped in the Matrix, or any number of things. The only way your mind can function, the only way you can get anything done, is to assume that you are not -- to at least assume that your mind is mostly your own, and begin to reason about what else you can know.