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Here's my well-reasoned (but so sorry, it is, sadly, a near- page-long bloggo!) responses to the typical resistant Christian mindset, which so often begins with the mindset thus:
"Quick! Hide thyselves! It's rifleman, the holy-grail wrecking ball of religious pandery! Run and BE VERY MUCH AFRAID of his facts and truths!"
So be it. Unlike many Christian acolytes here, I often invest my time in such thoughts on what is after all a designated and opendebating sub-forum, and the resulting independent and free-speech allowed content has often been the reason for my own, as well as countless multi-million strong and ongoing, conversions into rational atheism.
So far, there has typically been no better resolution of those quandaries of our existence and origins, else I would consider those with equal intellect and honesty in my responses. Unlike so many here.
So... read on. Or not. I know so many of you are desperately afraid to, but hey: no-one is forcing any of you. It's just that stubborn mind-set there alone in a mentally darkened room:
And predictably, Christians who dare to will provide yet another short-version of their defensive position, and a hand-waved off dismissal of what Christians choose to ID as yet another "rant", but with nary a single alternative perspective thoughtfully presented. OK then: I understand.
So... This is it: pure and inarguable logic. Obviously, all are free to comment on any or all of my points.
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1) There either is, or is not, a special and singular spiritual & ethereal God. Or, God forbid, several of them, all competing for global or local tribal power over the various illiterate masses.
2) So far, the alleged proofs of His existence, even though He has refused to EVER physically or in any documentable or visibly observable way, are only via the reading and uninterrupted chanting of a much-translated, always disputed and multi-contradiction-filled version(s), in so many alternate languages, and with confessed alterations by various agenda-driven religious organizations over the centuries, of The Holy Bible.
And yet... hmmm... all of it was written or chanted well after the facts (after all, no-one was there when God did all of his Genesis thing 5629.56 years ago, right?) And yet, it's invariably considered by so many to be totally inerrant on literally each and every detail!
3) AS with a natural origin of all we see, there also never any actual human witnesses to any of it, just those add-on word-of-mouth oral histories by dehydrated and starving desert minstrels over decades or even a century. All of it was generated by many v. imaginative but different and competing authors, who also all egotistically claim to have personally interacted with God or Jesus at different times, and in different.
And similarly nowadays, many also claim, with very emotional gesticulations, to have had actual, "I've heard it in my head!" interaction with their God.
As a result of such engagingly creative contradictions and speculation, this monumentally imaginative story should, at the very least be lightly yet intelligently reviewed for it's improbable content, don't you agree?
But still, I also suspect it's all pretty much imbedded in the Christian's thinking, likely from their mandatory childhood attendance to Sunday School (aka: Zah Christian EssEss!) indoctrination.
4) If there really is such an entity, and the ancient stories of His abilities are at least reasonably testable, why do Christians then rigorously resist any such testing with such fervor?
And even better, why don't the religious EVER take on any of the SM's test results, since it's all there to replicate. To, you understand, confirm it? Hmmm.... I wonder where that might come from, huh folks?
Fear again? I suspect so.
5) These supposedly magical abilities are then tested, with scientists using the simple and inarguable logic of The SM to try to validate or honestly debunk these claimed abilities!
6) When using such rational and defensible tests against those two lone options, one of them will always lose out or at least will create some reasonable doubts, which might arise and prompt further and more definitive test hypotheses. No grey areas.
Meaning that you can’t be partly pregnant.
7) Whenever the modern SM (with it’s processes of dedicated step-wise logic, followed by a vigorous peer-review process to protect The SM’s proven credibility)has taken on the various stories that came out of that highly variable biblical reference book, the biblical version always loses out.
Always, at the very least, when tested by rational standards.
All because us *demonic scientists* and our damnable Methods do not just give up when the testing gets intense!
8) "But why?" you may well ask?
It's simple! Despite what we now know in these modern times, the biblical versions always rely on brainless mysticism, superstitious magic and a plethora of what must seem, even to so many honest Christians, very implausible methods or on their simple but unsupported claims.
Meantime, turns out that the persistent and repeated SM versions always provide us with far more credible & defensible reasons in support of, say, species diversification, earth’s very old geology, natural biochemical interactions, testable and documented accumulations of such DNA-based changes in a population of organisms, and so on.
9) But then, and remembering that the mystical side always loses on these points from a logical and repeatable perspective, that obvious "correction" in our knowledge base is then wholly denied. Nope, never on any particular basis except “Well, Christianity has it’s millennia’s long biblical writings as ABSOLUTE PROOF, and anyhow, science faked all of it’s ALWAYS BIASED TESTS of literally any and all hypotheses regarding religion”
(Herein, a v. brief suggestion this crucial debating point: go look up the specific word definitions of Proof, Theory, and Hypothesis. Oh and also "Logically Defensible"...)
10) We are led to such inalterable facts that a) Christians are in general very sadly or completely uneducated in a) The SM (and it’s step-wise application), plus b)any even rudimentary and basic high-school biology, and finally c) the supporting accumulation of knowledge that ongoing competitive scientific analysis has created over the past 150 years. to repeat: its all re-testable by anyone who disagrees in any way, so why on earth don't you guys do that? Huh?
11) And yet, for obvious reasons, all of it is then casually and predictably swept aside in simple mindless support of a now-very old and wholly unsupportable set of beliefs.
And all of that is in frantic and unsupportable aid of maintaining a religion's antiquated mythology, because of what such a Revelation (Science, Ch. 1, pg. 1 – 200) would do to modern culture and Christianity.
12) So finally, we have all that growing support for the rational version, and yet steadfast Christian defenders and denialists steadfastly continue to refuse to a) ever improve their own knowledge of the sub-topic of basic understanding of The SM and it’s history of factual accomplishments (we did, after all, land on the moon, and not by incantations for a few guys in a barrel-shaped wooden lunar lander!), b) the post-medieval age of fear-mongering “knowledge” by a vicious and defensive church
(Noting that it has always wanted to keep it’s well-established but essentially pagan power as well as it’s dependable income, for those pedophiles, molesters, thugs and holier than thou outlook.)
Result?: the back-pedaling and furtive responses we predictably see here support that there will unlikely be any timely future advancement of understanding, or for at least the next few decades, because too much is at stake for the milling Christian mobs to accept. They don't seem to know how to have a spiritual persona without a fake idol to fall down and chant the official roteistá drone in front of!
Pretty silly, huh? But also, it's their loss, to be sure!
Those points are good and logical, but what you are saying is that, unless something is logical and reasonable by the standards of the human mind, it is not true. There is no logical reason why I should love my wife more or less than any other woman, or love her any differently than any other woman. So, logically, I should either not love her at all or I should love all women the same. Right?
Those points are good and logical, but what you are saying is that, unless something is logical and reasonable by the standards of the human mind, it is not true. There is no logical reason why I should love my wife more or less than any other woman, or love her any differently than any other woman. So, logically, I should either not love her at all or I should love all women the same. Right?
Charles Sands
37129
For some bizarre reason, certain agnostics and theists assume people exist, somewhere in the world, who believe only what is logical can be true.
We assume people know pain hurts. We assume people know the sky is up. Let's assume everyone knows that, just because something's logical, it doesn't necessarily make it true.
If there are logical arguments for theism, they are buried beneath a pile of illogical fallacies stated by those who seek to defend theism, causing we atheists to be vastly more likely to assume theists don't have any idea what they're saying until long after they've said it. Such logical fallacies are probably hurting theism more than Richard Dawkins ever could.
Those points are good and logical, but what you are saying is that, unless something is logical and reasonable by the standards of the human mind, it is not true. There is no logical reason why I should love my wife more or less than any other woman, or love her any differently than any other woman. So, logically, I should either not love her at all or I should love all women the same. Right?
It is true that a thing can seem logical and reasonable, maybe even be logical and reasonable, and one could still be mistaken about it. The basic difference with the scientific method is that there is a built in mechanism for dealing with that. When new evidence presents itself, the theory can then change in accordance with it.
This is also true, hopefully, of you and your wife. If you woke up one night to find your wife wielding a butcher knife over you, or if you found her sleeping with another man, it would invalidate the explicit and implicit social contract you have between you and your beliefs about her character, and then the value / love you confer upon her would have to change. No matter what you formerly believed, or how ardently you believed it, that is no longer possible in the light of new evidence.
The problem with religion is that when new evidence presents itself, it is dismissed as unimportant (because it's by the inferior standards of the human mind, apparently), and the religion does not change. The mind that god supposedly gave us is suborned to some ancient writings or doctrinal understanding of those writings.
To return to the marriage analog you mentioned, some people are so attached to their need to have their spouse on a pedestal of their own making that nothing could ever pull them off it. Not wielding a butcher knife, not unfaithfulness, not chronic nagging, nor extreme mental cruelty, not anything. They would rather participate in a living hell of emotional pain than change their idealistic views. That is what many theists are like, at least the kind that are dedicated to Bibliolatry.
What it boils down to is, if a dogma contradicts established scientific fact, which do you believe?
You are free to believe whatever you like and I am free to believe whatever I like, with or without reason.
To be honest, I don't give a rat's behind what it is that you believe in or don't believe in. My fights are with other Christians and not atheists.
Atheistic logic? Didnt know such a thing existed. Your post is a half page of ad hominems followed by a bunch of assumptions and ramblings.
Where did Rifleman say he was using "Atheistic logic?" While you're looking that up, go ahead a cite the assumptions and ramblings you claim he posted.
Atheistic logic? Didnt know such a thing existed. Your post is a half page of ad hominems followed by a bunch of assumptions and ramblings.
There seem to be two major types of arguments made to defend Christianity:
1. semantic trickery
2. arguments dependent on the initial assumption that god exists
There are several subcategories:
Examples of semantic trickery
*God is X. X exists, so god exists.
*Person X desires Y to exist. Therefore Y exists.
Examples of arguments dependent on the initial assumption that god exists
*God is beyond logic, therefore logic cannot prove its existence incorrect
*Without god there is no basis for morality, therefore god exists
*Something must have created the universe
*God can be sensed through feelings, and those feelings show god's existence
Got anything that's not that?
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