[1] wrote: An event for which the only record is the few lines in Matthew. Even Josephus, who seemed to enjoy listing Herod's faults, failures, and nastiness, never mentioned it.

Roger: Quite why Josephus not mentioning it is evidence I am not sure. Matthew mentions it, and there seems no objective reason to ignore this, nor to suppose that anything Josephus doesn't mention -- or Matthew doesn't mention, or anyone else doesn't mention which is recorded in some other source -- therefore did not happen.

[1]: So in reality, there are more reasons in Luke, to ignore anything he says..

Roger: Anyone can find reasons to ignore things, especially if they took place long ago and the person doing the ignoring isn't very educated. What very many atheists don't seem to grasp (this is not a personal attack on anyone) is that the more they do this, the more evident becomes the lack of objectivity to everyone else. This is a real weakness in most atheist posting. We all recognise excuses.

What most atheists need to spend rather more time on -- this petty vituperation being rather pointless -- is to expound the position for which they all in practice proselytise. After all, none of us are interested in hearing attacks from people who can't discuss what they propose instead.

None of those to whom I put this simple point seem able to state the alternative by which they live. Yet we all know that atheists of any given period merely adopt their manners, their slogans, and their values and ideas from whatever menu of beliefs happens to be in fashion at the time and place in which they happen to live.

All the hatred directed at Christianity tends to have the silent inference that we should do the same. But why on earth would any rational person adopt a value-idea system which has no rational ground, which those who live by it cannot state, which is defended merely by finding fault with long-established systems of belief, which was not held 50 years ago and will not be held in 50 years time?

It is a sad thing to record that, as a rule, when I raise this issue, the average atheist either (a) screams abuse or changes the subject to whether I am a Good Person (!) (b) changes the subject back to "why Christianity is crap" or (c) says "I don't have any religion so I don't have to account for anything."

All the best,

Roger Pearse